Rampart Walk

On top of the Wall surrounding the Old City. It was such a beautiful view!

In Jerusalem, Sabbath is on Saturday. So, because everything is closed and also in respect and since everyone has sabbath on saturday, the Jerusalem Center does too. So Sunday is our Saturday and Saturday is our Sunday. It'll get some getting used to but it's an exciting change.

So Sunday was a free day. Every Sunday is a free day so we all go out to the city (of course!). We walked as a huge group to Aladdin's (ALA-DEEN's) money exchange  and we got there a little before it opened. So here's this huge touristy looking group standing in line at a store that's not even opened. The store next door called Aladdin and told him the Mormons were here. He told him to give the phone to one of the Mormons, who he gave it to Hailey and told her, I be there in 7 minutes! 7 minutes! Haha, we thought that was funny, not 10 minutes but 7! He exchanged all of our money and while we were in line, there were dozens and dozens of sticky notes taped to his walls from previous JC students writing to future friends attending the center, or the future students in general. It was cool to read them all. I am definitely going to write one for Mary Bennion who just got accepted for this fall, so look for it girl!! :)

Geoff, me, Rachel, and Natalie outside Aladdin's shop

After we exchanged our money we took the short walk over to the Old City at Damascus Gate. There is one big opening, like the picture in my previous post, and those are old Crusador gates, I think, not entirely sure. But the wall and gate is newer than Christ's time but underneath was three Roman gates found that they built on top of which were official Roman centurion gates during the time of Christ. We went down the stairs and into one of the gates which leads us to the Rampart Walk.

Sarah, Rachael, Rachel, me, Natalie, and half of Ryan's head haha.

The Rampart Walk lead us through where the Roman soldiers would be at and up the stairs to the outside where you walk along the top edge and see both inside the City and outside. When I refer to the Old City, I mean the part of Jerusalem that is surrounded in this wall while the outside is the rest of Jerusalem.

Ryan, me, and Susan inside the Roman soldier quarters.

We walked all the way from the Eastern side of the wall, all the way to the West which took us about an hour and a half. But we spent a lot of time taking pictures. We were the last straggling group because we were taking so many awesome pictures! Here are just a few (of the 'no-people' pictures I took while on the Rampart Walk).

Walking along the Wall. We walked from one side of the city to the other! It was a long, but a very beautiful walk!

Stopped to snap a picture sitting between the stones on top of the huge wall around the Old City!

We caught up to the group and took some jumping pictures. As you can see the picture taken on my camera did not turn out very good but nonetheless it's really funny to look at!


Me, Pam, Natalie, Beka, Heather, Jay, and Maddie awkwardly landing our jumping picture.

Most of the group (a lot of the boys were gentlemen and took the pictures with all the girls cameras!)
okay let's see if I can do this and name everyone! LtoR: AJ Natalie, Laura, Lauren, Madi, me, Stephy, Sara, Rachel,
Jay, Pam, Heather, Rachel, Susan, Rachael, Chloe, Beka, Devery, and Sarah. Yeah. There are lots of Rachels, 5 of them!

(Susan, Ryan, Natalie, and I)
Part of my awesome group during the Rampart Walk! The groups we all have during our adventures into the City are pretty much random. We just find whoever and go! Depending on where you want to go and how fast you want to walk you can pretty much fun 2 other people to come with you. I had fun taking lots of fun pictures during our walk with them! :)

After the end of the walk, we ended up at Jaffa Gate which is the fartherest possible place away from the Center. Our whole group broke up to go different places and pretty much the group I previously was with went together exploring into the Old City. When you go exploring, especiall these first few days, you end up running into all kinds of stuff!

So the Old City is split into 4 quarters:

• The Muslim quarter
• The Jewish quarter
• The Armenian quarter
• The Christian quarter

It is amazing how different each quarter is. We went to the Jewish quarter and came upon this lovely open plaza with this synagogue. There was a man playing the guitar, cute Jewish children were running around playing, and there were open benches in the shade facing the whole plaza. It was the perfect place to eat lunch! We stopped and ate our packed lunches we made from breakfast earlier that morning and had a wonderful time talking and listening to the guitar and watching the kids.

Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish quarter with Rachel, Rebekah, and Natalie.

