For the last 3 months, you, my faithful audience, have listened to me explain and rant and giggle about my travels in the Middle East. As many of you know, I spent this past weekend in the Holy Land. My friend Rebeca and I visted crossed the border by bus and visited Jerusalem, Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho. We wondered the streets of the old city, visited religious and historic monuments, spoke with the locals, fought with belligerent people, stole food from a nice hotel (cakes and water), and stayed in a disgusting hostel. All of this adds to the amazing tale of our entire magical and eye opening weekend. Anyway, instead of making you read the narrative our weekend from my perspective, I thought it would be fun for you guys to experience our trip from someone else's point of view. The following blog post is from my friend Rebeca's blog, http://storiesfromjordan.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/weekend-in-jerusalem/, and she is just as detailed as I would ever be. I have added pictures and interjections along the way so you could see exactly what we were talking about, so plase enjoy!
I feel like our hostel in Jerusalem is a story in itself that should be told all at once and not in chronological order with the rest of our weekend. We miraculously found the place, a narrow opening of a larger building that doesn’t end, much like the architectural style of Europe along the roads. The owner wasn’t even aware of our reservation. We showed him our printouts and just paid him how much the paper said we still need to pay, minus 20 sheckles (about $5) we didn’t seem to have. Not a problem, we can pay back later. We had reserved two beds in an 8-bed all-girl room. There were guys in our room each night we were there. We were promised towels and breakfast. We were told neither would be provided. However, Paulina’s personality is such that people just naturally want to help her and give her things. We got towels and the promise of breakfast, but the time for breakfast started so late we never got to enjoy it. The bathrooms were rancid, always lacking either soap or toilet paper, they always smelled, especially since you were not allowed to throw the toilet paper down the toilet. You were asked to throw it in the waste basket that didn’t look like it was taken out regularly. Low water pressure, you know? Friday night we bought some bread to have for breakfast since everything would be closed on the Sabbath. We wrapped it up and place it among our things. The next morning we saw a feral cat had gotten into our room and eaten it. Awesome. When we came back later that day, I saw that my bag of dirty clothes had been disposed of as it was missing from the room. None of the pieces were particularly important, but that was the last straw. For our last night, we scoped out nearby hotels, and Paulina’s parents came to our rescue and allowed us to charge on their card one night in the cheapest and most decent hotel we could find. It was so worth it. Clean bathrooms, clean towels, an actual shower and not just a nozzle and hole in the floor, no boys in our room, breakfast at an early hour, feeling safe in general-it was grand. A funny thing about it though was when we first checked in the manager asked us if we wanted a street window or a back window, which was quieter. We went with the back window and discovered why it was so quiet. Our window faced a Muslim cemetery. Paulina thought this was hilarious. It’s no wonder why he never explained why it was so quiet. So that was my first experience in a hostel, and to be honest, this was what I was expecting. I had this image in my mind of hostels being this horrible place, and what we go was exactly how I imagined it. Paulina, on the other hand, knew better. She’s travelled more than me and informed me that this was by far the worst hostel she had ever seen. Well, I guess that means I can only go up from here! We never paid back the man his 20 sheckles. We didn’t think he deserved it, especially since a sign in his office made it clear that refunds were absolutely for no reason given. I wonder why.
The first day in Jerusalem was a little hectic. Us being there over the weekend complicated things a bit with Friday prayers, Saturday Sabbath, and Sunday church. It was a Thursday, so we tried getting into the part of the Old City that held the Dome of the Rock, a mosque that is said to be built over the rock where Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac before the angel stopped him. We were not allowed in. Next order of business was trying to get to Hebron on our own. We figured we would take a bus, but we were told we’d have to go to Bethlehem first and then catch a shared taxi to Hebron. Since our bus station was in a predominantly Arab area, we saw the Palestinian experience of trying to move within the country. I met a woman on the bus and talked to her a bit about her life and this experience. She helped Paulina and me when we were stopped at a checkpoint and had to exit the bus, walk through a no longer used checkpoint, walk a quarter-mile up to the ominous wall, and walk through on the other side inside of a caged walkway that followed the length of the way for a bit of ways. After, we were accosted by taxi drivers which our new friend was trying to help us with. However, all of the prices were two or three times as much as they should be, so she told us she was going to drive us in her own car to where some shared taxis were that would take us to Hebron. This was probably the most scared I felt while there. The taxi drivers followed us, yelling at the woman. A policeman came over to see why there was so much of a commotion. I think the taxi drivers were accusing the woman of stealing their business. At one point, the woman even walked back over to one of the men following us and yelling at her, taking off her shoe and shaking it at him almost to the point of throwing it at him. (This has to be one of the greatest insults you can do to a person in the Arab culture. Remember the Arab reporter throwing his shoes at Bush? Yeah, it means a lot.) All Paulina and I could do was silently stand there and follow the woman, the only person we knew and could trust. She was clearly upset in her car as she drove us and explained that when she visited the US, there was someone kind there that helped her when she needed it. She wanted to do the same for us. Thank you, whoever you are that extended aid to this woman. I really don’t know how things would have happened if we didn’t find her.
