The Begining of Discovering Jerusalem...

The beginning of discovering Jerusalem...
I still feel pretty jet lagged but hopefully itll get better soon. i can't believe its 9:00 here and only noon at home. so weird especially since I feel like its midnight and I should be cozy in bed. Anyways today we had a tour of Jerusalem. It is so different here than it is in Denver. I have been looking at pictures for the past 8 months but nothing can really prepare you for the real thing. The traffic is pretty crazy here and there is a lot of honking and crazy drivers you have to watch out for. We started in East Jerusalem which is the Muslim quarter of the city. It is pretty cool to walk around and see the different signs all over the city that have the Arabic symbols, then Hebrew, then English. As we walked up the hill we could see the wall that separated the old city from the rest of Jerusalem.The wall has been rebuilt over and over again but there are still remnants of the wall during Christs time that you can pick out if you look closely. We entered the Old city through Damascus gate (which reminded me of the talk by Pres. Uchtdorf called "waiting on the road to Damascus" its a gooden). It was interesting because there is a railing that you can look off of before you enter the gate and you can see how far down the wall actually goes and see how much the wall has been rebuilt. A person can even see the gate that was in place during the time of Herod (which is significantly deeper than the gate that stands now). This part of the city was pretty much how I imagined all of Jerusalem. The streets are pretty narrow and there are vendors all over the place selling anything you could imagine. It is interesting to see how many different religions and people have tried to lay clam on even just a small piece of the historical city. There is the Dome of the Rock, the church of the holy Sepulchre, and an Austrian christian church also. I finally found out what the church of the Holy Sepulchre is. It is were many Christians believe that Christ was buried and resurrected. it is also believed to be the middle of the earth. There are many different factions that claim different parts of the church. Each faction lives in that part of the church because the law is if they leave they forfeit their right to be there. When we went into the church it was interesting to see the devotees singing and worshiping in their own manner. even though it is different from my beliefs I thought it was pretty cool to see them worshiping the Savior and their devotion to him.

As we exited the Old City we entered the West Quarter which is the Jewish section of the city. It was kinda crazy how different it is from the East Side. Everything is a lot newer. So weird that you can walk a couple steps and be in a different time...

One of my favorite parts was walking by the entrance to the road leading to the Garden Tomb. I confess I haven't been able to go inside yet but it was cool even just to stand there and feel the difference between it and the rest of the bustling city. So cool I can't wait to go there!

So that's pretty much the highlight of my day! Oh, and I got to sit outside and look out over the city as I read my homework... not to rub it in or anything...

Lifes good!