After lunch we walked towards the Western Wall, but we did not go all the way in. We split and a few of us walked home back to the JC. Man I was exhausted!! I definitely walked more than 5 miles and we spent 8:30 til 1:30 in the city that day. It is amazing how much history is in every building and every stone of this place and I love learning all the new things about each of them. It was definitely a great day in the Old City! :)

This was the old mayor hall. Close up you can see all these bullet
holes everywhere on the building!



Archaelogists found this old wall, which was the original wall surrounding
the First Temple, as in the Tempe of Soloman. How legit is that!?

Ryan aka King Benjamin speaking to the people of Jerusalem ;)



Showing cool magic tricks while
taking a break in the shade.





The first few days in Jerusalem!

Before I post about specific storise and places I've been I wanted to post a few pictures of the first few days in Jerusalem! I got off the plane in Tel Aviv and had a short drive to my new home! Jerusalem is SO beautiful! Especially in the spring time and the weather has been wonderful. I've only been here 4 days and I've already grown to love this place and the people so much!

Here is beautiful Mt. Scopus with the Jerusalem Center poking out behind! This was my view driving into the city after getting off the plane! A bus full of very excited college students is a big understatement, haha.

 All the signs are in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. The languages are so beautiful and I love the written language of them. I am so excited for my Hebrew class!



 The night we got to Jerusalem we had a firework show just for us! Haha, if only, the city was celebrating Memorial and Independence day the first two nights we got there so we had a beautiful view of the fireworks right outside our backyard, a perfect way to be welcomed to Jerusalem!

Our first time going out to the city by ourselves after all the orientation meetings and walks. Although we were still jet lag zombies we were all so excited to go out to the city for the first time! You can see the Dome of the Rock behind us. This is our daily view during class, church, meals, and everything. It really is the best.







I hope these pictures can help you feel like you're in Jerusalem with me as I walk through history and see these wonderful places and sites! I am so excited for what the next few months have in store for me as I continue to grow my friendships and the knowledge I'll gain here in Jerusalem. :)

My new Home the Jerusalem Center!

This is my new home! Isn't it beautiful!! :)

So if you didn't already know, I am studying abroad in Jerusalem for 3 1/2 months at the BYU Jerusalem Center, also known to the locals as the Mormon University.

The internet was all in Hebrew and I finally figured out how to change it to English so I could post on my blog but it is hard to upload and post my own pictures with the internet in the Center so I'm using pictures from google and I will try to post my own pictures as much as I can.

We had an orientation walk around the Center which is such a beautiful building with the architecture, and the view is spectacular! We also had an orientation walk around the Old City which was awesome. We walked through the Wall Gate like the one on the bottom right (this one is Damascus Gate). The Old City is very packed but is so beautiful and all the people know we are and yell out, "Mormons, Mormons!" or say "Hello beautiful American women!" and honk as they drive by. The people at the vendors will do anything to get business, one said to us, "Eat here, eat here. This is the place Jesus had his first pizza!" Haha, oh it was great. And it is SO close to us! It is a workout though because it is all full of hills and valleys but that's good because the food at our Center is SO good and I would be getting fat otherwise.

This place is my new home and I love it already! I can't wait to learn more about the Near East and more about Christ. I've already made such good friends and I can't wait for all the adventures coming my way!

Is this really happening!?!

So let me just give you a list of numbers:

• 6 Days until I get on an airplane and go to Jerusalem,
• 80 people I will meet and become close friends with this summer,
• 11 hours on a plane from New York to Tel Aviv,
• 3 months and 18 days I will be living in the Holy Land, and
• A once in a lifetime experience is coming my way!

Can you believe it!? I will be here!!

I canot believe this is really happening...

The reason I started this blog at the beginning of this year was so I could record and share my experiences as I live in Jerusalem this spring and summer and have the most awesome adventure! I can't believe it is finally here! This semester couldn't have gone any slower but finals are done, it is time to start packing, and start getting super excited for the next 4 months!


I will be walking where Jesus walked, learning what Jesus taught, and all along the way I will be posting weekly with pictures of every kind and stories with full detail so you can walk in my shoes as I begin this whole new adventure. :)

♥♥♥