So I was in Asia AND Europe today... nbd.

What's the best way to fly to Turkey?
By PEGASUS! (look at the wing)

Ah, the adventures begin. As if the adventures didn't already begin a month ago! Today began our first extended field trip. We woke up at 3:00 AM (Right when priesthood session started, actually) and flew to Turkey, where we will spend the next week!

Now if you were anything like me, you have no idea what's worth seeing in Turkey, or why anyone would go there on a religious-pilgrimage-style study abroad. Well, let me tell you. Now I know you. You're totally the kind of person that grabs your scriptures when you read my blog. Because let's be honest, everyone has those handy when they read blogs. A quick glance at map 13 of your scriptures would confirm that the Apostle Paul traveled all over Turkey on his missionary excursions. So we get to go follow in the footsteps of Paul!

So today we landed in Istanbul (not Constantinople) and immediately had our first meal in the city. It was a four-course meal at some ritzy place along the shore. At first we all saw them bring out this small appetizer and thought, "seriously? We woke up at 3 and we're starving, and your giving us this tiny little mushroom-crepe thingy?" But then when we finished that, they brought out more food, and then more food, and then dessert!

So after being thoroughly stuffed and tired, we set out to tour around Istanbul for the rest of the day. With only half a day remaining, we didn't see a ton, but what we did see was amazing!

1) First off, we drove over a bridge. Isn't that exciting!

...Why aren't you excited? Bridges are awesome. When's the last time you built something that could support cars while they cross a river? Seriously. But! Awesome architecture and physics aside, there was something special about this bridge. It is an inter-continental bridge! That's right, on the left side of this picture is Asia, and on the right side is Europe. Istanbul (not Constantinople) is a city of two continents. How cool is that?!

Asia on the left, Europe on the right

2) Next, we went to the Hagia Sophia. This thing is a massive piece of architectural genius! It was originally a Christian Cathedral, and the home of the Orthodox church. It was the largest church in the world for almost 1000 years! In 1453, when Istanbul (not Constantinople) fell to the Ottomans and became Muslim territory, it was turned into a mosque. Then when the Ottoman empire fell, it became a museum. So we got to go inside! I took 4 photospheres in the area. Check my Jerusalem Photosphere Album for all of those later.

3) After checking out the Hagia Sophia and the Turkish Archaeological Museum, we had a five-course dinner in the upper room of another seaside restaurant, which overlooked the view to these two continents. And now here I am in the Grand Washington Hotel! Not sure what the star-rating is here, but it's pretty nice in any case.

So! This week is going to be a great week. After being worked to the bone for the first month, it's almost like we're going on vacation, visiting amazing sites, eating great food and staying in nice hotels for a week. And yet all the while, we'll still be learning all about the sites and stories of the Bible.

And I'll tell you what, I've never seen the Old Testament come alive before like it has here. Seeing the sites is great, but it's really our Old Testament class that makes the difference. I read a lot for the class, but I get out what I put in. And as I've been putting all of this effort into my study, I've been feeling the spirit in remarkable ways. The Lord has been very carefully and intently guiding me to grow into what he wants me to be. There are ample opportunities here to feel the spirit. It truly it like a little piece of Zion out here, because we are of one heart and one mind, and I am always seeking to draw near unto the Lord.

Let me tell you what, folks. As you draw near unto Him, He will draw near unto you.

Stay tuned!
CJ

How did I forget this?!

I was looking through my pictures this morning, and realized that I'd somehow left out one of my favorite photospheres! This is the view from the seventh floor balcony of the Jerusalem Center.

Edit: If you see a circular icon in the center of the picture, that means you can click on it and drag it around to see more. This is photosphere!

I'm hoping that the image embeds itself directly into the blog so that you can view it without going to another page, but I won't know for sure until I post it live, so here goes! Just in case it doesn't work, here's the link to one of my favorite photosphere shots:
Jerusalem Overlook from BYU Jerusalem Center

Post-post comment: It worked! But the quality is much better when you view it through the link, so use that if you want to look closer, such as picking out the Dome of the Rock down below.

Church-ception and Spelunking!

Finally! I found a moment with enough bandwidth to upload three whole photospheres! I'm so proud of myself.

Wow, where to even start. A week is a long time out here. Classes have been pretty hectic lately. However, they're still not as bad as my CS 236 class last Fall. Nothing will ever be as difficult as that, because at the end of the day, I can just choose not to do a piece of work and cut my losses. But in CS 236, every project built upon the previous one, so everything had to be perfect every time. And if not, every assignment afterward would automatically fail. So yeah, it's stressful sometimes, but never, ever so bad as it was a year ago.

