Days 34, 35, 36, 37, and 38

Bedouin tent

Bedouin Weaving

Sarah and I at Tel Arad

Middle of nowhere, aka where the Bedouins live

Tel Beersheva

This week has basically been busy and boring. Alliteration. We’ve only watched the first session of conference so far and were all pretty excited about the new temples! Especially the tabernacle in Provo.

On Sunday morning I went out with Whitney, Leslie, and AnnaLeah. We didn’t actually go into the Old City, but we were just outside the walls. We went to Omar the favorite wood carving man. I ended up spending a pretty decent chunk of my money. Omar is great because he shipped everything home for me so I don’t have to carry it home in December. We also went to a bakery while we were out and got a few different cookie type treats. They all pretty much tasted the exact same, sort of like a shortbread. Not that great but still a fun treat. We met a local woman while we were out named Sam, it was surprising because the women never approach us. But she was a bit more of a free spirit and she told us to come visit her at work. So hopefully we do. After our two hours in the city we headed back to the center. And pretty much spent the rest of the day doing homework and studying!

Monday=Fieldtrip

The buses were leaving at 7:20 and at 7:18 we were still in our room. Four flights of quick stairs later, we were the last ones on. This field trip was pretty lengthy, pushing eleven hours. A lot of the time being on the buses, but it didn’t seem like we were on the buses for an exceptionally long time. Except for some odd reason I got major carsick. I felt like I was going to barf every single time we got on the bus. Although I had a bag in hand, I thankfully never had to use it. Our first stop was at a Bedouin village. The women talked to us and demonstrated how they weave wool into different things. Bedouin’s are nomads and are generally not recognized by the government. The weaving ladies were at a nicer, recognized village. We then drove to another village, but this one was not recognized and literally consisted of little shacks in the middle of the desert. It was interesting to see how they lived. We then visited Tel Beersheva and Tel Arad. They were some of the more extensive tel’s we have seen. We walked through a huge cistern at Beersheva, we even got to wear lovely hard hats while we were in it. At Tel Arad we went into the ancient tabernacle, which was well enough preserved that we could walk into the Holy of Holies.

This week we have had a lot of midterms as well. Tuesday we had our Judaism Midterm, I studied for a while. But let’s just say I relied a lot on my test taking skills and somehow pulled off a perfect score. Yay! One final down. Wednesday morning we had our OT test. There was an in class part, which I completed in about ah seven minutes. Easy. I was the first one done. Then there was an out of class packet/novel that we were allowed to use our scriptures on that wasn’t due until the next morning. It was like a scripture scavenger hunt, super time consuming. I worked on it throughout the day. But I know that I didn’t do very well on it, it required way more effort than I was willing to put into it. But I did finish my entire paper/midterm for Islam, instead of spending more time on OT. So now I’ve got that out of the way too! I have one more midterm this week, well it is actually in three hours. Hebrew. I’m not too worried. It’s pass/fail. And I know the entire alphabet, but sounding out the words is like the game madgab. Let’s just say I usually can’t figure out what the word is, unless I hear someone else sounding it out loud.

Good news. Hebrew midterm only took me about ten minutes. Easy! Although I was somewhat disappointed because I was the third one done, but only by seconds. I wanted to be the first. Oh wells.

Now i've just made the trek up to Hebrew U. How exciting. Even more exciting, its italian food for dinner tonight. Yay.