The next morning was a little hectic. Paulina’s first alarm didn’t go off, making us late with my “just in case” alarm. Then we had to find this hotel where we were going to get picked up for our first tour. We had our google map, but we had great trouble in figuring out where we were on the maps, stopping every couple of hundred feet to make sure we were heading in the right direction. Finally, we found the Prima Kings Hotel and were picked up to start our tour of Jerusalem, the old and new city. This started with Mt Scopus, one of the hills in the range of Mt Olives. From there, we could see the majority of the city, especially the old city. The gold-topped dome was the Dome of the Rock, the two gray domes were of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the single gray dome was the El-Aqsa Mosque. Then, we headed to the Old City, to Zion Gate. Along the way, we passed a massive Jewish cemetery, the size of which was just phenomenal. Before entering the city, our tour explained that in the time of the Ottoman Empire was the last time the city’s walls were rebuilt. However, the two architects made two mistakes. They forgot to include Mt Zion in the city and accidentally left Mt Golgotha inside the city. The two were beheaded. And right next to the gate we could see some of the remains of the City of David. Along the outside of the city’s walls we could also see bullet holes, evidence of the last century’s wars.
Zion Gate, on the southern side of the city, enters into the Armenian Quarter. Inside, we could see an area with the original level of the city. It’s common in this region to just rebuild a city on top of the old’s remains instead of clearing them away. So, Jerusalem actually sits higher than it originally did, making places like Mt. Golgotha seem less like a hill. While in this quarter we also got to see some of the celebrations of a Bar Mitzvah. Then we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which houses Mt. Golgotha, the stone where Jesus’ body was cleaned for burial, and the site of his tomb. If you place an object on one of the three stones, then it will become blessed. Inside, we were also shown the place where the two Marys stood as they watched Jesus being crucified. We were also told that three different churches reside there with their own prayer times, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Catholic, and things can become nasty when one steps on another’s toes. Outside of the unassuming entrance, there is a ladder on the second level up to a higher window. Our guide explained that that’s been there for about a hundred years, but no one can remove it because of the law of status quo. This law states that nothing in the Old City can be changed without the consent of the others. This means that the Christians, Jews, and Muslims would all have to agree to any change. This pretty much guarantees that not a single things changes in the whole city. Next, we followed the path through the city that Jesus took as he carried his cross. Each place where he fell or met a person was marked on the street’s walls. I can tell you, this was not a short or an easy walk. We walked it backwards because we started at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but it was all downhill from that direction. After, we found ourselves at the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall. This is believed to be the only remaining part of the second temple the Jews built after their exile by the Babylonians (present-day Iraq). Just in case you’ve never seen it before, the place is massive. Many people gathered to the wall, touching it and reading from the Torah with tears in their eyes. After this, we headed back to the bus to head to the Gardens of Gethsemane, to the Church of All Nations. This took a little bit of time because it was Friday, and many roads were blocked because of Ramadan. After sitting in the middle of an intersection traffic jam for over a half-hour, they decided to go ahead and let us through. The Gardens and Church lie on the slopes of Mt. Olives. Directly facing the church is the Old City’s Golden Gate. The city has eight gates, but only seven of them are open. The Golden Gate is the gate believed to be the one the returning messiah will enter through. For this reason, they keep the gate closed, to better know the messiah when he returns. Also to block his path, there is now a Muslim cemetery on the slopes in front of the gate. After this, we went to see King David’s Tomb. I honestly expected something a bit grander, but it was in this squatty building across the street from a holocaust museum. After many twists and turns down hallways, the women and men separated into two rooms where we could each see half of a giant casket, covered with a deep maroon colored cloth with gold stitching with a plastic covering on top of that. In another part of the building, our guide explained, is where some people believed Jesus help his last supper. However, this is highly debated. The most people know is that the house was in that general area. This concluded our first tour. Because our time at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher did not allow us to wait in line to see the stone/place where Jesus was buried, we returned to the church to see it. After that we were exhausted and returned to our hostel. The city’s ground is so hard from the many layers of stone underneath it that I had serious pain in my knee, and so we spent the evening mostly in and went to bed early, this time with the correct alarm time.
