Commentary on "Hi I'm a blog post by Anniekins!" (Neil)

It's time to restore some balance to Annie's clearly fictionalized accounts of the very first week or so.. She doesn't even know half of the stories. I mean, she knows the half that everyone would describe as "important," like her posts where she's like "Hey everyone, we visited some world famous location and it was so awesome! Let me tell you about it in excellent detail so if anyone else writes about it, particularly one of my brothers, their account will seem inferior and you will stop acknowledging them as family before long and I can have their possessions when they are gone!" Sly try, Annie, but as you should well know I won't give up my lucky machete and my favorite gym sock quite so easily.

Thus, I will mainly be adding commentary on things that already done been mentioned here in the blog and then writing about others that are more of my own stuff. There will be verbose descriptions, you have been forewarned.

Nabi Samwil overlook field trip: Annie forgot to mention that there were fig trees at this place. I picked a few and ate them while we were listening to the teacher talk about the site. They were way better than the several pounds of fresh figs I had purchased inside one of the city gates the day before--which all began spoiling overnight--which didn't stop me from eating almost all of them--which brings me to another point--fresh figs aren't very good.  The people inside by the spot that is traditionally regarded as the prophet Samuel's cenotaph (empty grave) was really nice to see. The people watching over it were very kind.

The building itself was not in good shape--the top of it is a mosque, the bottom a synagogue, but as Palestinian access has been restricted it has fallen into disrepair and it has been claimed by a sinister force I have faced before. I refer to the second most evil of global avian hegemons(we learned this word in class and I am not sure what it means. Either cultural monarchy or artichokes), the Pigeon King/Evil Pigeon Overlord. His forces once took me captive in Paraguay. If you don't remember how that went down, check it out here:http://elderreedinparaguay.blogspot.co.il/2009/06/pigeon-city-and-its-utter-destruction.html   The number one bird threats from humanity is, of course, Perky Bird the Cockatiel. I won't get started on that now, I hate crying bitter tears of bitterness when I think about it. 

Bethelehem overlook--
It was cool to look out and see Bethlehem. By the way, the hymn "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plain" isn't quite accurate. It's all a bunch of steep hills and valleys. That's OK, though. And I was, in fact, attacked by  a dust devil. I and the professors were all just minding our own business when one of the members of our group pointed north and screamed. I looked and had difficulty figuring out exactly what I was seeing before it was upon us. Dust, leaves and insects blasted through the air for all of two seconds before it had passed us. I spun and saw the dust devil stopped behind me, seemingly taunting me and inviting me to battle it as its smoky form coalesced into tangible existence. I have been chasing after these things for years, and I wasted no time in throwing myself into it and using the first thing that came to my head (literally) as a weapon. I thrust my trusty black sombrero into its core. It spasmed violently and then exploded, its defeated remnants floating away harmlessly. Unfortunately,  the entire other class looking on from a distance didn't see this battle in such an epic fashion as I remember it.  Their teacher merely paused, told his class to turn around and  jokingly said "Looks like that group has made the Lord angry." The aftermath wasn't so bad, besides the grit in our hair, the burrs attached to our bodies and the spider we picked off one of the girls.

Tel Aviv--Surfing was a lot of fun. I even got up once, which was harder than last time I went since the board was quite a bit smaller. There were some big waves where I wiped out. Now I know  what the rinse and spin cycle of a washing machine feels like. The rest of the city was interesting, we found a quirky market where a lady was selling what was surely one of the first telephones ever manufactured, and others selling things like fryer baskets. Definitely not the tourist part of the city. There were a lot of strange animal murals everywhere. There were three bears, a creepy rabbit painted on a dumpster, and a two headed rabbit that looked like it was investing in the oil business or something.

Weird happenings besides the dust devil---I accidentally nearly ingested a bee during lunch. It let me know with a subtle "HEY BUDDY I"M WALKIN' HERE" sting to my lip. It was a small bee and a small sting. It was almost kind of lemony.

 I was buying fruit in a market when a massive package of diapers fell past my head. The guy yelled sorry from the rafters above, and I was like "No worries, bro. Not like they were loaded!"

Barfing-- it is kinda like Annie told it. I was talking to some girls about eating bugs and the time I regretted not eating a cicada in Paraguay (a story for another time) and I talked about some roasted coconut grubs I had eaten in Paraguay. I was saying how it was a lot like bacon, and then she said how we could market the stuff--get little yellow tubs of it labeled "I Can't Believe It's Not Bacon!" As she said this, I was drinking water and I laughed. I choked on the water, spat a bunch on the floor, laughed and choked more--which activated my seldom-used gag reflex. It's been about six years since the last incident, folks, but I knew what I felt. I surged to my feet and looked for a trash can--nothing! I burst out of the room, and ran into the computer lab. Nothing! I glanced at the nearby drinking fountain, shook my head, and knew it was already too late. I quickly pulled up my orange button-down shirt to my forehead and let fly. WHOOOOSH! As soon as my airway was clear, I couldn't help but laugh maniacally at the clearly hilarious situation. I began walking down the stairs to my room so I could get rid of--I looked at it. Funny, I didn't remember eating chicken salad with carrots. Anyways, at this time Annie's account does in fact suffice."On his way down some girls were like hey Neil what's in your shirt and he was like you don't want to know and they were like um actually yes we do and he was like no really you don't and they were like YES WE DO and he was like FINE and then they got a peek and skiddaddled really fast. And then Neil took a shower. The end."

And that's the end of this. For now.

