my first night in Jerusalem!

So here is what you have all been waiting to hear about: Jerusalem! I was going to write about it last night but one of my professors daughters invited me to make cookies with her mom in their apartment. It was fantastic!

First of all, my google toolbar says that it is currently foggy and 11 degrees in Provo. Right now I am sitting in the beautiful city of Jerusalem watching the sun set over the old city and it is 63 degrees here. I know you hate me right now but that's ok. I understand.

I'm going to start up again where I left off last time. We got off the plane and headed to baggage claim and I found my bag without any problems. One girl in my group wasn't so lucky. I think I would have died if my whole life for the next four months decided not to show up here. We went out of the airport and found Brother and Sister Huff waiting for us. They were so excited to see us! As we walked outside I saw some palm trees and the warm air hit me and I felt right at home. We got all of the suitcases loaded and started driving over to Jerusalem. Everything seemed so normal to me that I almost pulled out my cell phone to send off a few texts before I realized that I am halfway across the world and that probably wouldn't look so good on my cell phone bill. I stopped worrying about texting as soon as we got on the freeway. Everything is really similar to the United States except that the signs are all in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Pretty cool, eh? Anyway, I forgot about texting when we stopped mere inches from the car in front of us. I thought it was a onetime thing, just a close call, but that was how the whole ride over was. It was pretty crazy!

When we got to the center it was dark outside and the whole center was lit up magnificently. The Jerusalem Center is definitely one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. As we walked into the huge front doors our professors and the service couples were all lined up to meet us and welcome us. It was so great. We went straight downstairs for dinner and then we had a few minutes to take our things down to our rooms before our meetings.

Factoids: The Jerusalem Center is 8 floors. You actually come in the top on the eighth floor. The Jerusalem Center also has Jerusalem limestone and marble floors. Rolling your suitcase is not allowed. My room is on the third floor.

This presents a small problem for my 50 pound suitcase. But remember how I am the most blessed girl ever? Some nice guy who I had never met happened to walk up as I was digging my luggage out of the pile and he just threw it right up on his shoulder and carried it down the stairs for me. What a blessing!

I didn't have any time to start unpacking right then because I had to run all the way back up to the eighth floor auditorium for orientation. The auditorium is amazing. Right behind the stage there are huge windows looking out over the city. It was kind of hard to pay attention with a view like that and I don't remember very much of what we talked about.

After that meeting we met with our religion teachers. I have Brother Huff and he is so funny! He talked about class a little it and then we all went around saying our names. I'm pretty sure he has them all memorized now. I wish I could say the same but I am having a hard time remembering names for more than five minutes. Anyway, I am really excited for my Old Testament class and I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot.

Then we had a meeting with our Ancient Near Eastern Studies teacher, Brother Skinner. He has a really dry sense of humor and I can tell that he knows so much about the Near East. I am so excited to learn from him!

When he was done we were split up into groups to take a tour of the center. I went with Brother Squires. His assignment here is to play the organ and he is the sweetest old man. He was trying so hard to hurry so we could get to bed. It was so cute! Everything on the tour was amazing! I had already seen or heard about most of the things but seeing everything in person was like a dream. We were assigned to start on the seventh floor and go all the way down. You may remember that there are 8 floors so we had to hike up all of those stairs to see the last floor. It really was saving the best for last but I at the time I thought I was going to die. My inspiration was little Brother Squires booking it up as fast as he could so that we could all get to bed.

I headed back to my room when we were finally done with everything and decided to take a shower. After travelling for so many hours I was feeling pretty gross. This was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I was going to try to hurry so that all of my roommates could shower and get to bed but as soon as I turned on the water I knew that wasn't going to happen. It was probably the best shower I have ever taken. The water was scalding hot, the water pressure was AMAZING and the shower head was actually taller than my head. The hot water hitting my sore muscles felt so good and it was just what I needed. The only problem is that I don't know how I will ever go back to a normal shower. I am definitely going to enjoy it while I can for the next 3 1/2 months!

After that I finished unpacking and I hit the sack around midnight. Wait until you hear about what happened the next morning! I wish I could tell you right now but typing this up took so long that my battery is about to die and my power cord is three floors down so you'll just have to wait until tomorrow!