Back to good ol' Cougartown

I doubt anyone even reads my blog anymore now that I have returned... but I still think I am allowed to write, even without pictures of camels. :( Tragic I know, I miss Egypt too. Actually today I went to the "opportunity fair" on campus and I talked to the student relations director of the Jerusalem Center. I said, "Hi this is great booth- I just got back, but still it's a great booth, I wanted to stop anyway." She probably thinks I am weird but I just needed some Jerusalem brochures to get me through the day. Right after that I talked to the Washington Seminar booth lady and I thought I had to have some future in politics to be able to intern with that program in DC- but apparently they have two BYU students working at the Hishhorn contemporary art museum. Sweet, right? I could do that as an internship- well I don't know if I could it would take lots of applications and money and desire and passion, ya know. But still- a good option. After that I went to the honors booth. I took a few honors classes for my generals because I heard they were easier (little did I know- that means less work but more thinking... aka rough stuff). So I thought hey I have taken a few classes maybe I should just keep going and do the other honors requirements. Which apparently I am close- all I have to do is take more 12 honors courses, 2 semesters of 200-level language classes, read 12 books from their list, go to 12 plays on their list, 12 concerts, 12 films, 12 "science experiences" -what is a science experience?, and 12 art exhibits... all from their special list. Then I get to choose 2 from each topic and submit a paper about it. Then I must do a thesis project and create a portfolio with a bunch of stuff, documents of some sort. So the lady at the booth went through all that stuff and then I saw something at the bottom. GPA requirement 3.5. I said, "So you're telling me you could do all this work and then your final semester you are at graduation and you realize that you only have 3.49 - then you don't graduate with honors?" She said, "yep that's right." Moral of the story- don't plan on seeing me with honors in a few Aprils from now.

On a more happier note- I really like walking to campus. It takes me longer this semester because I live pretty far from the art building but luckily it is actually enjoyable. I walk past 2 bus-stops, I get to go on two crosswalks of busy roads-- that adds lots of excitement. Best of all- I walk past the duck pond at least 4 times a day! There are probably 30 ducks in the little iced over pond but they quack and waddle and are as cute as ever. Worst part of my walk- no one has classes the same time I do (8 am every morning!) so I end up doing this path by myself most the time. Before you get sad for me- it isn't all bad. Sometimes I get to play games. Yesterday I played one that got a little dangerous. I walked as long as I could with my eyes closed. At first I couldn't go one cement block (from one crack to the next). Plus some pieces are a little off - lower or taller than the next block which causes tripping, tripping is not good to do south of campus. I have done it before and it was way embarassing- not to mention painful. At any rate, I still faced my fears and kept closing my eyes. I got up to 20 steps all with my eyes shut! It was funny because I would go a few steps and then I would open my eyes and start laughing and I bet it weirded out anyone watching. Especially the one time when I was at 13 steps and I was feeling good because it was a pretty straight-way, but alas I came to right as I crashed into a mailbox off the side. I think my body is aligned to the right because I kept going crooked that way. I should probably get that checked out.

Last word: check out this artist dan steinhilber. He is pretty awesome. He came and talked to my class today and pretty much changed my life. Plus he was funny. Then tonight my friends and I went to his opening reception at the MOA. We felt cool because we wore straight leg jeans and fancy coats with little flat shoes. And just as I expected- so was every other college girl that was there. Anyway- He has some things for sell at this website
http://www.artnet.com/artist/190612/dan-steinhilber.html

I think he is most famous for this piece. It is in DC at the Hishhorn and it is made out of hangers. Pretty like birds right?

I would also like to encourage people to listen to Nickel Creek. I am wearing grey pants with a green shirt today and everytime I do this color combo I like to listen to "Green and Gray" and then I remember how much I love Nickel Creek even though I can't tell which part is the melody in the chorus of this song. Oh and thanks Emily for buying me this CD several years ago. Ok I'm done. Happy Thursday.

One of my favorites. He said that he worked in food service and he always had to take out the trash- and these were the kind and color they had. He talked about how much he loves the feeling of opening a new trash bag and lining the container. How fun it is to pop the air into it and see it open up, how it provides a fresh, clean start for whatever may come. So he blew up all these bags and made cool shapes by tying the drawstrings together. Pretty neat.