The second tour would be of Jericho and Bethlehem. We first passed the Inn of the Good Samaritan, though this part of the tour’s description was deceiving. We passed signs indicating the exit to the Inn, but we never got to see it. Farther down the road we stopped to see Moses’ Mosque from a distance. We then finally came to Jericho, the city closest to the Dead Sea on the Israeli side. It is also referred to as the City of the Moon because the people there worshipped the moon. After a lovely short video that looked at the archaeological facts compared to the biblical story of Jericho, we received a short tour of the older city. Apparently, just like Jerusalem, this city was rebuilt again and again on top of itself, forming a short hill from all the levels. In 1954, an archaeologist discovered that there were 25 or 26 (I can’t remember) levels of the city. During the time though that the tribes of Israel were being led by Joshua, the city was mostly abandoned. No walls have yet been found from this biblical time though the Jericho of Jesus’ time existed a little farther away in a Roman reconstruction. Jericho also lies at the foot of Mt. Temptation, so we were able to at least see from a distance the massive monastery built into the side of this enormous mountain.
This is where the 1st and 3rd temptations of Jesus occurred. (The second was in the Old City in Jerusalem.) The first temptation by Satan was for Jesus to turn some stones into bread. The second temptation was to throw himself from a height in the Old City for angels to catch him. The final temptation was for Jesus to bow down and worship Satan in exchange for the whole world. There were zip-line carts that carried visitors and pilgrims to the monastery, but there was not enough time in our tour to do this. Also, a side note: I love dates, and I’ve noticed that the dates in Israel are quite a bit bigger than those in Jordan. While browsing the gift shop (tours always make time for gift shop browsing) I was looking over the produce, and the guide offered for me to try the dates. It was an odd experience. They weren’t bad, but I was just not used to so much meat around the giant seed in the middle. (Quick English lesson: meat can also refer to the insides of a piece of fruit. Sorry, used to be an English major.) After this we went to go see a Sycamore tree. The guide didn’t even try to convince us that this was the same tree that Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus in the crowd, but he wanted to make sure we knew what the tree looked like. Compared to the other trees I’ve seen here, this thing was massive. I couldn’t figure out how a short person was supposed to have climbed it. Of course, being there and seeing this tree, I had to sing the Sunday school song for Paulina who had never been taught it. (True...I didn't know it...and I was offended by fact that Rebeca insisted on emphasizing that he was a little bitty man ;p) From there, we headed off to Bethlehem, the same city in which I had felt the most in danger. I was interested to see how I would view the city from the safety of a tour. (ME TOO!!!!)
The first place we visited in Bethlehem was the Milk Grotto. This was the cave in which Mary, Joseph, and Jesus hid when King Herod began looking for the child. It is said that when Mary was nursing Jesus, some of her milk dropped and touched the stone, and all of the rock in the cave became white. Indeed, there is now a white powder all over the rocks inside the cave. Women in Bethlehem will mix this powder in water and drink it for fertility. We next visited the Shepherd’s Field, which greets you at the gate with a large archway proclaiming “Gloria in Excellis Deo.” There we saw where the shepherds tended their flocks and also the cave where they lived. The church there dedicated to the site was where I began to feel a profound sense of peace that would stay with me the remainder of my time in that town. Fashioned of stone to look like a tent, the inside was lit with natural light, held three mosaics from that night around the walls, and was crowned with a circle of stone angels circling near the top of the building. I sat there as others took pictures, trying to imagine what it would be like to look up and actually see those angels floating in the air, singing praises to God. As I said, it was the greatest sense of peace I had yet felt on the trip. From there we visited the Church of the Nativity, the site where Jesus was born. At this point, I don’t know how to describe it to distinguish it from the other places I had seen. It was a beautiful church, with a bit of the floor removed so that you might see the original Crusader mosaic floor that lay underneath. (Again, it was rebuilt on top of the old instead of removing the rubble.) Crusader mosaics on the walls and paintings on the columns still remained. Like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, three denominations were housed in the church with their own areas and mass times. The Catholic area though was in a different chapel just off to the left of the main church. Here is where the Christmas sermon is televised each year. After exiting the church, our guide told us about how the doorway to the church became progressively smaller with each reconstruction. It is now just a small opening, the Door of Humility, where you must humble yourself by bowing in order to enter the church. On the way out of Bethlehem we passed the wall again, this time on the other side of the city, affording us the opportunity to see the protesting graffiti on it. We were on the wrong side of the bus though to get any good pictures. Although our tour was by an Israeli tour company, we found ourselves being rerouted by randomly closed roads and stopped at a checkpoint. Only one person in the person was questioned though.
