Aloha.

So, I was missin' Hawai'i a bit...

Hey, it's Elizabeth, my bedfellow!

I hope you can see where this is going...

So, I've been missing science classes....

We needed an experiment...

...and a snack.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the awesome, creepy Valentine I made for my secret Valentine. Yes, that is a bag made out of a corset. Yes, I made it myself. No, he didn't get it. (Like, understand it. No, I didn't decide to keep it....although, I might have to try to steal it back....)

I find that some things don't need explanations. This is one.

So is this!

This too!

But maybe this does. Creepy Valentine that my roommate got. Great pick-up line, yeah?

City of David Field Trip

Yo!

End of Hezekiah's Tunnel - the fake Pool of Siloam.

This is backward...(BLOGGER!!!!)...but here we've arrived at the end of the tunnel.

I got left in the tunnel....alone.....with a camera. It's really dark inside.

Hezekiah's Tunnel!!! So great. This is how the water gets from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam.

Remains of a house at the City of David excavation site. Can you find the toilet?

Olive wood carvings in Omar's store. I like 'em.

Back to Valentine's!! This store went all out!

That was all a bit mixed up. The past few weeks and the next few weeks we are in the classroom all the time. My hebrew script is getting awesome. I can write secret notes in class. We go on field trips every Monday, so tomorrow we'll go and you'll probably hear about it by the end of the week....hopefully sooner.

It's getting warmer! Yay!

Oh, I forgot that most of you haven't heard this. A couple weeks ago I lost my passport in the city. I'm not an idiot. I had it with me for a reason, but somehow it got away from me. For about a week I had to retrace my steps in the city, tear my room apart, and generally go crazy trying to figure out how to get a new one. Luckily I know a man who works for the US Consulate and he was very helpful in telling me what I needed to do...but it wasn't coming together until one morning about 5 days after I lost it. Suddenly I had a ride, new passport pictures and the time to go get a new one. Keep in mind that's $100 down the Jerusalem drain! So, I got to the Consulate and after waiting and waiting, I got to a window, handed the man my application and photos and as he was gluing the picture to the paper, he paused and said, "I think we have your passport. Someone turned one in here this morning." What?! Whoa! So, a few tense minutes later, I was called up to another window, where they handed me my passport and assured me that THIS NEVER HAPPENS!!!! So, I'm being looked out for!! It's a miracle. There is a God in Israel! And His timing is quite amazing, even if you have to live through a few very stressful hours or days.

All for now. Take care and be good!

I like takin' pictures and I've been holding out on you guys, so feast!


Old pictures, but you wouldn't know, would you? I love the sky.

Absalom's Pillar. Can you believe this is what we do for homework? Dan, Bentley and I went a-wandering.

We found a little whole to crawl down into...but getting out is a multiple person feat.

We waffled quite a bit on whether or not we should let Dan come out of the hole...

Church of the Holy Sepulchre....from a view that mostly just cats see. We found a way to get on top of the Old City. It felt like Aladdin!

This was by far the best olive grove we found.

EGYPT

My cairns!! At the border, crossing into Israel from Egypt.

At a mosque.

3!0!5! Roommate love over the Nile.

Don't hate me.

Oh, what a kind pharaoh!

Again, don't hate me. Luxor was really quite dreadful.........who am I fooling?!

Queen Hatshepsut locked her step-son in the palace for years and assumed his rule. Crazy woman. Good thing there's no resemblance, huh?

You know, a trck full of camels. Small kine.

The nerve.... Ummm...flashback to Egypt!

Flowers are....

what my camera...

does best.

SPELUNKING IN MICAH'S CAVE ~ I could barely fit one shoulder through the hole I'm sticking out of, let alone two......but I didn't even try. "Stuck" is probably my least favorite word, not to mention feeling.....

Heehee. . . Now you know!

Argh! My other video deleted! Check out facebook until I can re-upload the other one.

So, happy winter! Enjoy America!

I've come to the conclusion that....

You can tell how involved a person is in what they're doing by how much they blog. I, for example, posted something new almost every day in the beginning of my Jerusalem time...during which I wasn't too concerned about making friends and building relationships with the people around me. However, I've repented and gotten a lot more involved with the Zion community we're building and suddenly spend very little time blogging. So, rest assured, that when you don't here from me, I'm probably having a time too awesome to stop and sit down and write about. Horrible, I know. I just need to be more disciplined and make more frequent reports.