Last days in Jerusalem

Well I am home back in Utah now. But a piece of my heart is still in the holy city. I am still dealing with jet lag, so I wake up early in the mornings and look at my pictures. I decided to share a few. This is my class. We were in Old Testament and New Testament together and we were all on the same bus for most field trips. We became very close and they feel like kin.

This picture probably isn't very cool when it is this small. The last morning when everyone was still at the center, we woke up at 5:30 and went to the lookout of the Judean Wilderness on top of Mt Scopus. Security didn't want us leaving that early, but they knew it was our last morning, so they came with us! Thanks Hassan!

This is the sign right before the turn into the long driveway of the center, if you keep following this road up it takes you to the lookout from the last picture. Everyone in the city knew us as the students at the Mormon University. It is the only place in the world where this term is encouraged by the First Presidency.

This is the "Arab Costco" as we called it. This was our favorite section with bulk candies. I would buy boxes with 24 Cadbury chocolate bars for only 10 shekels-- Which is less than 3 US$. Pretty good.

As much as I love the deals there, I am glad to be back and to have visited the real Costco in the US. I forgot how blessed that store is. We swung in the other day to get a few things, but I was still able to taste every sample in the store. I am really good at finding those. Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving

I am stealing Lindy's idea. These are some things I am thankful for this week.


Nature. I love my field trips, I really do. But during Galilee we were all taking in too much information. Sometimes you just can't absorb it all and you get distracted. Thus Lindy and I like to point out all of our favorite pieces of nature. When we were in Dan (it has the mainspring to the Jordan River and an ancient altar that Ahab built who was the first king of the Divided monarchy) we were trying to listen to something important about something ancient but we were just so distracted by these darling pinecones. Look how big they are! Plus it reminds me of autumn which reminds me of Thanksgiving, so I feel it is very appropriate. I am thankful for nature and Lindy's new obsession with taking pictures of things she found on the ground.

This picture is a little blurry, but it just captures us so well. We changed around the busses so that we could ride with a mixed group rather than just people in our religion class. We are on the Matthew bus and from the first time I walked on, I knew I had a special bus bond with Eli and Chelsea. We are the 3-some and we have way too much fun making pirate jokes. I am thankful for their companionship during the long drives.

I am thankful for Mikael and Lauren and their love for sea-shell collecting and I am thankful for the millions of seashells that are beautiful and detailed. But this also highlights my awesome camera. I loved my camera before but I know so much more about it now! It is my little partner in crime in the memory-saving game of soaking in every single detail from the Holy Land. I have yet to name her, but she goes with me everywhere- thanks mom and dad, this camera is the best!

Yay for Israeli Thanksgiving celebrations. As Bro. Skinner puts it- they combine Independence Day with Thanksgiving. The entire dining hall was decorated with red, white, and blue streamers, balloons and crepe paper. Plus we get fireworks in the turkey. It was entertaining and very delicious. It was a little odd to have dates in the stuffing, but whatev you only get a Jewish Thanksgiving once. Ein Gev rocks! Tova!

Galilee

Hola team! I haven't posted forever, I realize this. I start several entries but I get interrupted and never finish them, but I haven't regretted it because I have been doing awesome things and I don't really need to post it online but I just do because I love seeing how many people have looked at my blog- not in a prideful way, ok it might be prideful because it makes me feel good about myself, but not too good. Anyway- tonight we watched a little movie my friend made, it had clips of people hanging out on field trips, shopping in the old city, and just chillin at the center. But then he put it to slideshow music that makes people feel nostalgic. It was probably only 5 minutes but I was crying at the end because it felt like this program was over. So I stopped crying, gave him a hug and decided that I am going to keep soaking everything in and just try to push away all my homesick feelings. Everyday Lindy and I talk about foods we miss, people we want to see, activities we want to particapate in, clothes we want to wear, the list goes on and on and then we have to say ok stop we love it here remember? So mom- just know that I really do miss you all a lot and I have lots of homesickness but I am trying to not focus on it.


This is a little taste of my field trips. We are sitting on the steps of St. Peter's primacy church with the Sea of Galilee in the background.

me with the Sea of Galilee

This is the church in the city of Nain. Look up the widow that lived here in the New Testament.

