we drove around in a time machine

welcome back to my world in jeru.

i have a lot of updating which means a lot of pictures.
the biggest news....my MACie (computer) is, as in the words of jt, dead and gone. i really have no idea what happened but all i know is that MACie needs to get home to utah in less than 40 days so he can attempt a recovery. sadly along with MACie's death came the loss of a month and a half of journal, all my music and most of my pictures. luckily i'm in one of the most amazing places in the world so nothing is getting me down.
hopefully the loss of MACie won't hurt my blogging experience too much.

so a lot has happened since i last blogged. last week we had a real passover dinner put on by our judiasm teacher. everybody helped to make the night a success and i signed up to help with flower arrangements. i was under false pretenses when signing up that i had at least one creative bone in my body....i soon learned other wise. like many of my other past attempts of being artistic, i failed quickly. luckily heather signed up to help with flowers as well, she has a lot more artistic abilities than i do.

passover lasted about two and a half hours. we followed traditional passover etiquette, read from the book, at the most amazing food ever, ran around the center looking for bread, laughed a ton, listened to rap music, and maybe even cried a little (thats a maybe). all in all it was a great night.

bod, lyds, mandy and me...the short blondes. who would have thought i'd find so many of my kind right here in jeru.

this is us after the amazingness what was passover.









so sunday's are our freedays. a few of us decided to venture over by the dead sea into ein gedi. there is this sweet national park that we got in for free (thank you byu) and hiked a bit to these sweet water falls. at first we just swam around a little enjoying the break from the heat but soon we found excitement with crossing the "falling rocks" signs and jumping off waterfalls into beautiful pools of cool water.




at one of the pools we met some way nice jewish familes from texas. we sat and talked to these two moms for a long while actually. they were so funny and asked us all sorts of questions about byu and the jerusalem center. as they were getting ready to leave one of the moms came up to me. she looked me in the eyes and made me promise i wouldn't rush into having kids. it was hilarious! she was a mother of 4 boys and in her words "i sure love them but they give me hell". she was hilarious.

this is the whole group! the day was perfect. we had a dance party on the ride over to t-pain. swam in closed off areas (gotta love only being able to read english), got a little bit of a tan, jumped from a 30 ft waterfall, made a few "stupid" decisions that ended in laughs, and basically just enjoyed the day in the sun with my friends.

i love the fact that i spent a day waterfall jumping in israel....beat that!
yay for monday field trips. today we visited this huge park half way to tel aviv that gave us the chance to live life like in bible times. for the most part i felt like i was at girls camp again (which i didn't completely hate). at one point we were given the task to direct sheep and goats "home". while waiting for another group to finish their job i found this cute little girl goat wanting to join in on the fun. sadly she was on the other side of the fence. so she gave me a quick kiss and ran away...yes i kissed a goat today, and yes you can be jealous.
so shopping in west jeru is one of my most favorite things to do. i haven't bought too much but yet i still enjoy the classic window shopping.

this is emily, me and mandy just chilling on ben yehuda street. the best street in west jeru for shopping.

the worst thing about shopping in jeru though is the fact that on fridays everything closes early. but here is the best part....fridays are the best days for us to go shop. yep you see my problem. luckily i'm smarter than the average mojo and i still manage to spend plenty of money in this small city.

hey somebody has got to help the economy here...i'm just doing my part.

last sunday was another free day. a few of us made our way to the "bible lands zoo". yes you read correctly...there is a zoo in jerusalem. it actually turned out to be super fun.

this is me just hanging out in the australian area. the best part of the zoo was the fact that the animals were barely held back from the public. if i wasn't terrified of getting attacked by mama kanga i could have taken a nap right next to the kanga-roos!

oh and of course noah's ark was at the bible zoo. what other option would they have...none.

sadly the art turned out to be lame. we were all excited to see what noah had left behind. yep nothing much. i guess the flood really did destroy everything.

god bless the rains down on earth apparently.
















have i told you how much i love my roommate kellyn...well i do!

kells is always making me laugh and smile. she is probably one of the greatest blessings in my life.

one afternoon we decided to just "get out" and explore a little. we made our way over to the jewish quater and found this awesome shop. i love random horns for sell. we kept ourselves entertained.

i can't explain what i was doing but i think it had something to do with unicorns. (yes they existed they were just left behind on the ark)





ben sent me a picture that looks almost exactly like this (expect he is in it and not me). he told me to find this spot.

not as easy of a task as you would think. the old city is a lot bigger than expected. once we got over to the jewish quater we asked around for this gigantic gold structure. the store lady really didn't know where it was. "it might have been moved" were her words to us. who moves a huge glass incased menorah?

she was wrong...it was still there. after waiting for a random tour group to leave we were able to take pictures by it. i love finding random cool things in the old city.

again life in the holy land is blessed.

i've officially been here for half my stay. i can't believe i'm on the down climb now. the most exciting things are to come though.

i feel like i'm in a time machine and i love every minute of it. life is beautiful. jeru is beautiful.