Stoned.

I’ve been stoned, and essentially peed on today, and I still love it here.

Well today was our first real day here, and (this may surprise you) I loved it!  We woke up bright and early, party because we had to and partly because my body is still somewhere in England’s time zone.  First item on the agenda today...breakfast!  Okay, so I’ve only been here a few days, but my heck I love the food at the Oasis.  Its delicious, I feel so lucky to get three solid good, tasty, balanced meals every day.  If I weren’t walking everywhere I would definitely be gaining some serious weight.  

Classes officially started today with Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies.  I am so excited for both, Brother Judd my OT professor is amazing, I seriously hang on every word.  We had two hours with him today and it felt like half an hour.  I can’t wait for more.  ANES kind of caught us all by surprise because our schedule said we only had it for an hour, but lo and behold it was two, so it was kind of difficult to pay attention towards the end.  It’s going to be a tough class I think, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.  Main lesson of the day was this.  Israel is not a desert, it is a land that floweth with milk and honey.  This is true, Israel is much greener than I was expecting.

After all of that we decided to go to the city by ourselves for the first time.  Dun, dun, dun!  So we packed up and left at three, because on Friday’s we can’t go to East Jerusalem or the Old City until after 3:00.  (I’m still learning where I can go and when, and how to get to these allowed places without passing through the forbidden areas, but it will come)  So we made our way down the bottom entrance of the center to make our way, and just outside the bottom entrance is a public playground.  There were a few kids playing and they started waving at as, so we being the friendly mormon americans we are supposed to be, waved back.  They then prompted to throw stones at us.  Okay, so they were more like little pebbles, but a stone is a stone...therfore I have been stoned in Jerusalem.  Anyways, we being the friendly mormon americans we are supposed to be, did not stone them back.  We made our way to the Old City and went in Damascus Gate for a while, just looking around.  This was still kind of a test-out-the-waters visit, since we are still very very new, but I think in a week or two we’ll all be very comfortable.  So after a bit of walking around we made our way back to the center.  We were walking down the sidewalk and then we began to wrinkly our noses because there was a very foul odor in the air.  Thats when we saw the running water down the street that was bubbling up from a pothole.  Before we could do anything about our placement, a car comes speeding down the hill, drives right through the puddled running water and sprayed us all with this less-than-pure water.  Needless to say, we got home and showered pretty quickly.  

After dinner our movie showcase began, tonights feature was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Complete with a full review by Professor Chadwick, a leading archeologist here in Jerusalem.  “A handsome rogue archaeologist, being the fancy of all the women, saving the world one artifact at a time?  What’s not believable about that?”  It was great, this is seriously going to be the best semester ever.