Our first weekend in Jerusalem was rather busy but a complete blast. The weekend here is Friday and Saturday rather than Saturday and Sunday. For the Jewish community, the sabbath starts on Friday night and goes into Saturday. We got to sleep in Friday morning and then went out to a market where a lot of people were getting their last minute supplies for Shabbat dinner. The market was a sight to experience, crowds of people everywhere and more food than you can imagine. After the market we got to do some of our own shopping before we ate dinner. The best part of the day was going to the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall to Americans). Going to the Western Wall at all is a major excitement, but being there on the first night of Shabbat.....amazing. So many Jews from Israel and all over the world gather at the wall to pray for the city of Jerusalem. I have heard about the wall before but never imagined how amazing it would be to see. After the wall, everything was a dead zone. In Israel, Shabbat basically means that there is complete rest for the Sabbath. There are no Jewish shops open, no Jewish clubs open and no Jewish people walking around. Our school building is located in the middle of a ton of Jewish run business....therefore there was absolutely nothing open. We ended up at the one place that stays open all the time....McDonalds. Not my first choice, but whatever works.
Saturday was another lazier day. We had the entire day to go shopping other than taking a test and going to Shabbat service in the evening. Since everything was closed around our school we took the opportunity to go down to the Arab part of the Old City. There was a huge market there with tons of shops open. I tried my first shot of pomegranate juice, which was extremely strong! It was really good though. Some of our group got their first taste of bartering with the locals. It went pretty well I guess. After our authentic Shabbat dinner, we went to a Messianic Jewish service. It was completely amazing listening to them worship in Hebrew. The message was also given in Hebrew but we were given headsets with a translator feeding us the translation. The message was on Caeserea Phillipi which was really cool because we visited there a few days ago and could picture it all. After church, Shabbat is over and therefore the city goes crazy....The clubs next to us were louder and went on for longer than ever before! We ended up having our own dance offs inside. The coffee from our amazing little coffeeshop also helped us in staying awake....
Today we did more visiting. It was odd to know it was a Sunday and people here treat it like a Monday morning. We visited a few churches this morning, my favorite being the site where Mary went to see Elizabeth. There are now paintings and sculptures there commemorating the moment. We then walked around the town to get a better understanding of the culture before going on to Israel Museum. This museum has a huge model of the City of Jerusalem as it looked in 60A.D. This means that it looks almost the same as when Jesus would have been there. I was especially interested in the history of Herod and his religion. He was Jewish, but was a converted Jew and basically built the Temple in order to please the Jewish people. We also saw a film teaching us more about the dead sea scrolls. We got to see the jars in which the scrolls were found as well as a couple of the Scrolls themselves. They were truly amazing. Thousands and thousands of years old and they are still intact.....incredible. Our next stop was for another falafel lunch (my favorite). We visited a tourist shop and then headed for our last stop of the day. We learned a lot about the Israeli government of today and how it works. We saw what is basically the White House of Israel, where the Prime Minister's office is. We also saw more of the congress buildings as well as the histoical menorah outside of the Knesset. There was a lot of information to jam in today, along with a lot of stops. Tomorrow should be another great day...
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