Back in Jerusalem we had the whole of the afternoon and evening still left to us. We decided to try again to get into the area with the Dome of the Rock, this time coming from a different gate. We were once again turned away; however, we were told that we could visit from the area’s southern entrance tomorrow morning started at 7:30. We would be there. After that, we decided to wander the city, to become more familiar with it or see what we could find. By the end of the trip I could proudly say that we were becoming quite familiar with the narrow, maze-like streets and even once got ourselves out without the help of the map. We even visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher again. We both came to love that place exceedingly, and I’m glad we were able to visit it so many times. That sense of peace that began in Bethlehem extended itself to the feeling that church gave me. Hearing from friends how amazing Damascus Gate activity was at night, we hung around until after dark, even venturing on a possible one to two hour search for an ATM so that we could just buy ourselves some juice. We thought our feet were going to fall off by the time we got back to our hotel. It was nice and such a comfort to be able to go back to a clean place to sleep. I literally woke up the next morning with a smile on my face, to the great amusement of Paulina.
Our last morning had but a single item on our itinerary: going to see the Dome of the Rock. The time window for visitors to exit the Israeli border at Allenby Bridge (yes, it changes its name based on what side you’re on) closed at 2:30pm, so we didn’t want to take any chances. We woke up early, had a fantastic breakfast, and headed off to the other side of the city so that we might enter the area from the correct gate. Along the way we even saw a Sunday morning service in which a group of people followed behind a person carrying a wooden cross. We realized very quickly that they were carrying the cross along the same path that Jesus carried it. It was beautiful. Once we got to the gate, we began to stand in line with a number of other tour groups. Closer to the security check point, a guard noticed us, walked over, and asked where we were from and how many we were. This was the first time being an American afforded me special privileges. Considering we were just two sandwiched between massive tour groups, I wasn’t complaining about the special treatment. After climbing up the ramp (which overlooked the Western Wall) to the gate, we were told we had to cover up. Neglecting to bring anything, we had to buy scarves for ourselves before walking too deep into the area. It was so worth it though. This place was unlike anything else I’d seen in the Old City. It had wide, open spaces filled with trees. It looked like a giant garden. Although we were not allowed to enter either mosque, being able to see the details of the building up close were spectacular, particularly on the Dome of the Rock. White stone covered the bottom, but the second half was covered with intricately decorated tile with a large row of Arabic calligraphy along the top of the first level. The feeling of serenity that began in Bethlehem I also found here in this place. It was beautiful.
Crossing back to Jordan was stunningly easier than coming the other way. The only annoyance was the expensive exit fee, somewhere around $50. We were also given seats in a luxury bus (along with an extremely annoying Spanish family) because the normal busses were for Arabs. From the Jordan side, we took a taxi from the bus station back to my apartment, ending our journey. It was an amazing experience where we had just about every kind of emotion possible. We cried in frustration, fumed in anger, laughed harder than we have all summer, felt an inner peace unmatched by anything else, and felt paralyzing fear. There are many other stories I could tell from the weekend, but this post has already proved itself too long. Some of the best quotes form the weekend though should be mentioned:
“Excuse me, will you marry me?”
“Well, I guess we should enjoy it; it’s not like anyone’s going to ask us to marry them when we get back to the states. Wait, I guess not you, yeah because Jon already asked you…”
“They said we were going to have to share beds.” (Random guy who thought my bed at the hostel was empty until I took it back after returning from the hostel’s office.) Me: “What?!”
(After finding the chewed on bread in the morning) “Paulina! Our bread!” “Did someone take it? Where is it?” “No, DOWN THERE! Do we have a rat?!” (Pointing furiously)
“You know, they say that those who can’t listen to the word of God have demons in them. You should be careful, my friend.” (Random shop owner that was offended that I was too tired to stand still after a second day of tours as he was explaining to us often inaccurately and incorrectly what our tour guides had already told us. This obviously means I have demons in my soul.)
