And the winner is...........hey, wait, nobady actually identified BOTH greetings meaning love, although both were pointed out thanks to two different people. So Brigham and Aunt Katheryn each get half bonus points. And Brig, the best way to get a package to me is to bring it here yourself or to send it to Mom and Dad's house and I'll be happy to receive it in April! The deal with the postal service here is like that of Colonial America - you pay to receive packages, basically the value of its contents - so I'd rather just get it late. It's not your fault. Mahalo!
Today we started classes. Two hours of Old Testament, talking about accounts of the Abrahamic Covenant. Our classroom has floor-to-ceiling windows on one whole side which overlook the city. I've decided I should never sit on the end of that row because I will not pay attention. OT was followed by our Ancient Near Eastern History class. Ho-ly-cow. That professor went SOOOOO fast. I'm just grateful I had a full semester to study the history of the nations that conquered the land of Canaan, which he covered in about 5 minutes of a 2 hour class. At least I have that. Next week we'll start our culture/religion (Islam & Palestinians as well as Judaism & Israelis) and language classes next week, as well as starting our awesome field trips.
This afternoon we were free to explore the city, but since it's Islam's day of prayer, the Old City is closed until 3 pm, so some of us decided to go to Orson Hyde Park instead and read the prayer given when he dedicated the land for the gathering of Israel. That was fun and I took some pictures. The park is near the bottom of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from the Old City. Sounds vast and locationally important, right? Well, I'll tell you what. I could throw a rock across the Kidron Valley and probably beyond. Everything here is soooooooo close together and small, yet land formation is named and fought over by so many people that everything seems hugely significant. In fact, within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there is a staircase that is in the territory of one of the churches, but the courtyard that the stairway leads to is in another church's territory. The bottom step is only about 2 inches high, so there's a big contrversy over which church has charge over the care of that step, since it's nearly flush with the courtyard, yet it is a step.......so the stairway church cleans all but the bottom step because the courtyard church claims the responsibility to clean the bottom step. Wow.
Tomorrow we will observe the Sabbath with the rest of Jerusalem (minus the Muslims, of course...the the Christian churches, too I guess). This will be fun, trying to strike out against the conditioning I've had for 25 years, that Sunday is the Sabbath. Hmmm. Some people actually change churches over this issue. I think it'll be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes.
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