This week we sat in class a lot, but on Monday, we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial on Mount Hertzl in West Jerusalem. There are few experiences quite like that. Even though this happened years and years ago, you still get this sense of, 'I really need to do something about this.' It was a very powerful experience. The grounds are covered in karob trees, each of which is planted in memory of those who helped Jews escape from holocaust terrors. There are thousands of and thousands, and more are planted every year, as more stories are uncovered of these heroes. The architecture of the museum is very symbolic, giving you a feeling in the entrance that there is no way out and then finally opening up at the end to a beautiful view of pine trees and thriving Jewish communities on neighboring hills. The displays are very powerful, focusing on people and events, portraying life in the ghettos and concentration camps - there was a large collection of shoes from Auschwitz prisoners, actual cobble stones, street lamps, and a rail line from the Warsaw Ghetto, bunks from the concentration camps and lots of pictures and models. Near the end of the tour (oh, our tour guide was a young-ish Israeli woman who was born in Jerusalem and raised in New York), they bring you into a room of records, where they are trying to compile a complete list of all the holocaust victims. They have somewhere between 2 and 3 million names with information, but that's not even half of the 6 million they want, so they're always asking that if you have any information about holocaust victims, that you share the information with them. It reminded me so much of Temple Square and the Family History Library.......

We also went inside the Children's Memorial, which honors the memory of 1.5 million children who were also victims of the Holocaust. This was a very interesting and striking memorial - a single dark room with a very high ceiling. The only light in the room is provided by 5 candles, which are encased in glass and mirrors in the center of the room. The outer walls of the room are covered in mirrors of various angles, transparencies and distances from the center, which gives the effect of millions of stars or lights representing life of various sizes and brightnesses all over the otherwise lightless room. This helps you to shut out everything else for a few minutes and think just about these children whose lives and childhoods were cut short by these events. It was very touching.

After leaving the museum we proceeded to the top of Mt. Hertzl, which is named to honor the father of the Zionist movement, who was not, in fact, a very religious Jew but simply saw a great need for the Jews to have a place for themselves just like the French had their place and every other ethnicity had theirs too. There is a lot of interesting history here and learning about the Jewish National Home, from the perspective of both Israelis and Palestinians has been one of the greatest exercises in patience and understanding of my life. I'm convinced that I'll come away with absolutely no opinion on who is rightly entitled to this area, because honestly, neither side deserves it more than the other. Both have been victimized and neither one actually set the bounds of their territory - foreign governing powers took care of that for them. And it continues.....

Later that night some of us went to see the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Mozart, Beethoven, and completely spectacular violin virtuoso on the Beethoven, and the world premier of a piece by an Indian composer. Very modern and angry sounding, with dramatic oration in Hebrew. Very neat experience.

In other news, I've been trying to get over my cold. And it hailed the other day and it's been freezing. So, I haven't been out in the city at all this week. Lots of class and stuff.

Church was awesome today. Afterward a few friends of mine and I went in search of a huge old church in which to sing. The first two we tried, which by all reports have amazing acoustics were closed, so we wandered a little further down the Mount of Olives and found Dominus Flevit. I think it's a Franciscan church. That's what the monks looked like anyway. It's a small church, built on the site where Jesus wept. But it has a lovely vaulted ceiling and rounded walls, so we walked in with a tour group and just started singing hymns like we were supposed to be there. SOOOOO COOOOOOOOL!!!! I love doing that. So, let it be known that Cooper Johnson's music has been sung in a Catholic church in on the Mount of Olives. Woohoo!

Okay, where are we?

So, personal inventory. I just got back from Egypt.....almost 48 hours ago.....and you'd think I'd have already given massive updates, but darn it, I'm tired!! We didn't really ever sleep enough on that trip and it's hard work sitting on a bus.

I really enjoyed the trip. I think I said plenty about the first part of the trip, so I'll pick up where I left on. Off, rather. See, I told you I was tired...and obviously too lazy to back up and fix a mistake. Okay, a whole line later.......

I wrote from Luxor. We lived like kings, I tell you! I'll try to include some pictures to put your doubts to rest. Very few people actually contracted the "Cairo Quickstep" or "Pharaoh's Revenge," otherwise known as traveller's diarrhea. Yay! We simply had to avoid ingesting the water and any fresh fruits or vegetables......but toward the end, I broke down and ate some strawberries, which were awesome......and I didn't get sick! Apparently the group from last semester had a 60% rate of ick.

The last day in Luxor, that is after the boat and camel rides and all the other great stuff, consisted of touring the Luxor and Karnak Temples, which are collosol restored ruins of columns, statues and high ceilings. There was also so bartering in the bazaar. I think I won! I drive a hard bargain. Makes me want to go back to Hawaii, so I can successfully barter with the vendors at Swap Meet.