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I think the best way to describe Paulina’s and my experience with crossing the border was perfectly captured in the before and after pictures we took on various busses. In the first one we were smiling, a little scared but overall excited. In the second one neither of us smiled, and I gave the finger to the camera. We left early in the morning, taken by a private driver previously arranged to the exit bus station at King Hussein Bridge. There we payed an exit fee and a bus ticket that would just take us across the border. Once across we were in what looked like an airport terminal. I was stopped at security for no explanation and told to sit in a waiting area until called. After waiting some time, a woman took me to a curtained off cubby where she assured me I would not have to remove my clothes and then proceeded to run a metal detector thoroughly over all of my body. She then let me go. The next and biggest step was just ahead. Paulina and I were concentrating furiously on the story we were going to tell the customs officer, knowing that we would have to lie to her convincingly. We were not only going to a Palestinian town, but I also knew someone living in Palestine. These are not good answers to give. However, we were brilliant, answering confidently and handing over all of our hostel and tour reservations with graceful ease. Then we heard the slamming of a stamp. “Did you just stamp our passports?!” We forgot to ask her not to. Unfortunately, my passport did indeed get stamped. Paulina was lucky enough to not have had hers suffer the same fate. It has felt tainted ever since. They even stamped it on the first page! Ug. Then more corralling. Then Paulina was refused to go through the final check because they claimed her information had not processed yet. However, that’s not what we were told. No one spoke English well enough to tell us what was going on. She was just told to get out of line, and I was yelled at to go on and leave her behind. Our Jordanian phones didn’t work in this country, and we had no fallback of communication with each other. Finally, her sassiness got her through. We were out. The last obstacle of the border was just to find a bus to Jerusalem. While exchanging our currency, Paulina asked the woman working behind the counter how much the buses were, to make sure we got enough money. She responded that we shouldn’t take the bus; busses are for Arabs. We should take a taxi.
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| Taxi ride to the border- look how happy we are! |
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| Bus ride from Jordanian checkpoint to Israeli checkpoint |
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| Our first ever stamps of the trip! |
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| Here we start to get agigated a tad bit... |
Once we got to Hebron, we really didn’t have a plan. Paulina had a hand-drawn map a friend had given her to a mosque that might be interesting to us as well as the recommendation that we check out this street in the city, one that had been closed off to Palestinians after Israeli settlements had been built in the city. Outside the mosque, we ran into a promoter of a group called Breaking the Silence who gave tours of the city and what the situation is like there for Palestinians. Paulina’s same friend worked with a sister organizations, so she was familiar with this group, and we went with the guy, Islam, on a shortened, make-shift version of his tour. He explained that the wire netting above the Arab market streets were there to protect the Arabs. Israelis living on the second and higher levels of the buildings would throw trash, eggs, and dirty water on the Arabs below, and the netting was to help alleviate some of this. Most of the settlements in the town were once other Palestinian buildings, a hospital, a school that were transformed into settlements. Then he took us to Shuhada St, the street where to provide security to the settlements had welded the doors of all of the Palestinian shops and homes closed, forcing the majority of Arabs to leave the street. For this reason, many have begun to call Hebron “The Ghost Town.” As soon as we stepped on this street, we saw two Israeli settlers running through the street, maybe in their late teens, with guns. They often carry military-styled weapons and are allowed to harass Arabs. The numerous cameras throughout the area though make sure that if an Arab harasses an Israeli settler, he would be caught immediately. The graffiti was one of the worst parts. Next to “free Palestine” you could see “free Israeli.” There was “Zionism is racism” and also “gas the Arabs.” Since the street is closed to Palestinians, those who live on the other side of the street must cross a Muslim cemetery each day to get to the rest of the town for food or work. They are not allowed to leave the city, not to visit Jerusalem, not to visit other towns in the West Bank, and not to leave the country. They are trapped. After our tour, we parted with our guide and walked Shuhada St ourselves to see it. We caught a bus from the street back to Jerusalem, having a conversation with the Israeli guard in the watchtower directly across the street from the bus stop who first wanted to know what country we came from. Our experience on the bus ride back differed greatly from our experience in getting there. We never stopped at any check points; we never came across any problems. We travelled through the country with ease. From the bus station we caught the tram back to the Old City, where our hostel lied just outside of Damascus Gate. |
| The begining of the ghost town |
