Welcome Home

This is what all the staff here at the BYU Jerusalem Center said when we arrived. I thought it was neat. It is true, this will be my home for the next few months. This last week I started to feel that. Now that we are used to the City more, and we can go out of the center without it being a tour I feel like it can become my home instead of just acting like all the other tourists. Things started to get busy. We started more classes. Now we have an Old testament class, 2 Modern Near Eastern (Judaism and Muslim) classes, Ancient Near Eastern Class, and Arabic class. There is some much information that we cover in these classes and there is so much reading for every class. I will be honest, I have not been doing all of the reading. It is a constant struggle to decide each day if I will study (and what to study), or explore Jerusalem. When we leave the Center we have to go in at least groups of 3 so there are always many different groups going to different places and I can never decide which places I want to go to and with what group. There are just too many decisions and we all know I am bad at making decisions. The Arabic class is hilarious. We just laugh at our professor the whole time. He is great, with a Great sense of humor. Our schedule is different every day too. So today I sat down and made my own schedule of when I would study, visit the city, and everything else. Hopefully this week will go smoother for me.
This week we had many activities in the center and out. One night we watched "Prince of Egypt" to prepare us in going to Egypt this week, and we played Sardines in the Center. In doing this I learned a lot more about the Center, all the good hiding spots and even got locked inside a room with a few other people. We found these stairs that just kept going down in complete darkness and when we came back up the door was locked. There was no way anyone could hear us, and the elevator wasn't working but luckily we found a door that went outside and in time we found our way back to the front gate. It was hilarious and fun.
Friday night we got to go to the opening of the Sabbath at the Western Wall. That was a neat experience. It was in the Jewish section of the old city. There were so many people there praying and putting written prayers on the wall. I was even able to go pray and leave a note on the wall. I also got to talk to some other ladies there (there was a section for the girls and a section for the guys) and they answered some of my questions. There are some really nice people here. It is really fun learning about all of these religions.
Today was my favorite. After Sacrament meeting we all went to the Garden Tomb. Unlike all the other sites this place had only a few tourists and it was peaceful and clean. This is what I have been waiting for. A tour guide told us all about the evidence that leads us to believe that this is the spot where they put him. I loved how the tour guide said "Now lets go to the tomb where no man has yet lain." I also liked that he told us the cloth over his face was folded. He said it is tradition that if you fold your napkin when you leave the table that means you are coming back to finish. He said this might symbolize that Christ would be coming back. We got to sit and sing hymns and the spirit was really sweet. I hope to return there every Saturday (our Sabbath day).

P.S I will try to get more pictures up as soon as possible. We can't download pictures all the time on this Internet so I will when I can.