It has occurred to me that I've been a rather delinquent blog writer of late. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the busier and more involved that I get here, the less I remember to write about it. This week has been an interesting combination of feeling like I'm starting to settle in and feeling very homesick. It's not all that surprising though. Three weeks is long enough here for me to start to build some relationships and put down some roots, but also long enough away for me to start to realize how much I care about and miss people that are back home. An interesting combination.
This past week I've continued to fall into the pattern that I imagine will define the rest of my time here. Classes when they are scheduled, homework when I'm free and no one else seems to be (or everyone else is also doing homework), and going out exploring or errand running or just for fun any time that a group is free. It's been a nice week for getting out as we have had warm weather and very little rain. I can't say as this is a good thing for Israel (they are in a drought), but it makes exploring much more fun.
Classes continue to go well. I'm starting to really fall in love with my Cultural Backgrounds of the Bible class. It's fascinating to me to learn about and discuss the lifestyle of the people who lived and wrote the Bible. Many of the ideas are not entirely new to me, but they are coming alive in ways and details that I have never really understood before. Recently we have spent a lot of time talking about identity and where it comes from. Far from being and individualistic society like ours, the culture of the Bible valued the family above all else. It makes sense of a lot of the stories and the imagery within the Bible as I am really coming to understand what that means.
Apart from class, I've had a lot of fun getting out and exploring this week. I went on a bit of a scavenger hunt to find a camera repair store in the New City. While I'm still rathered annoyed that my camera needs to be fixed, it was pretty fun going out with a couple of the girls here and trying to find the place that I needed to go. We also discovered a cool little coffee shop with relatively cheap cappuccino. While this may be entirely unexciting to some, I happen to really like good coffee, which is also very expensive here.
Later in the week, I also went on an outing with 8 or so students from the school over to a place called the Garden Tomb. This site is one which resembles what the place of the cross and the tomb that Jesus was buried in may have looked like. While many scholars question the validity of the place (and they themselves do not even claim that this for sure was the spot), it provides a place that helps people to visualize what the tomb and the surrounding garden may have looked like. It fits much of the Biblical description of the crucifixion site and the tomb, lending it a very authetic feel.
Finally, I continue to fall in love with the JUC tradition of Shabbat (Sabbath). Every Friday afternoon as many as want to gather to play ultimate frisbee at 3:45. We play until about 5:00, when we all head back to the school to shower and get ready for dinner at 6:00. For Shabbat dinner the dining room is rearranged to give it a very community feel (tables all around the outside of the space so that we all can see each other). Then we all eat a Shabbat meal together, including the traditional lighting of the Shabbat candles and the Shabbat bread and wine (grape juice). Just following dinner, at 7:30, as many as want to come together in the student lounge for Vespers, an evening worship service. And while there is nothing official following Vespers, it is quickly becoming tradition here for a bunch of us to hang out afterwards playing games or going out into the city for a little bit. It's just a really nice evening of fun, community, worship, and relaxation, and I love it.
Today was a bit of a downer as I missed a pretty cool field study to Jericho due to being very sick. I'm hoping that a good night's sleep will get me well enough to be able to go out on the field study scheduled for tomorrow. And on that note, I'm off to bed to try to get that sleep.
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