Pictures!

The original steps to Herod's temple. Jesus and His disciples walked here! Being in this area was one of my favourite experiences here. I felt the Spirit strongly as we talked about temples and their importance both to Christ and to us today. We were able to sing "I Love to See the Temple" and I can't wait to go there someday!

Taken from Bethlehem, these hills are similar to where the shepherds would have been when they were visited by an angel and alerted to Christ's birth. Bethlehem was a moving experience. I was so happy to celebrate Christ's birth and can't wait for Christmas to come. I loved Christmas in July!

I love to watch the sunset from the Jerusalem centre. Yes, I actually took this photo! I adore the architecture of our centre, I really do believe it is one of the most beautiful buildings in Jerusalem.

My wonderful friend Jay and I cruising down the Bosphorus in Turkey.

My fabulous new friend Rachel! This is us with all our tasty pastries. We ate a lot of these...

We have seen an unbelievable amount of caves, tunnels, and cisterns this trip but I am not complaining! I love them all because it's fun to be underground, they are great to sing in, they are great to explore in, and, most important of all, they are COOL (temperature wise).

Monastery at Petra. This site is quite honestly one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

My wonderful friend and roommate Rachel and I in the Orson Hyde Garden on our way to the Garden of Gethsemane one Sabbath. Beautiful city of Jerusalem in the background!

The library at Ephesus in Turkey. One of my favourite sites!

Here Goes

Yeah. This is happening. I'm writing on my blog. I realize it has been two months. And they have been two very very very exciting months for me. Where to begin! I am going to try and list a lot of things I've done. I do not expect it to reflect these last months very well at all. I also do not expect it to be comprehensive in the slightest. What I do expect is for all of you to be absolutely faithless concerning this coming list. Enjoy.
-My calling at church is primary pianist. I absolutely love it. I've been able to play for the kids to sing on Mother's Day and Father's Day. They are really cute. Primary is a party every single week.
-I took a one credit arabic class. Even though I learned only a few essential arabic phrases and nothing more (except this stellar song I made up to memorize the numbers up to 10) it was so fun! I learned a ton about arabic culture. Our teacher Ayman was a real hoot and I enjoyed a lot of laughs. My favourite thing to yell is "ashera ashera ashera!!". It means ten ten ten. They always have it playing on recordings in the old city. It means that everything costs 10 shekels.
-Oh, and while we're on the topic of shekels. I love shekels. I call it fake money. The best part is that it is either a third or a quarter of a dollar. I can never quite decide so I just create a range of price in my head that it could possibly be. Somewhere in there. I really do love shekels. In fact the word shekel just feels nice to say. Not sure why.
-Okay so one time I went to Tel Aviv and loved my life. First of all, I hadn't been to the beach since I was 12. Now I remember why everyone loves the beach so much. The sand was amazing, the water was the perfect temperature, and I was amongst good company. Tel Aviv was a highlight.
-So for some reason there was this phase where all the little Palestinian kids were walking around with these vibrantly coloured chicks. I'm talking like super bright live chicks. One day we stopped and lingered for a moment beside them. Next thing I knew some kid shoved one of them into my hand. I completely PANICKED. I'm talking full on panic. And all my friends did nothing. No surprises there. I was pretty much hyperventilating with a bright pink chick poking around my hand. Finally the kid snatched it back and I ran away. I didn't touch anything with that hand until I'd washed it at least 5 times. I was still nervous after that.
-Alright let's just go ahead and skip to the part where I went to Turkey for a week! This is like 7 blog posts in and of itself but let's just say that Turkey was amazing. Perhaps I will tell more stories from that trip later.