SJ and I sporting our lovely treasures from the Old City. My Hebrew is covered up because I accidentally took this shirt to Egypt and they don't like Hebrew so much. Either way, I think we look cute.

Passover

We went on a tour of East Jerusalem the other day and this is the view from an overlook on the Mt. of Olives. We have been talking about the temple mount a bunch in New Testament lately, so I thought I would show the folks at home. The stairs on the left outside of the wall are the steps from Herod's temple. The Dome of the Rock is centered on the temple mount now.

A little room mate shot in our fancy clothes for the Seder meal. From left to right it is Lindy, Camber, me, and Heather. We were shocked that Camber showed up because oh wait, she spent the entire day in the hospital! I told the photographer to capture these beautiful floral arrangements on either side because they are so lovely!

This is my friend David with his beautiful floral arrangement! It looks a little sloppy in this shot since he is tilting it, but his major is landscape design so he can create beautiful things.

The distant shot of the Passover meal. For those wanting to correct us here, we know that the Passover is in the spring but I will be home by then so we had to do it sooner. You might be able to see my professor on the main table by the window in the back. He teaches us Modern Near East from the Jewish perspective. He is one of the best teachers I have ever had. Today we clapped and stood up after his last lecture and I was so near tears- that is how great he is. So in honor of his awesomeness I went all around East Jerusalem today to get a group gift for him. We had a pocket watch engraved, a BYU T-shirt made, flowers for his wife, and then my handy-dandy watercolor set (thanks Miss) helped me create a card. We are so sad to be done with his class. Anyway, I went to Bethlehem yesterday and it was incredible! I was so nervous and so giddy with anticpation that I planned my outfit out in advance. I knew I had to wear blue because I always picture Mary in blue and then I found a blouse that could almost pass as a maternity shirt and it was blue! So I borrowed it from Lindy and yep I wore it to Bethlehem- so get excited for some pictures.

Jerash

A day at the races! This was at the Roman hippodrome in the ancient city of Jerash. Jerash has more Roman ruins outside of Italy than anywhere else in the world. So this is the area where they would watch jousting and whatever other athletics. Our tour guides decided it would be fun to have a race between the two buses. They did a boy race and then a girl race. I won the girl race and we were all cheering and everything, chanting "Huffle puff... Huffle puff" because my teacher's last name is Huff. I was pretty shocked that I won because the other girls ran track and stuff that when against me, so that was definetley a little added bonus to the day. But then this group of Jordanian girls on a field trip wanted to challenge us. So here we are at the starting line. I am so hard core- pulling up my sleeves and everything.

This is an action shot, just because.

This is Tim and I with our little victory pose in front of the columns. Behind each column is where they would hold horses for jousting as they waited their turn. How cool!

This is the view from a citadel in downtown Amman. If you look to the left you can see an ancient Roman arena. It is huge! Super cool. Although Jordan was awesome, I was excited to be home. It felt so good to come back to my bed and food that I was comfortable with and I knew exactly what I was eating. Which made me home-sick because I thought wow if I am excited for this stuff at the center, think of how wonderful it will be to be at home with a kitchen and a huge bed and warm clothes and a rice bag, ah. Ok I will stop now. I miss you all!

olive picking

These are actually Sarah's pictures. I am getting a little tired of picture taking, so luckily we can all share pictures with our thumb drives. This is Sarah Jane and I in front of the center pretending to be doing something important, but really we just wanted a picture with the olives. But in my defense, I picked every one of the olives in the bag coming up.

This is on the street to the center and we discovered this darling little bench... when everyone else was picking olives... oops. It was hard because most of the trees are so big that you have to use a ladder or be really tall- both of which I did not have access to, so we took a little rest on the bench. You may notice that both Justin and Steven are leaning towards my side even though there is plenty of room on this bench, yeah... I so love it here!

This is my happy olive face. I picked all these olives all by myself. People kept saying, "Oh Becca let me take that bag for you and I will go dump them in the big bucket." I opted out because I liked the pride of carrying every single one and especially depositing it myself.

I didn't pick all of these, but aren't they beautiful?! My friend Melissa took this picture I think. There is a lot of picture trading going down, which I am so ok with.