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| To protect the Palestinians from the violent settlers, the PA (Palestinian Authority) tried to put up these protective fences over the sidewalks. The settlers throw down sewage water, trash, eggs, etc. These are all attempts to coerce the Palestinians living in the village to leave. |
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| The checkpoint we had to cross to get to Shuhada St. Just after crossing this, we encountered not only armed soldiers, but armed teen civilians. The streets are deserted, mostly open for only the settlers. A few Palestinian families remain inside the old city of Hebron, but they live in misery. |
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| Written by the settlers. My question is, how can a people who went through so much suffering and pain do the same thing to another innocent people? What happened to the saying of the Holocaust "never again?" Never again to whom...Jews... or everyone around the world? |
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| Artwork drawn at a children's school. The settlers had taken to writing things like "Gas the Arabs" and "Kill the Arabs," and the Palestinians didn't want their kids to see this. So, they just covered the writing. |
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| The abandonded streets... |
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| Rebeca and I waiting for the mysterious bus...which no one knew when it was going to come... |
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| The bus stop was located in front of an Israeli military outpost |
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| bullet holes |
Zion Gate, on the southern side of the city, enters into the Armenian Quarter. Inside, we could see an area with the original level of the city. It’s common in this region to just rebuild a city on top of the old’s remains instead of clearing them away. So, Jerusalem actually sits higher than it originally did, making places like Mt. Golgotha seem less like a hill. While in this quarter we also got to see some of the celebrations of a Bar Mitzvah. Then we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which houses Mt. Golgotha, the stone where Jesus’ body was cleaned for burial, and the site of his tomb. If you place an object on one of the three stones, then it will become blessed. Inside, we were also shown the place where the two Marys stood as they watched Jesus being crucified. We were also told that three different churches reside there with their own prayer times, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Catholic, and things can become nasty when one steps on another’s toes. Outside of the unassuming entrance, there is a ladder on the second level up to a higher window. Our guide explained that that’s been there for about a hundred years, but no one can remove it because of the law of status quo. This law states that nothing in the Old City can be changed without the consent of the others. This means that the Christians, Jews, and Muslims would all have to agree to any change. This pretty much guarantees that not a single things changes in the whole city. Next, we followed the path through the city that Jesus took as he carried his cross. Each place where he fell or met a person was marked on the street’s walls. I can tell you, this was not a short or an easy walk. We walked it backwards because we started at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but it was all downhill from that direction. After, we found ourselves at the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall. This is believed to be the only remaining part of the second temple the Jews built after their exile by the Babylonians (present-day Iraq). Just in case you’ve never seen it before, the place is massive. Many people gathered to the wall, touching it and reading from the Torah with tears in their eyes. After this, we headed back to the bus to head to the Gardens of Gethsemane, to the Church of All Nations. This took a little bit of time because it was Friday, and many roads were blocked because of Ramadan. After sitting in the middle of an intersection traffic jam for over a half-hour, they decided to go ahead and let us through. The Gardens and Church lie on the slopes of Mt. Olives. Directly facing the church is the Old City’s Golden Gate. The city has eight gates, but only seven of them are open. The Golden Gate is the gate believed to be the one the returning messiah will enter through. For this reason, they keep the gate closed, to better know the messiah when he returns. Also to block his path, there is now a Muslim cemetery on the slopes in front of the gate. After this, we went to see King David’s Tomb. I honestly expected something a bit grander, but it was in this squatty building across the street from a holocaust museum. After many twists and turns down hallways, the women and men separated into two rooms where we could each see half of a giant casket, covered with a deep maroon colored cloth with gold stitching with a plastic covering on top of that. In another part of the building, our guide explained, is where some people believed Jesus help his last supper. However, this is highly debated. The most people know is that the house was in that general area. This concluded our first tour. Because our time at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher did not allow us to wait in line to see the stone/place where Jesus was buried, we returned to the church to see it. After that we were exhausted and returned to our hostel. The city’s ground is so hard from the many layers of stone underneath it that I had serious pain in my knee, and so we spent the evening mostly in and went to bed early, this time with the correct alarm time.