That evening we boarded a train to travel overnight back to Cairo. I think the trip took 5 or 6 hours. It was a fun experience - made me feel like I was living "White Christmas," minus Christmas and Vermont and Bing. Everyone should have that experience at least once. We checked back into our hotel and then hit the Cairo Museum - THE Cairo Museum! It was fantastic, of course, and contained way more than I could even appreciate. We did get to see a bunch of mummies, including Rameses II - probably the most widely photographed mummy, the face that saw the face that saw the face of God. So......I now have the face that saw the face that saw the face that saw the face of God! And what rounds out a trip to Egypt like lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe in Cairo?

After a bit more shopping began our pilgrimage to Mt. Sinai. We drove back under th Suez Canal and around the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula to the Morgenland Hotel, where we enjoyed a nice cold night before waking up at 2:15 AM(!!) to climb up the very rocky 4 mile trail, dodging camels all the way, to the summit of Sinai. It was pitch black, ice cold and holy windy!! Then the sun started coming up VERY slowly and eventually was glorious! The summit was packed with Koreans and various Europeans, all singing hymns as the sun rose. It was another neat experience of joining with lots of fellow believers in a once in a lifetime, faith-building pilgrimage. So cool. We had a testimony meeting at Elijah's Spring on the way down.

After St. Catherine's Monstastery, we checked out of our hotel and then stopped to lunch at a resort on the Red Sea. I MISSED HAWAII SO MUCH!@! The water was warm, the sand was lovely and I ran down the beach like a little kid, trying to get far away from the group and just bask in the glory of the waveless beach. I picked up some great shells. They finally coaxed me back on the bus. Crossed the border. Tried and failed to sleep on the bus. Laughed my face off with my classmates. We've bonded so much in the last week. It's been awesome for me, forcing me to break out of my shell and make a bunch of friends. But I've realized that in order for this experience to make a big impact in my life, I need to invest emotionally. It's beginning!

Borin' ol' Egypt

Marhaba. This will all sound very sarcastic, but Adam asked me to tell him about all the boring things I'm doing and seeing in Egypt, so you're getting my response...because I'm really short of time online, so .......

Well, hello. Today I rode a camel named William Shakespeare. It was really boring. We climbed in a bunch of really boring tombs in the Valley of the Kings, which I think they should rename the Valley of the Snores, because I was so bored by the well-preserved boring colors that were painted on the boringly carved walls thousands of years ago. We also saw the boring, shrivelled, mummy body of King Tut Ankh Ahmen. The only interesting thing about all those Rameses' tombs (why did they all have the same name anyway?), is that one of them almost collided with the shaft of the tomb of Amen Messe - glance at that name really quick and then look away reall fast....do it......humor me......okay, please!!!........is that vaguely familiar to you? I saw the boring cave where the scrolls and mummies that Joseph Smith purchased and from which he translated the Book of Abraham - I actually took a little nap there.....I'm not kidding - I did. We also took boring pictures at the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, who locked her step-son, the rightful king Tut Moses III, in the palace while she assumed the throne herself in the guise of a man. There was also something about the Nile and a sailboat, but the details escaped me...clearly not memorable enough......

THIS STINKS!!! No more lies. I'm amazed at what we're seeing and experiencing. I think the only thing I'm struggling with is how much they're trying to jampack into our schedule and how many times we get on and off the tour bus every hour. We drove to Eilat (still in Israel) and spent the first night in a kibbutz, after having seen tons of historical sites I didn't even know existed. The next day we crossed the border into Egypt and drove across the Sinai Wilderness. Actually that was kinda boring. We ended up in Cairo and saw the pyramids in the skyline of the city as the sun was setting. That night we went to the Sound and Light show, which I admit was kinda boring - just think Disneyland in the early early days. These are The Great Pyramids at Giza, where the Sphinx hangs out. THe next morning we went deep inside one of them and all 80+ of us sang in the tomb. So cool. I learned how papyrus is made. I think I'll pick that up too - doesn't look too hard. We jump on a plane and flew to Luxor, where we're staying in the nicest hotel I've ever been in, eating spectacular food and generally living it up on the bank of the Nile.

Sidenote: Some Egyptians look like Samoans very vaguely........don't know how that happens....

Mas picturas!

Aloha. I've taken advantage of a quick trip to Hebrew University, where the internet can handle uploads, so I'm posting pictures, but I may not have time to tell all the stories in this post. There are videos too. So..............I hope this will all make sense eventually. There are also pictures from out journey through the Judaean Wilderness to Jericho. Enjoy!

The monks' rooms inside the monastery.

The ceiling inside the Monastery. This place was built by the Greek Orthodox Church.

Aloha. I've taken advantage of a quick trip to Hebrew University, where the internet can handle uploads, so I'm posting pictures, but I may not have time to tell all the stories in this post. There are videos too. So..............I hope this will all make sense eventually. Some of the pictures are of a spur of the moment adventure with a couple guys from the group that landed us inside tombs, in an idyllic olive grove, up the backside of the Old City and up on the rooftops. There are also pictures from out journey through the Judaean Wilderness to Jericho. Enjoy!