Anyway now for a real update. I have been here about a month and a half now and I have only gotten homesick a few times and I really think I am receiving lots of help from heaven in that department. The only times I get a little teary is when I see my adoorrable niece, so that is ok because if I were home I wouldn't get to see her anyway. Although it may seem like I only have fun all the day- I am taking 15 credits. We are almost done with my Old Testament class which has been really great. My teacher is pretty tough, but we are memorizing names and meanings and places and valleys and Phillistine fortresses and it is great. It is so great to go to these sites and know the geography of everywhere surrounding and the stories that happened there.Also, we have an ancient near east studies class taught by a BYU professor- so we have been going in order of Old Testament chronology so that we can put the patriarchs in context with their actual surroundings at the time. For example, we discussed why it was so important for Abraham to be taught in Ur because he came right after the Sumerian renaissance when they would have learned writing in their temples and about how important it is to have priesthood- even though there's was corrupt. We all love love love the ancient near east class because we are learning so much new information, but gaining more knowledge about why the Old Testament is true.The other classes are called Modern Near East studies. We take it from 2 different professors, a Palestinian Christian from Bethlehem University and then an Orthodox Jewish man who teachers at a Conservative Jewish school. This class is really interesting because so far we have learned a detailed history of Judaism, and now we are starting to discuss the Jewish perspective of the conflict. Our Palestinian teacher has talked more about Palestine and covers Muslim background a little bit, but most of the things we learn about Muslim culture comes from my Arabic teacher.Ayman- my Arabic teacher could quite possibly be my favorite teacher here. He is hillarious and we all look forward to this class so much because we just ask him questions and have a blast. He told us the best restaurants to go to for falfel and kinea so I think we are going to check that out this week. Well, Arabic starts in 10 min so I better say Khatrek!

JORDAN

This shot is dedicated to the "brethren." I was so so close to buying this do-rag for my dad, but it was such bad quality, so I hope a picture will suffice. And we are trying to do a "J" with our hands, we are not calling you all losers, I promise.

This was our first night in Jordan. This is the famous Sarah Jane. By some miraculous intervention we got to be room mates. There were 3 of us, so Sarah and I got to share a bed. How sweet, the blanket looks cute but trust me there were hairs (that we did not own) all over it.

This is me at the monastery at Petra. No it isn't the infamous treasury but I liked this more and there were less tourists.


I just got back from Jordan... wow yeah I know. It is amazing how much you learn about a country by only spending 4 days there. We went to Mt.Nebo and saw the brazen serpent memorializing his life, Petra to see the massive Nabatean ruins carved out of rock (intense pictures sure to follow). Petra was way cool! I made a little video humming the Indiana song as I walked through the pathway that Indiana Jones takes before he gets to the treasury. A lot of the rocks and pathways reminded me of southern Utah, but then some parts have these deep dark purple splotches. It is so crazy how many colors there were- so I took a lot of pictures for my friend Alex because she is a geology major and she can explain it all to me. Then we took a donkey rides up the mountain to a big monastery and oh my lands, I think it is even prettier than Indiana's treasury. It is just as big and it is way more effort to get up there so you feel like some explorer discovering this huge building carved into the rock.

Now that we are back, everyone is sick again. It was really cold and rainy in Jordan so we all caught colds again. It is pretty rough to have a Jordanian virus because my body is so not used to it, but I am getting better. It helped that we had our Halloween party last night and boy was it a hit. Who knew that 80 kids could be so creative with the few clothes we brought from home? In my room alone we came up with DJ Tanner, a telestial teal crayon, a rose bud, and I was a sumo wrestler. We helped our friends next door transition into a dove and a tree. My favorite costumes were from room 408. They were "bad girls of the Old Testament." One was Delilah and she was carrying around a hair cutting kit (she cut Samson's hair), then there was Jael with a hammer because she nailed this guy's head to the ground, then Potiphar's wife and she had a pair of boxers hanging on her necklace (Joseph's) and last but not least, Bath-sheba-my friend Sarah wore nude colored clothing with a towel, wet hair, and a pitcher of water like she was taking a bath. We have all noticed that our humor has become much more Biblical. All of our jokes use phrases from the Bible, and in all of our conversations we will be talking about somethng and then it always relates to the Bible and we say, "hey that is like when Absalom did this..." Oh goodness, only in Jerusalem. Expect Halloween pictures in the near future!