first day of classes..

to even attempt to describe to you all that we heard and learned today would be impossible... and beyond all that you would most likely grow bored with what would seem to be another boring history lesson. but it is far from that.

our day in the classroom began with an orientation of what to expect as students of JUC. what might that be?? lots of walking. to begin, we walked around the campus. jenni and i had already done this, but we had yet to find the correct staircase to the roof and the view was incredible. a clear view of the valley of gay hinnom (biblically-gehinna) and king david hotel and tower for the ymca on the hill beyond. then it was back to the classroom and we met our well traveled teacher, carl rasmussen. his history with the school and the nation or israel contains more stories than we have classroom time, but it is interesting to note that he was here for the 6 day war, the war of yom kippur as well as both intifadas (uprisings). after a 95 minute lecture, we broke for lunch and then met at the gate for our "walk" of the old city.

our walk began at 1pm and ended shortly after 6 in the shop of our new friends dov and moshe kempinski. the beginning instructions for the walk was to find a new "buddy" who we didn't know. jenni and i met kevin and james, two pastors from oregon. our tour took us on several winding routes through narrow and wide streets in and out of a majority of the gates to the walled portion of the city--Jaffa, Damascus, Herod's, St. Stephen's/Lion, and finally Zion. we also weaved in and out through the four quarters of the city--armenian, moslem, christian, and jewish.

we went back again to the church of the holy seplechre, but this time we came in from the opposite side. going through the church for the second time, jenni and i were able to focus a little more on what dr. rasmussen was saying along with distinguishing between the six religious groups that share ownership of different properties within the church--greek orthodox, eastern orthodox, roman catholocism, ethiopian, coptic, and syrian. we also passed through several shops again and met some of the shopkeepers.. who were very anxious to give us their business cards.
we headed outside the walls through the damascus gate and saw gordon's calvary and garden tomb where some would dispute that the crucifixion and burial took place. winding along the outside of the wall we walked along a portion of the arab section before reentering through herod's gate. our next stop was the pool of bethesda.... and then back through narrow shop-laden streets out st. stephen's gate and into a muslim graveyard. amidst the tombstones engraved in arabic, we turned our attention to the mount of olives taking in church after church that was built upon "traditional" sights (saints burial, garden of gethsemane...etc.). once again we headed back into the city to visit the western wall before continuing the shorashim, the biblical shop, owned by the brothers (http://www.shorashim.com/). then it was home through zion gate and dinner.... since we have been dining on food at the JUC kitchen we have had a variety of food mostly american style. however, there is always hummus and a variety of fruits.

the homework for tonight wasn't too bad.. and jenni and i are already done, and i know that i am looking forward to sleep (but since when is that new)

side history note.
this year celebrates the 40th year since the War of Yom Kippur in 1973. tomorrow is Jerusalem Day (which partly began tonight with nightfall, which signifies the new day). however because of the 40th year the celebration will last the entire week and we are seeing signs of it everywhere--banners, lights, fireworks, stages set-ups.. the works.

---emby