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| Church of the Holy Sepulcher...we seriously came here almost every single day to pray and get things blessed...I told Rebeca our souls were really "purified" lol |
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| praying on the stone where Jesus was cleaned |
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| At the Wailing/Western Wall |
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| Church where Jesus prayed before he was betrayed on the Mount of Olives |
The second tour would be of Jericho and Bethlehem. We first passed the Inn of the Good Samaritan, though this part of the tour’s description was deceiving. We passed signs indicating the exit to the Inn, but we never got to see it. Farther down the road we stopped to see Moses’ Mosque from a distance. We then finally came to Jericho, the city closest to the Dead Sea on the Israeli side. It is also referred to as the City of the Moon because the people there worshipped the moon. After a lovely short video that looked at the archaeological facts compared to the biblical story of Jericho, we received a short tour of the older city. Apparently, just like Jerusalem, this city was rebuilt again and again on top of itself, forming a short hill from all the levels. In 1954, an archaeologist discovered that there were 25 or 26 (I can’t remember) levels of the city. During the time though that the tribes of Israel were being led by Joshua, the city was mostly abandoned. No walls have yet been found from this biblical time though the Jericho of Jesus’ time existed a little farther away in a Roman reconstruction. Jericho also lies at the foot of Mt. Temptation, so we were able to at least see from a distance the massive monastery built into the side of this enormous mountain.
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| I really, really, really wanted to take the little floating cars up to the monastery :( |
This is where the 1st and 3rd temptations of Jesus occurred. (The second was in the Old City in Jerusalem.) The first temptation by Satan was for Jesus to turn some stones into bread. The second temptation was to throw himself from a height in the Old City for angels to catch him. The final temptation was for Jesus to bow down and worship Satan in exchange for the whole world. There were zip-line carts that carried visitors and pilgrims to the monastery, but there was not enough time in our tour to do this. Also, a side note: I love dates, and I’ve noticed that the dates in Israel are quite a bit bigger than those in Jordan. While browsing the gift shop (tours always make time for gift shop browsing) I was looking over the produce, and the guide offered for me to try the dates. It was an odd experience. They weren’t bad, but I was just not used to so much meat around the giant seed in the middle. (Quick English lesson: meat can also refer to the insides of a piece of fruit. Sorry, used to be an English major.) After this we went to go see a Sycamore tree. The guide didn’t even try to convince us that this was the same tree that Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus in the crowd, but he wanted to make sure we knew what the tree looked like. Compared to the other trees I’ve seen here, this thing was massive. I couldn’t figure out how a short person was supposed to have climbed it. Of course, being there and seeing this tree, I had to sing the Sunday school song for Paulina who had never been taught it. (True...I didn't know it...and I was offended by fact that Rebeca insisted on emphasizing that he was a little bitty man ;p) From there, we headed off to Bethlehem, the same city in which I had felt the most in danger. I was interested to see how I would view the city from the safety of a tour. (ME TOO!!!!)
The first place we visited in Bethlehem was the Milk Grotto. This was the cave in which Mary, Joseph, and Jesus hid when King Herod began looking for the child. It is said that when Mary was nursing Jesus, some of her milk dropped and touched the stone, and all of the rock in the cave became white. Indeed, there is now a white powder all over the rocks inside the cave. Women in Bethlehem will mix this powder in water and drink it for fertility. We next visited the Shepherd’s Field, which greets you at the gate with a large archway proclaiming “Gloria in Excellis Deo.” There we saw where the shepherds tended their flocks and also the cave where they lived. The church there dedicated to the site was where I began to feel a profound sense of peace that would stay with me the remainder of my time in that town. Fashioned of stone to look like a tent, the inside was lit with natural light, held three mosaics from that night around the walls, and was crowned with a circle of stone angels circling near the top of the building. I sat there as others took pictures, trying to imagine what it would be like to look up and actually see those angels floating in the air, singing praises to God. As I said, it was the greatest sense of peace I had yet felt on the trip. From there we visited the Church of the Nativity, the site where Jesus was born. At this point, I don’t know how to describe it to distinguish it from the other places I had seen. It was a beautiful church, with a bit of the floor removed so that you might see the original Crusader mosaic floor that lay underneath. (Again, it was rebuilt on top of the old instead of removing the rubble.) Crusader mosaics on the walls and paintings on the columns still remained. Like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, three denominations were housed in the church with their own areas and mass times. The Catholic area though was in a different chapel just off to the left of the main church. Here is where the Christmas sermon is televised each year. After exiting the church, our guide told us about how the doorway to the church became progressively smaller with each reconstruction. It is now just a small opening, the Door of Humility, where you must humble yourself by bowing in order to enter the church. On the way out of Bethlehem we passed the wall again, this time on the other side of the city, affording us the opportunity to see the protesting graffiti on it. We were on the wrong side of the bus though to get any good pictures. Although our tour was by an Israeli tour company, we found ourselves being rerouted by randomly closed roads and stopped at a checkpoint. Only one person in the person was questioned though.