-One important discovery I made in Turkey (specifically the Blue Mosque where you have to remove your shoes) is that I am extremely sensitive to the smell of feet. I can't stand it.
-In Jericho there was the worlds oldest discovered tower. I know. It sounds super amazing. 8000 BC or something ridiculous like that. Lesson learned from this? Rocks shaped into towers looked the same 10,000 years ago.
-We had an Arab Culture Night that was great fun. We all pretended to look like Arabs (even though we're the whitest bunch you can imagine) so that was entertaining. I loved that the father-son duo from the Al-asqua mosque came and performed the call to prayer for us. That is truly an art, I love how it sounds. Later on that night some Arab teenagers came and danced with us. Everyone just bounced around and acted crazy for awhile. It was great.
-I have been so blessed to be able to play the piano A LOT here. I absolutely love it.
-One time we went to the western wall and watched the sunset and ate tasty bread and went to the Dome of the Rock. I LOVE the Dome of the Rock. I really do. This one other time I went to the western wall and met Julie Beck there. Pretty cool stuff. We went to the Dome of the Rock super early in the morning and it was so peaceful and beautiful and it's honestly one of my favourite things that I've done here. And one time my friend went to close to this one wall and an anonymous voice starting yelling at him. Amazing.
-We went to a service at Christ's Church for Pentecost and it was a party! A lot of singing, praising the Lord, raising hands to the sky. All that good stuff.
-We go to a lot of cisterns (if you don't know what that is, look it up, it's important) and caves and we often get to sing in them. I love it! Plus I love these places because they are a beautifully cool temperature. Very important.
-I went to the valley where David fought Goliath! And I slingshotted some rocks. Ah yeah.
-Sometimes I drink 2.5 litres of water before 4 pm and it's still not enough. Wow.
-I have had numerous people tell me that I have the features of an elf from Lord of the Rings. Mission accomplished my friends. Mission accomplished.
-One Friday night some of us went to a Jewish synagogue for our Israel class. While it was interesting and involved lots of pretty Hebrew singing I didn't love it. It was weird because I don't think it feels very spiritual. It feels too rehearsed.
-Sometimes on Saturdays (which are the new Sunday in these parts) we walk through Orson Hyde Garden and go to the Garden of Gethsemane. I love that place. Very pretty. Very significant. There is a cool church right next to it called the Church of All Nations that we sing in. Something pretty funny happened while we were there. My roommate (and friend!) was taking a picture of me. All of a sudden these people (some sort of foreigner, I'm not good at racial profiling, probably a good thing actually...) gave Rachel their camera because they wanted her to take their picture. Perfectly normal so I went to step out but he avidly motioned for me to stay in it (bit of a language barrier here). So I awkwardly smiled and walked away. Then the other guy runs up next to me and points to a picture he took (of the back of me...) and smiled. Either I'm a celebrity in their country or they just loved my white blondeness. It was borderline creepy to be honest.
-The Garden Tomb is one of my favourite places in Jerusalem. Because of what it represents, the spirit it creates, and the peacefulness of it all. I love the sign on the door of the tomb that says, "He is not here, for He is risen." It makes no difference to me whether or not that is actually Jesus' tomb. What matters to me is that the Atonement is real and Christ is present in my life, for He is risen!
Okay so I am pretty much through most of May (minus Turkey). Wow there is way too much to say. I will speak of June soon. And pictures are coming!!
Oh I can't finish this without commenting on how great all the people here are. Really great.
I love it here! But I miss home!