Jericho from the Monastery at the Mount of Temptation. The long, skinny, raised mound in the middle is the tel where the ancient city of Jericho was built. Google "tel" to learn more.;)

Okay, malfunctions have forced me to quit. Just as I was getting to the good stuff....... Anyway, I'm going to Egypt tomorrow morning, so I'll try to get caught up on my adventures before leaving and we'll be in touch. There's no guarantee of free wi-fi in Egypt. So until then, spread my blog. We'll be in touch.

Once again, Shabbat Shalom and Aloha!

So, I apologize for the great gap between updates. You've all been very patient. Speaking of which, is anyone actually reading this? Raise your hands....come on, raise 'em up........okay, now put them on the keyboard.......and leave a comment - just your name, if that's all you wanna say.

Now that that's out of the way....this week we spent in the classroom.....long hours....but the classes are great. We are taught Ancient Near East History by a BYU professor who talks 5,000 miles and hour and admits that he's grumpy. We take Modern Near East classes, one on Judaism, Israelis and the Zionist movement and the other on Islam and Palestineans. The first is taught by a Jewish man from New England, who is just a hoot - great sense of humor, very comfortable in front of a crowd, funny little bald man with a kippah, always with a kippah (or yamulka for you yiddish-speakers). The Islam class is taught by a Catholic Arab. Very nice man - kinda looks like a Palenstinean Thomas S. Monson. My Hebrew class is taught by a great Jewish lady who emigrated from Sacramento years ago with her family. I know how to write "Bob" in Hebrew. Old Testament class continues to be charming. We meet every day. We are studying Old Testament for the first half of the semester, follwed by New Testament, but unlike most BYU religion classes, we are going through the whole books in one semester - usually you take one half at a time - so we're covering about 4 times as much in the same amount of time. Phew! We blasted straight throw Genesis and already to the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20). Our professor prides himself on having gotten married at 40, just like Isaac.

Last night (Friday) we went to the Western Wall to welcome in the Sabbath with the Jewish world...at least the ones in Jerusalem. Great experience - all of us dressed in Sunday best, the guys replacing their ties with a kippah. The areas for men and women are separated at the Wall. So you slowly make your way up to the Wall, and wait your turn to get close enough to tough it. As you do you notice thousands and thousands of wads of paper stuck into the holes and cracks of the wall, upon which are written prayers. But keep in mind that you better write them before the Sabbath, because once the sun sets on Friday evening, there is no writing, no recording, no photography at the Wall......and there are police to make sure this is observed. So write up close to the Wall is very reverent and solemn - it's a beautiful thing to think of all the prayers that have been or will be offered by the women, daughters of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel (and others) at this Wall. The men's side is much more boisterous with groups of Israeli soldiers, students of the Torah and many sects of Orthodox Jews venerating is many ways. Lots of dancing and singing. We actually joined a group on the women's side who were dancing and singing all the great songs of Shabbat. I only know one. But it was incredibly fun. We rounded out the evening by watching The Prince of Egypt.....oh, man, did I mention we're going to Egypt this week!!!!????!!!!

As for our Shabbat......Saturday morning began with normal church business. I've been called as the 2nd Counselor in the Relief Society Presidency - the others are a local woman (she lives in Bethlehem, so she must be Palestinean), and two Americans, one whose husband works for the government and the other whose husband is the district President. Did I mentiont that we are part of the Jerusalem Branch of the Israel District of the Church? Pretty neat. Anyway, I got to speak in Sacrament Meeting, on top of that. So, I woke up feeling about 5 years old and very inadequate today, but the Lord doesn't set you up to fail. He helped me. After Church we went to the Garden Tomb as the whole group. It's right in the middle of the hurry and noise of the city, just outside the walls of the Old City, and one of the most peaceful places in all of the Holy Land. Our tour was guided by a lovely man from England - reminded me a lot of a ever-so-slightly younger Gerald Mullet - who was just here volunteering (like a missionary!!) and he was very enthusiastic and kind. The garden is sprawling and lush and full of winding paths and beautiful places to sit. After we looked around and went in the tomb (!!), we sat and sang hymns together and then took some quiet time alone. This is probably the most peaceful I've felt in any of the places we've visited. Apart from the Kidron Valley, which will always be an untouchable favorite, it's my favorite place we've been to. There is a very special Spirit though and although no one can really say for sure whether or not is was the very tomb where Jesus laid, you can tell it's a very special place shared by so many millions of Christians throughout the world. And I got to go! I'm really lucky!

I'm headed off to a fireside about the making of the Jerusalem Center.......Enjoy your Sabbath!! And the other free day of your weekend, whatever it may be!