Martha Stewart, anyone?

Sorry there was no post or email replies or anything yesterday! If I wasn't eating, going to meetings, or doing homework yesterday, I was probably asleep (although I mostly slept through the meetings and homework part, too). Conversely, I woke up almost every two hours last night because I wasn't tired at all, yet somehow managed to sleep through call to prayer and my alarm this morning. Isn't jet lag great??


So, after our 456th orientation meeting that morning (this number's just a rough estimate, though I think it's pretty accurate), we finally went on our walking tour of Jerusalem. My tour guide was Sister Huff, and all of us girls agreed that she was the best person for the job since she knew all the great places to shop :) She pointed out the cheapest places to get falafels, the cleanest bathrooms (located in the Austrian Hospice), and a little store that sells earrings for only 5 shekels each that I'm sure I'll be checking out later. She also taught us that when a big guy pushing a cart shouts "HELLO!", he's not being friendly--he's telling you to get out of the way, or he'll run you over. Actually, she was a little late in teaching us that, but she was kind enough to pull me out of the cart's way when I wasn't moving:)

The Old City is definitely my favorite part. First of all, there's no cars, so there's no crazy drivers speeding by and honking every couple seconds. Second, there's so much more to look at. The Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and actually most of the coolest sightseeing places are in the Old City, as well as a ton of little shops selling blankets, t-shirts, women's shawls, olive wood carvings, and all sorts of things. I was excited to see pomegranates in almost all of the food shops (just 'cuz pomegranates are cool like that), and I noticed that most of them also sell halva, a dessert that my dad always used to talk about that I think I might have to try someday. There's always so much going on that it's easy to get lost in it all... but don't worry, Mom, my antenna are "up." :P

Life in the Center is going great, too. The only problem is that they won't let us out. Security's decided that tensions are a little too high for us to wander around East Jerusalem right now, and since East Jerusalem basically contains the Old City and anywhere else worth visiting, there's not much to do aside from studying and, in my case, writing a talk (they caught me early :P). I suppose technically we could visit West Jerusalem, but the only way to get there is to either walk through East Jerusalem (which isn't an option right now) or to take a taxi, which we can't pay for yet because we haven't visited the moneychangers in East Jerusalem yet. So yeah, we're stuck here. Not that it's really a bad place to be stuck, per se, but it still kind of feels like we're under house arrest. Martha Stewart, anybody?

At least the people here are nice. I met a girl named Whitney who's also engaged (have I mentioned that?), so I have somebody to talk weddings and flowers with. I also have really nice roommates, which is quite the turnaround from last semester. I was a little thrown off when one of my roommates, named Sarah, asked if I wanted to go up to dinner with her. I've become so unused to people actually caring about where I go and what I'm up to, so it's really a nice change. We've both agreed that we're going to go out and get falafels together once the ban is lifted.

There's more that I could write, but I think I will do so later. I can answer a couple questions that people have asked, though. Grandma--we're not allowed in the Old City on Fridays until 3 p.m. because it's the Muslim holy day. We can go out after 3, but we have to be back before sunset when shabbat starts, so there's not much of a point to it right now when the days are so short. As the days get longer, though, that'll be more of an option. Wendy--well, none of the meals we've had so far have been quite up to par with the meal that they served on the very first night, but it's still been very good. Usually we have three options for a main meal including beef, chicken, or fish, along with side dishes that are usually unidentifiable but are almost always quite good. I know we've been served hungarian goulash and chicken boraccas so far, and I thought I tasted curry in the meatballs tonight, but there's not much more I can tell you. I guess I could ask for recipes, though I usually have trouble understanding what the kitchen staff's saying, so I'd rather not. There's one thing they serve though that's always amazing: pita bread and hummus. 'Nuff said :P