I have arrived!

Unfortunately, I write to you after waking up at least a half an hour early. Noooooo. I already wake up ridiculously early in this place but today was particularly disappointing. My head is not happy with this new schedule. But I have arrived in Jerusalem! I guess I will give some highlights thus far. The airplane wasn't too bad surprisingly which is really great. The trip to JFK I had a tv so I watched some friends. The girl next to me wanted to watch hers but her volume control was busted so she had to hold the ear bud about 2 inches away from her ear for it to be a normal volume. I felt kind of bad. Oh well! The airport at JFK was really big. We all piled on this bus and took probably the longest route possible to get to terminal 3, I'm fairly sure. Then some kid standing across the way from me kept mouthing the words "how are you?" even though he was only like 4 feet away. I gave him the thumbs up. Always a good go to. The worst part of JFK terminal 3 was the lack of tasty food and the nasty pigeon that flew over my head and almost gave me a heart attack. We had to go through security again and then we all piled onto a GIANT 747. Those planes are pretty sweet though. It took FOREVER to take off which was rather unfortunate but after almost dropping my suitcase (and maybe actually dropping my suitcase...) on my face about 3 times and forcing the other girl next to me to braid my hair, we took off.

It still didn't seem real the whole time we were flying, especially since I was sleeping in the most awkward positions possible the whole time. Apparantly I was sleeping on the girl next to me (my bad!) but desperate situations call for desperate measures. We finally arrived in Tel Aviv after that 10 hour flight!! Tel Aviv is right on the coast which is kind of cool but otherwise we didn't see too much of it. We piled on the bus and I saw my first palm tree since I was 12! That was exciting. The landscape is very unique here and I love the architecture of normal buildings and houses. It is very plain, using straight lines, boxes, etc. I love that sort of thing. When we arrived at the BYU Jerusalem centre I couldn't believe my eyes! They handed me tasty juice and it was like a heavenly tropical oasis. I was just nonchalantly drinking my juice and admiring a fountain when my friend suddenly points at my hand and yells "BUG!". Luckily I didn't panic, but, being in a foreign country and all, I was a little concerned. Also given the enthusiasm put into the yelling of "bug" gave me some inclination to think the thing was huge. Turns out it was just a small gnat. Yeah. Thanks a lot Jay.

We took a small tour of the centre which is just amazing. I was able to pick my favourite bomb shelter. Definitely NOT the one that is the laundry room, it smells funny. Jay kept on asking what we do if the bomb is in the bomb shelter. At the time it seemed ridiculous but now I'm beginning to wonder what happens in that case. Ha.

My room is really cool because the door opens up to an open air hallway. This is true of all the lower floors because this building is built into the side of a mountain. And when I say mountain, I mean average sized hill. But still, given the fact that it is the Mount of Olives, I suppose that's pretty cool. You should all probably take the liberty of googling this place so you can see the building. It really is 8 floors. The stairs are killing me. Man I'm in bad shape for my age.

Every meal I overlook the city of Jerusalem. Wow. The dome of the rock is the most obvious landmark but you can seriously see it all from here. The scary part of eating on the balcony is all the stray cats. There are seriously zero dogs here but a TON of stray cats. They hang out in trees and I'm afraid one of them is going to jump on my head. Apparantly a bunch of girls watched a kitten fall of the balcony yesterday. Creeeeppppyyyy.

We took a tour of the city together and now we are pretty much free to do as we please. The other day we just traipsed (lovin' this word as of late) around the old city, checking everything out. There is so much more I could say but I will leave it at this since I'm hungry and it's almost breakfast time. I live for food. Miss you all but this place is sweet so not really that much!

My Semester

Now that I am 20 years old I clearly have so much to tell the world. Yes, I did wear a blazer, v-neck sweater, and blouse combo the day after I turned 20. The world of the twenties welcomed me in style. The last birthday I had was when I was 16. Wow! When I think about being 16, it seems so far away. And I never ever could have possibly imagined ending up here. If asked at age 16, this would have been the four year plan: music degree, stay in Alberta, marry the boy I thought I loved at the time, except not actually because I hated the idea of being married, etc. Now I am on the brink of being halfway to being a chemical engineer and days away from a summer in Jerusalem. Wowza! I am so happy with where I’ve ended up. And along with looking back, I must also look forward. Where will I be when I’m 24? Who even knows! I’ve learned that planning is useless. But I’m so excited to see what the next four years hold. And if they are anywhere near as good as the last four, we’re in business.

I have had a most wonderful semester. I have so many things to be grateful for. While my favourite pastime would have to be STUDYING, my friends and family made it completely bearable. I have made some fantastic friends and had the pleasure of maintaining a relationship with many of my freshman friends. Now my friends are super special to me but I must say the highlight of this semester was going HOME! Yes, I just left Provo for a few days to visit my family and meet my brand new niece Reese who is the most beautiful baby I could possibly imagine.

So I've tried to overcome this bad habit after my sister pointed it out to me but I love the phrase "it changed my life". Just the right amount of drama in my opinion. But perhaps I use it somewhat too liberally. Some things that have recently "changed my life":
-putting avocados on sandwiches
-when my brother-in-law showed me a new way to floss around my retainer
-my cheese slicer (so great)
-my new leisure suit
And last but not least, my acceptance to BYU Jerusalem! Leaving in ONLY THREE MORE SLEEPS!
(I am aware these photos are SUPER random)

My two favourite girls from freshman year.

Just hiking in the clouds and doing yoga. Yeah I do stuff like that now.

Kait and I are essentially the same person. We are considering starting a cousin concert tour, that's how cool we are. Be jealous.

This coat was my mom's when she was my age!

In my apartment.

Chillin' with my number one boy.

I LOVE THESE GIRLS