Sunday, April 29, 2012

Arriving/First few days

Everyone arriving at the Jerusalem Center after traveling for two days


              This is my home for the next three and a half months. No big deal :)


             Us doing the ramparts walk.                                      Us at the Western Wall.
(Basically we walked all around the city on the walls)

And yes I know I'm looking very stylish with my baggy clothes and my fanny pack but hey they are comfy and the fanny pack is super convenient (probably should've listened to my mom years ago about that).


                                Just a bunch of us walking around in the old city.


So I have been in Jerusalem for a little less than a week and it has been AMAZING!!  We have seen so much but I still feel like we have so much more to see.  Our second day here we got to go on a tour of the city.  All the shop keepers were out and wanted to give us their cards.  Everyone here loves mormons.  Everywhere we go people are asking if we are mormons and they are so happy to see us.  They all tell us we are beautiful so that's a self esteem boost :) On our tour we passed the Garden Tomb and went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  We also stopped at the Austrian Hospice and got a good look over the old city.  Friday (the next day) was our first day that we were able to go to the city by ourselves.  I didn't realize how much of a hike it is to get there because the first time (when we went on the tour) we kept stopping so it wasn't too bad. We didn't see too much that day but we did do a lot of walking around and I felt like I kind of knew my way around (at least a little better than before ha).  Saturday we had our sabbath and after church we went to the Orson Hyde Garden and the Garden of Gethsemane.  Today was probably my longest day so far.  We were in the Old City from after breakfast till dinner.  We did the ramparts walk (we did most of it and then went back later and finished the other part we had missed).  We went to the Western Wall and we tried to go see the Dome of the Rock but the line was pretty long so we figured we would have to come back another time.  The last thing we did was go to the Bethesda pools.  That was one of the prettiest places we had been all day and I wish I was a photographer because I was having the hardest time getting good pictures. 
That has been about the extent of my adventures so far and I'm sure there will be plenty more to come :)