When it rains, it pours

"When it rains, it pours." I think this phrase was first said by somebody in Jerusalem, because I've never known it to drizzle lightly here. In fact, it started thunderstorming last night, and has been going strong for the past 24 hours, even occasionally hailing at some points. I don't mind too much, though, because they really need the water here, and it definitely made for a cool Sacrament meeting--the congregation faces wall-to-ceiling windows with a view of the city, and we could see every fork of lightning cut across the sky over Jerusalem. We even sang "Master, The Tempest Is Raging" in choir this morning. How perfect is that??


I've been trying to think of what I haven't covered so far that you might want to know about. We've been on a couple of field trips since we got back: one to Jericho, and one to the Shephelah, or the lowlands, where a lot of the fighting during the Old Testament took place (including the battle of David and Goliath in the Elah Valley). We also went to the Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust museum here in Israel. Then, there's the little daily adventures I've been on to places like the Knesset (the Israeli parliament building) and Me'a She'arim. So, let's start with Jericho.

Jericho is actually in the West Bank, though I didn't feel any less safe there than normal. There was a man who owned a fruit stand there, and he was really nice to us. Of course, that might be because we bought so much fruit and sycamore nuts from him. Jericho's supposed to be known for their fruit, and I believe it--the pomelos there were amazing! And the oranges, and the bananas... and you probably get the picture. While we were there we saw the tree that Zacchaeus the short publican might've climbed to see Jesus over the crowd, and we discussed the story of Elijah and Elisha, who traveled through Jericho together before Elijah ascended into heaven. We also hiked up to a monastery that's supposed to be located on the Mount of Temptation, where Jesus was tempted by the devil to change rocks into bread. We had a great lookout from there, and Jericho is really a beautiful place. It's also known as the City of Palm Trees, which is a very apt name for it, and as Amanda could tell you, anywhere with palm trees is good by me! :)

The Shephelah was a pretty long field trip, though it was a good one, as well. We visited a couple of the ancient cities, including Lachish and Beth Shemesh, and we went to the Valley of Elah were we used slings to shoot stones at "Goliath", who was basically a bunch of cardboard boxes with a face drawn on. I've never feared for my life as much as I did that day. Seriously, you give a bunch of slings to untrained college students and just let 'em loose?? Slings are pretty hard to use. In fact, my respect for David has increased exponentially since realizing exactly how hard slings are to use. When you're first learning how to use a sling, the direction that the rock is going to fly can be pretty much unpredictable. All I can say is that it's a miracle that nobody was hit by a rock as we made our pathetic attempts to slay Goliath. I think somebody did manage to knock him down eventually, though I didn't see it happen--I was "safely" in the back (though it wasn't really "safe," since rocks actually flew backwards alarmingly often) with a couple other girls having contests to see which of us could fling our rock the furthest. I didn't win, but I didn't die either when Eliza's rock went sideways and straight towards me, and for that I'm grateful. Oh, I we also went through a couple of caves which had no historical significance, but were pretty fun to climb in. One of these we affectionately dubbed "the Birth Canal" because of how tough it was to squeeze through--there wasn't even room enough to crawl in parts of it, so you kind of had to push yourself through inch-worm style to get out. I think somebody out there has a picture of me being "born" at the end, so I'll have to see if I can track it down. We got so filthy, but we had a lot of fun (or at least, those of us who weren't claustrophobic did). We also saw a pretty cool ancient oil press. And that was that.

Yad Vashem... Well, it's really kind of hard to come up with a good adjective to describe Yad Vashem. What can you really say about a Holocaust museum? That it was "fun"? I suppose I can say that it was very well-organized, and definitely worth the visit. I remember going to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., and though they had some very good exhibits, it didn't seem effectively organized to me. Yad Vashem was very sequential, though, and you got a sense of how anti-Semitism built up over the years until Hitler finally released it in one torrential wave. ...That's really all I have to say about that. To me, Yad Vashem is kind of a personal experience that's difficult to share effectively, but if you ever find yourself in Israel, I highly recommend going.

A group of us took a taxi down to the Knesset during freetime the other day, and that was pretty interesting, especially since I finally have some sort of limited grasp on how Israeli politics work. Not that I would consider myself and expert by any means, but we spent a class period in Jewish history talking about it, and vague terms such as "list proportional representation," "majority," and "plurality" started to float up from the abyss in my mind where everything I learned from Professor Jacoby during Comparative Politics my freshman year has ended up (hey, Katalin, out of curiosity, does Liz read this thing?). At least the Israeli government is less complicated than the French government, though that's not saying much. It was really interesting to see how interconnected religion is with politics, though--even the seats of the Knesset are arranged in the shape of a menorah. I'm still in the process of forming my own opinion on Israel and its government, especially since I've been exposed to the Arab/Islamic point of view so much recently, but it was good to at least go and see where everything takes place. I have decided that it doesn't seem to be a very effective governmental system, though. Not that I would EVER want to mess with Middle Eastern politics! *shudder*

Hmm... what else is there? Me'a She'arim was fairly interesting. It's a street in West Jerusalem where ultra-orthodox Jews have shops set up, so we kind of went window-shopping and people-watching (because this is where the guys with the huge beards, curly sideburn-type things, long black coats, and big funny hats hang out) for a little while. We had to wear skirts and long-sleeve shirts to go down that street (well, we didn't exactly have to, but I think we'd have gotten some pretty dirty looks if we hadn't), and unfortunately it was a fairly windy day so our skirts didn't really like to stay down, if you know what I mean :P We made it through okay, though. We were going to go to dinner with the JC Diner's Club that night, but that turned into kind of a fiasco because apparently the restaurant we were planning on going to didn't exist (don't ask me, I didn't plan it!), and the restaurant they ended up picking instead was a little out of my budget, so I taxied home with some other people to eat dinner at the JC instead. Which was fine with me--they had my favorite beef stroganoff that doesn't really taste like beef stroganoff, but tastes like something better, so I was totally fine with JC cooking. Oh yeah, we met a really creepy man in West Jerusalem while we were out, but that happens so often that I'm not sure if it's even news anymore :P Seriously, though, this guy scared me a little. He must have been 60 or something, but he saw me and Whitney (who is also blonde) and he started following us, shouting things like, "Oh, beautiful angels! Blonde beauties! Come to me, my white angels!" Creeper! We started walking really fast and eventually he gave up following us, though it was a little scary how desperate he sounded near the end. Maybe his mind wasn't all there or something.

Geez, well I can't end on that story! I have to end on something happier! Umm... I finally got service groups set up! Since I'm the chairman of the Humanitarian and Community Service committee, it's been my job to make service opportunities available to students here, and I've felt like a slacker since it's taken me the longest time to get it all set up. I finally have things going, though! We're sending out 16-20 people a week to the Princess Basma Center for Disabled Children and the Domari Society for the Gypsies, plus we're putting together hygiene kits for the Church here so they don't have to pay a ton of money to ship them from the states, PLUS we're working on designing a wall mural to paint as a group project in the Princess Basma Center. I am also now known as the "taxi lady" by the security guards because I'm up there almost every day arranging a paid taxi for a service group going out. So, I no longer feel like a slacker :) Oh, and my application portfolio for the illustration program is finally in, too (which is the excuse I'm using for how long it took me to post). Hopefully I'll have heard by the end of April whether I made it into the program or not.

The end.