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| The Church of "Fertility" This is the church believed to the be place where Mary and Joseph and Jesus hid before they escaped to Egypt. A drop of Mary's milk fell on the rocks of the caves and turned the rocks white. |
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| A Nativity Set inside a church on the Shepherd's field was |
Back in Jerusalem we had the whole of the afternoon and evening still left to us. We decided to try again to get into the area with the Dome of the Rock, this time coming from a different gate. We were once again turned away; however, we were told that we could visit from the area’s southern entrance tomorrow morning started at 7:30. We would be there. After that, we decided to wander the city, to become more familiar with it or see what we could find. By the end of the trip I could proudly say that we were becoming quite familiar with the narrow, maze-like streets and even once got ourselves out without the help of the map. We even visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher again. We both came to love that place exceedingly, and I’m glad we were able to visit it so many times. That sense of peace that began in Bethlehem extended itself to the feeling that church gave me. Hearing from friends how amazing Damascus Gate activity was at night, we hung around until after dark, even venturing on a possible one to two hour search for an ATM so that we could just buy ourselves some juice. We thought our feet were going to fall off by the time we got back to our hotel. It was nice and such a comfort to be able to go back to a clean place to sleep. I literally woke up the next morning with a smile on my face, to the great amusement of Paulina.
Our last morning had but a single item on our itinerary: going to see the Dome of the Rock. The time window for visitors to exit the Israeli border at Allenby Bridge (yes, it changes its name based on what side you’re on) closed at 2:30pm, so we didn’t want to take any chances. We woke up early, had a fantastic breakfast, and headed off to the other side of the city so that we might enter the area from the correct gate. Along the way we even saw a Sunday morning service in which a group of people followed behind a person carrying a wooden cross. We realized very quickly that they were carrying the cross along the same path that Jesus carried it. It was beautiful. Once we got to the gate, we began to stand in line with a number of other tour groups. Closer to the security check point, a guard noticed us, walked over, and asked where we were from and how many we were. This was the first time being an American afforded me special privileges. Considering we were just two sandwiched between massive tour groups, I wasn’t complaining about the special treatment. After climbing up the ramp (which overlooked the Western Wall) to the gate, we were told we had to cover up. Neglecting to bring anything, we had to buy scarves for ourselves before walking too deep into the area. It was so worth it though. This place was unlike anything else I’d seen in the Old City. It had wide, open spaces filled with trees. It looked like a giant garden. Although we were not allowed to enter either mosque, being able to see the details of the building up close were spectacular, particularly on the Dome of the Rock. White stone covered the bottom, but the second half was covered with intricately decorated tile with a large row of Arabic calligraphy along the top of the first level. The feeling of serenity that began in Bethlehem I also found here in this place. It was beautiful.
Crossing back to Jordan was stunningly easier than coming the other way. The only annoyance was the expensive exit fee, somewhere around $50. We were also given seats in a luxury bus (along with an extremely annoying Spanish family) because the normal busses were for Arabs. From the Jordan side, we took a taxi from the bus station back to my apartment, ending our journey. It was an amazing experience where we had just about every kind of emotion possible. We cried in frustration, fumed in anger, laughed harder than we have all summer, felt an inner peace unmatched by anything else, and felt paralyzing fear. There are many other stories I could tell from the weekend, but this post has already proved itself too long. Some of the best quotes form the weekend though should be mentioned:
“Excuse me, will you marry me?”
“Well, I guess we should enjoy it; it’s not like anyone’s going to ask us to marry them when we get back to the states. Wait, I guess not you, yeah because Jon already asked you…”
“They said we were going to have to share beds.” (Random guy who thought my bed at the hostel was empty until I took it back after returning from the hostel’s office.) Me: “What?!”
(After finding the chewed on bread in the morning) “Paulina! Our bread!” “Did someone take it? Where is it?” “No, DOWN THERE! Do we have a rat?!” (Pointing furiously)
“You know, they say that those who can’t listen to the word of God have demons in them. You should be careful, my friend.” (Random shop owner that was offended that I was too tired to stand still after a second day of tours as he was explaining to us often inaccurately and incorrectly what our tour guides had already told us. This obviously means I have demons in my soul.)
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