Another fieldtrip
So, last Saturday was another fieldtrip. We went out to Beth Shean, Lachish, and a bunch of other Philistine cities on the coast. We saw the battlefield of David and Goliath, Solomonic gates, and this huge underground cavern where pigeons were "domesticated". We climbed up and down a bunch of Tel's, and we got great views of the land from the top.
It is now high holy holiday season. Today I woke up to the sound of birds chirping, a far cry from the usual sounds of cars beeing their horns on Jaffa Road. Today is Yom Kippur, The Day of Judgement, when all Jewish people fast and pray and beat their chest to atone for the sins of the entire world. Therefore, no one drives their car or wears leather shoes, etc. So there are no cars and everything is closed excpet for Synagogues and the silence is all so very beautiful.
I'm so glad that all of you have been checking out the websites that other students her have. Andy told me yesterday that over half of the hits to his website comes from Grand Rapids MI, because, obvoiusly, people in Grand Rapids are great!

Having Coffee with Emanuel Tov
So, Rachel and I ran over to Hebrew University yesterday to meet with Prof. Tov. He got us security clearence the night before, so he ushered us in and gave us a tour of the campus. Then he showed us his office, which includes the cot where he takes a nap (so much better than the floor of Pickett, I'm sure). And then the room next to his office, which is where the DJD, the series that publishes the Dead Sea Scrolls, was researched. So amazing. So then we went to the cafeteria and he got us coffee and we hung out and talked. He might come and have dinner on our campus soon. Prof. Tov remembered coming to Cornerstone, but he forgot Doug Mohrmann's name, so he referred to him as "the little man who smiled a lot". Which is about right.
So today I went down to around Mt. Zion and saw Oscar Schindler's grave, as well as the pictures of the horse that the gardenkeeper there had. Then Rachel and I had some time to kill before dinner, so went down to the Church of the Holy Sepluchere and poked around in some more corners. In the far reaches of the Church it's amazing how much graffiti, both sacred and profane, is there. Somebody really should clean it up.... We also found the benches in front of the Edicule of the Tomb that are 10 years after the end of their life. Somebody should replace them, but the Status Quo and money keeps them pretty much stuck there and disintigrating. But seeing as the Edicule itself is coming up on its 100th anniversary of being strapped together by British Iron beams, I don't think the benches is the biggest problem. Well, I'm off with everyone else here to hang out in the park with our Israeli friends and the nargeela.

ma'a salame

Rosh Hashanah
So, everybody went to Elat for the weekend, except for I and Heather. So this afternoon we wanted to do something cool, so we walked down to the Church of the Holy Sepluchere, just to poke around. So anyways, the church looks small and junky on the outside, but on the inside it is so huge. And to think that the church Constantine built was even bigger, unbelievable. So yeah, there are so many nooks, crannies, and weird stuff there, you can get so lost. Though we did find the Ethiopian chapel downstairs, which was was cool, both in spiritual and tempature sense. And we also found the Latin chapel, which is extremely pretty in a very classy sort of way.
So then we were going to go down to the Western Wall and see if they were going to blow the shofar there. But we were early so we went up to the Wall itself and prayed. I tried to pray in Hebrew. I think God is Omnipotent enough to understand what I was saying. While we were down there the evening Muslim call to prayer was sounded. It was such a weird feeling to be a Christian at a Jewish holy site while hearing the Muslim worship call.
We then decided to run up to St. Anne's real quick and see if we could get a Mass schedule. So we get there and the Arab doorkeeper was like, daily Mass is everyday at 6:30 in the morning, and it's in French. So we weren't to sure about that. So he calls the priest there and so Father Lavoie, from Canada, comes down and meets with us. He's like, 6:30 in the morning is too early for students to go to church, especially church in French. So he goes and gets us a schedule of all the churches in Jerusalem and what language they're all in. So he accidentally mentions that they have a 40,000 volume library there. So I get excited and I tell him about my interest in Early Christianity and Patristics. So he takes us down there and shows us this huge library of like all the best books in the world. Then he tells me that the librarians name is Daniel and that he is there on Mon-Thurs, and I am welcome to come anytime then. I think I am in heaven, it's so exciting. So then, I also happen to mention that I'm learning Arabic, and he gets all excited and tells me about his Arabic language courses, so he goes to get his books from his room. But then he comes back and tells us that he can't carry everything out to us, so as long as we're not scandalized, we can come and hang out in his room. As we walked in he said "Thank God I never married, she would have to clean up after me." Which was rather sexist, but funny. So he showed us his Arabic books, CD-Roms, and CD's; which were so amazing. Then he also showed us the cool books he had in his own library and we talked about our favorite Bible versions. He also takes us up onto the roof, which has an amazing view of the Dome of the Rock.
After that we walked past the Western Wall again, but not that many people were there. I think they were all at the Synagogue.

Shova Tova.

Sarah - stuff
Last week was rather stressful. But I should have known that trying to learn both Hebrew and Arabic at the same time would be tough. I don't think I like Hebrew as much as I like Greek. Of course, just learning a biblical language only to read the Bible is rather annoying to me. I'm taking Arabic - spoken only- at the YMCA. There are no tests, ustaz Haloun just randomly shoots questions to you in Arabic and you have to answer him as quickly as you can, in front of the whole class. But this is my new preferred way of learning a spoken language. Arabic really helps here in Jerusalem, the Arabs in the Muslim quater really warm up to you once you practice trying to say your Arabic to them. There are some really nice shopkeepers in the Christian Quater that Rachel and I visit just to practice our Arabic, they get a huge kick out of all the cuss words we accidently say. Other than that, the super hard grading scale for grad students here is making me feel the pressure of doing really well. I just started filling out my applications for Notre Dame and Duke and I'm starting to feel a bit stressed. But I'll be ok. We all went on a fieldtrip yesterday, but Jericho is still shut down, so we couldn't get in there. But we did get out to 2 monasteries, the tomb of Samuel, and a crusader castle.