Day 42

This morning I was woken up by the lovely sound of our phone ringing and then the even lovelier sound of listening to my roommate talk in a baby voice for half an hour on it. It was just great. Not a big deal, but still. It's adding up. After breakfast I headed out with a group of about ten kids. But Leslie, Lauren, and I fell a bit behind the group and never caught up then lost them. So we just did our own thing. Which was really fun. And it gave me a chance to navigate through the city without other people doing it for me. We went over to the western wall first and watched a bunch of bar mitzvah little parties. They were singing, dancing, and playing the drums and horns. It was really cool to watch. We just wondered around the Jewish Quarter for a while after that. We tried to get into this Yeshiva, a jewish school, and get on the roof and take pictures (apparently you can get a pic with the western wall, dome of the rock, and the JC). But it was only for students and boys. So we couldn't get in, obviously. But there was a nice little old man that talked to us for a bit while we were trying to get in. We then had our sack lunches at about ten on a nice little overlook. At one point we walked by a bunch of little kids having recess and I said good morning to one of the little girls in Hebrew and she just stuck her tongue out at me. We then left the Old City and went to Jimmy's Olive Wood, but he wasn't there but the next store over let us in. Eventually Jimmy's nephew and friend came over and helped us out. We talked to them for a while too. His nephew is trying to get a scholarship to a BYUI and Leslie has some connections up there, so she is going to try and help him out. After that we went over to Sam's. Remember she is the muslim lady we met last week and she told us to come visit her at her work. So we walked over there and talked with her for a long time. She is hilarious. Very chatty. She went and bought us drinks, but brought us tea. That was a bit of an awkward conversation. Because we aren't allowed to talk about our religion at all, so it was hard to explain why we couldn't drink it. She ended up driving us back to the center. And wanted to come in and talk, but we couldn't because we had to set up for our Seder dinner. But she gave us her number, email, and facebook. So we will def get together with her again. PS she is like 30's, married, w/ kids. When we got back we helped set up for our Seder dinner. Lauren and I arranged all of the name tags. We then went into the kitchen and talked with Achmed for a minute and he gave us a bunch of little cookies, well he actually gave us an entire plate full to take to our room. Which we have been slowly consuming. Yummm. And as a returning favor to him we went out and cut a bunch of flowers for his vases on all of the tables. We had to get into Sunday dress for the dinner. Our Judaism teacher was in charge of it. We went through all the traditions and rituals of the holiday. It was great, but I was starving because we had eaten our lunch so early. Eventually we got to eat and we had delicious mashed potatoes and veggies. Plus the meat stuff for everyone else. We had great desserts too, ice cream plus a plate of other little treats-which included more cookies! Now I am just blogging while watching LOTR. But now all I can think about is the plate of cookies sitting in my room. Peace. Or Lila Tov. Night.

The only picture I took today. The Western Wall and the Dome.