Field Trip Mania!!! (Annie)

     This weekend we went to all sorts of places and excursions and they were all fun so I will tell you about all of them! Sorry about the late post, this week has been extremely busy and I've been writing this post in my extra bits of time for a few days now.

    Friday all eighty of us headed over to the Western Wall to go to the beginning of Jewish Sabbath. Sabbath for the Jews starts at sundown Friday night and goes all through Saturday until an hour after sunset. The Western Wall is basically a kind of synagogue, so a lot of Jews go there to worship on the Sabbath. It was really fun to see Sabbath at the Western Wall. The Western Wall is divided into two sides, one for men and one for women. The men's side is a lot bigger than the women's side, and I have no idea why that is (and most of the Jews I've asked don't know either). Anyway, all the boys headed off to their side and the rest of us went down to the women's side. It was pretty funny to see the differences between the two sides. On the left side the men dance and sing and look like they're having a blast. On the right side the women pray and talk. The reason the two sides are so different is because the men lead the worship and the women follow, which makes sense to me. Personally I was just jealous of the men since it seemed like they were having a pretty great time over there. It was interesting to see everyone worship. We were stopped by a Jewish lady who heard us asking questions and asked if we wanted her help. It was very nice of her, and she answered a lot of our questions about Jewish Sabbath. Then at the end she invited us to go the Sabbath dinner with her at a famous Jewish rapper's house! I was like YES SIGN ME UP but we weren't allowed to go because we can't be in East Jerusalem after dark. Dang! But it was still pretty cool to be invited to something like that. Also, Neil totally looked like a Jew! He was wearing the right colors and kind of has the right coloring and everything so a lot of people mistook him for a Jew (until he started talking). Finally! Neil fits in somewhere!

     On Saturday after church we went to the Garden Tomb, which is where some Christians believe Christ was buried for three days after the crucifixion. It is relatively quiet and peaceful and a lot of people sing hymns while they are there, so it's generally a pretty nice atmosphere. However, whether it is actually Christ's tomb is debatable, since the tomb doesn't date to the first century. To me, though, that is not that important as much as actually thinking of the Savior there. We got a tour of the Garden from a British guy (all of the guides there are British for some reason), sang a few hymns, and saw inside the tomb. Seeing the tomb took a while, since only six people can fit in there at one time and around two hundred people were trying to get into it. It was a really nice Sabbath day activity and I'll probably go again sometime. Afterwards we walked home in our massive group of eighty people. I find it extremely amusing to walk around here because since we are so easily identifiable with our foreign features and extremely modest clothing, and all the time we get people calling things at us like, "Hey Mormon!," "I love you Mormon!" and "Hello! Hello! Hello!" (which children repeat over and over until they get some kind of response). I think it's kind of hilarious.

     Sunday we partied it up in Tel Aviv, which is the official capitol of Israel. Tel Aviv is right on the beach so we decided to take a beach trip and see the city a little bit as well. The beach was beautiful, and the water was amazingly warm! Shawn got really excited when we got to the beach, because we saw surfers in the water and he wanted to go surfing. So we find a surf rental place and rented two boards and went surfing for three hours in the Mediterranean Sea! It was really fun, even if Neil and I didn't exactly know what we were doing. We've all learned before in Hawaii, so it was just a matter of getting the hang of it. Afterward we finished surfing and playing at the beach we headed into Tel Aviv to see the city. They had one section of the city was obviously designed for tourists and was also deserted; apparently tourists don't like tourist traps. Neither did we. So we went into the "authentic" part of the city, and there we saw the real Tel Aviv. Believe it or not Tel Aviv is a real city! And it's just like any other city! And it's also super dirty and has lots of bad smells! After a few hours going around Tel Aviv lets just say I'm glad I'm living in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv, even though it's right next to the Mediterranean Sea.

      On Monday we headed south for another field trip. In the southern part of the Holy Land there is a desert called the Negev where there are many Bible cities to see. It was also, shockingly enough, hot! I melted like nutella on hot pita bread the whole day. We saw Beersheva, which is a Bible location where Abraham received revelation from the Lord, built a well, and where the Israelites stopped before going into Canaan. However, the location we went to isn't the ancient Beer-sheba. The real Beer-sheba is where present-day Beersheva is located, a few miles away. Where we went was an important trading village along the Patriarchs Way, a few miles away from the current Beersheva. We saw the village and a lot of it has been restored so that it actually resembled a living place. We had to wear hard hats, which was a problem for me because I was also wearing my huge floppy hat and balancing both of them on my head was a challenge (the person behind me learned to catch my hard hat as it fell because it happened so often). We saw the city and how it pertained to the Bible and then we went into this enormous cistern inside the city walls. It was super deep because the city is built on a tell, which basically is an area where people destroy the previous settlement and build their's on top of it over and over again, making the area appear to be a tall hill. Some tells can have a lot of layers. We went down into the cistern, hence the need for hard hats, and made our way through the creepy underground tunnels to the exit.

     Afterwards we went to Arad, which is an ancient Canaanite city from the Early Bronze Age. There is also an Israelite Temple located in the upper part of the city. The city dates to at least 2400 B.C., so it is at least 4,400 years old. Can you imagine anything that old? It is mind-blowing! It was almost surreal being there and seeing everything. That's another amazing thing about Israel: civilizations were born here, and the history is rich, complex and old. There's always something else to add to the history, something new to discover, something more to learn. It's like stepping into ancient times for just a moment.

     So I'm going to finally finish this post up! I'm going to Turkey on Sunday (SO excited) and next week I will not have internet access, but expect a nice long account of our Turkey trip on the way back! Before I leave I'll try to get some pictures up. Have a fantabulous day!