A Green Christmas

Last... Tuesday, I believe, is when we went to Bethlehem. It also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, which is why my right ring fingernail is currently painted a lovely shade of green--my green shirt was dirty, and I had to celebrate somehow. I didn't think to bring nail polish remover, though, so that nail might still be green by the time I get back home :)

Bethlehem was probably one of my favorite field trips up to this point. We went to Bethlehem University in the morning and watched a documentary on some Palestinian settlements that the Israelis wiped out during one of the wars they fought, creating hundreds of refugees (really a drop in the bucket to all of the Palestinian refugees out there, but there were still some sad stories), and then we got to talk to a panel of students who go there about how their life as a university student differs from ours. Then, after lunch (which was pretty typical of Middle Eastern restaurants we've been to so far--pitas, hummus, babaganoush, grilled chicken--but was still really good), we went to the Church of the Nativity. The good news about this church is that even my teachers are pretty positive that it's located on the actual place. The bad news? They covered it up with marble and fabric and paintings, so you really can't even tell what it looked like :P I'll never understand why other churches feel the need to do those things--wouldn't it be preferable to leave the place relatively preserved, even if you're going to stick a big fat church on top of it? Luckily, there was more good news--the cave that you go down into that's the nativity cave has a wall that divides it in half, and a different church owns the other half, and it's relatively well preserved. So, even though "they" (whoever "they" is) think that Jesus was born on the other side of the cave, it's really still the same cave, and the Spirit can be felt more in the second half of the cave. The priests are nicer there, anyways--the priests in the highly-decorated half are kind of rude and pushy, but the priests on the simpler half are more gentle.

We sang a few hymns there, and then we went out and looked around Manger Square a bit, where they had some touristy olive wood shops. Afterwards, we drove back out of Bethlehem to eat dinner in the shepherds' fields, where we had a small program in our religion classes as the stars began to appear in the sky. It was a little chilly by the end, but so peaceful that I really didn't want to leave. We sang some Christmas songs and talked about the various people involved in the nativity, and imagined that the angels were in the skies above us, singing good tidings of great joy.

The next day we had a final to study for... so of course I went to Ein Karem instead. I was sitting in class debating whether to sign up, and the person sitting next to me asked if I'd been yet and I told her no, so she told me to go. So I did. I give in really easily to peer pressure, I think :P I was so glad that I decided to go, though! Ein Karem is the birthplace of John the Baptist, and it's just a quite, peaceful town that almost looks like a European town (or at least, that's what some other girls were saying--aside from the Vienna airport, I haven't been to Europe yet). We walked around to a couple of churches in the area (the Church of the Visitation, dedicated to Mary Magdalene, and the church that's dedicated to John the Baptist), and they were all very pretty. Afterwards, we just kind of walked around. We stopped in a small art gallery, bought some fruit and nuts for lunch, and I took about a million pictures of flowers--the weather was so perfect, and the town was just so beautiful! After lunch we hiked over to the hospital, where twelve stained-glass windows made by a famous Jewish artist (Chagall, I think) were on display. Each of them was made to represent one of the sons of Jacob, and it was really interesting--there was a cassette they played that described the symbolism behind the windows, and they each symbolized some part of the tribe's history, or the blessings that Jacob gave his sons before he died. Unfortunately, cameras weren't allowed, and by the time we got out the gift shop was closed so I couldn't buy the postcards. They were really cool, though.

In other news, I'm wearing a beautiful new dress today :) I'm not really a dress-wearing individual, but if I had enough of these flowy Old City dresses that sell for $6-$10 each, I'd probably wear a dress every day for the rest of my life. I also finished up Ophir and Musallam's classes this week! I know that I did okay on Ophir's final, and as for Musallam's... well, he told me that I drew a beautiful map of Israel, and he was being pretty critical of people's maps, so that's something, I guess. Honestly, I think most people didn't do very well on his exam, so all I can do is hope. At least I filled in all the questions with a general sort of idea of what I was talking about, and from conversations I've had with others, that's more than a lot of people could say :P On the plus side, it's done! We only have New Testament and Ancient Near East History for the rest of the semester (which is actually only 34 more days!!!), and those are my favorite classes, so I really don't mind. We're also about to leave for Galilee next week, and I can't tell you how excited I am for that--while the Old Testament was interesting and is a great set up to the New Testament, I really came here to learn about the life of Christ, and I imagine I'll never have this type of a unique opportunity to do so again. By the way, I'm sorry to say that you probably shouldn't expect another blog post for about two weeks since we'll be in Galilee for awhile, and it sounds like internet isn't readily available. I'll try to make my post more like Jordan's than Egypt's, though, in terms of punctuality. Once I'm back, I'll only have about three weeks left here! It's the weirdest feeling! I mean, I'll probably be less sad than some people to leave, but I'll still miss it here. Maybe I can make it back again someday...