Some good news from inside the center itself:

• They finally finished remodeling the classroom area. You didn't even know it was being remodeled, did you? That's because I never mentioned it. But now it's done, and it's great! It honestly has given the whole place a different feel, especially because the windows all along the sides make it lighter than other places where we'd usually study. Plus, it has carpet. Soft carpet! Ahh...
• In addition to making photospheres of our adventures, my other Memories Committee job is to gather photos from everyone. So I plugged my external HD into one of the lab computers and made it accessible to all of the other ones through the network. Once I did that, I set the background on each computer to shuffle through those photos. The cool thing is that as soon as one person adds a picture to the collection, it starts showing up in the slideshows on all of the computers! Oh, I miss being nerdy. I frequently have minor programming withdrawals.

But aside from the time I've spent living in this wonderful little paradise of a center, I've got to experience some great things! Here are some tales from outside the center. I have three pictures in particular, which will save me 3,000 words. That's so much less for you to read! You should thank me. But make sure to check them out in sphere view using the link below each picture or you're totally missing the point!

• Ethiopian Church - On Sabbath (Saturday, remember?) a few of us went out to see the Ethiopian Church. It was totally silent inside, and there were carpets laid out all over the floors. In the center of the church was a basilica (which is pretty much a really old name for church / cathedral) which we couldn't enter, because it was fenced off. But we could look inside that dark doorway and see what looked like a shrine to Mary and Jesus. There was also a wedding shoot going on outside with a beautiful young Ethiopian couple! Congrats to them.

Ethiopian Church in central Jerusalem.
Notice the building inside the building.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104141017599587335952/albums/5926027156243539297/5930520868237361458?pid=5930520868237361458&oid=104141017599587335952

• Zedekiah's Cave - The bomb-diggity! Only 10 shekels for students. It goes something like 235 meters back (770 feet). So it was a lot of fun going down tunnel pathways and opening up to yet another big room! This is the supposed location where the rock for Solomon's temple was quarried out.

Zedekiah's cave, a quarry beneath the old city.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104141017599587335952/albums/5926027156243539297/5930521309848778946?pid=5930521309848778946&oid=104141017599587335952

•  Bell Caves - Just as bomb-diggity as Zedekiah's cave! They get their name from the bell-shaped domes, which are topped off by a hole. We came here with the whole center as part of our field trip across the low hills of Israel. this was also a quarry for... something. Acoustics are great. Lots of singing here. And it's familiar if you've seen Rocky III :)

The Bell Caves.
This should ring a "bell" if you've seen Rocky III
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/104141017599587335952/albums/5926027156243539297/5930521642083710242?pid=5930521642083710242&oid=104141017599587335952

• Underground Houses - Seriously, this week has felt like I lived in a movie. While visiting some of the more severe areas on our Monday field trip, we got to explore a series of underground neighborhoods carved out of the stone. I wish I could have explored it all! Some parts were fenced off, and some parts we just didn't have time to check out. But seriously, it was like a movie. I took a 1-minute video and ran down to the bottom of just one small finger of one of these neighborhoods. But there was so much more than what I could record! It was quite the adventure wandering through these cistern-like caves that once kept the people here alive!

Jared Sybrowsky and me at the entrance to just one of the caves

Next week we're leaving for Turkey. Last night they gave us an orientation on what to expect, and I'm pretty sure that Turkey is going to be one of the BEST EXPERIENCES EVER!

Stay tuned!

CJ

Simchat Torah - Dancing with the Torah!

Tonight marks another victory for experiencing Israel at the expense of homework. I got a good chunk of it done, anyway :P Ever since we arrived in Israel three weeks ago, there has always been some holiday either going on, or coming right around the corner.

• On our second day, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, right as we arrived. 
• Then for the next ten days, the Jews will make an effort to fix relationships with each other, so that they can be ready for Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. This is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. On this day, after restoring their relationships with each other, we got to watch hundreds of Jews will gather to the Western Wall (inaccurately known as the Wailing Wall) and pray for forgiveness from God. Sounds familiar at all? We shouldn't approach the temple with unkind feelings toward each other. "If ye shall come unto me... and rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee... first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I will receive you." (3 Nephi 13:24) Funny how similar we are to the Jews...
• Just a few days after Yom Kippur, the Feast of Tabernacles (sukkot) began. This is the week-long festival when the Jews build booths in the street and on their porches to commemorate the booths the children of Israel lived in during their wandering in the wilderness. Everyone eats their meals outside in these booths, and some even sleep in them. I'll add a picture later, but bandwidth is being a bum tonight.
• So then there's today. Sukkot just ended, so people celebrated Simchat Torah... the uh... day of celebrating the Torah. To show their close relationship with the Lord, the Jews get together to dance with the scrolls of the Torah. Yesterday night was when they did it in a spirit of religious reverence, but today is when they throw together a live band and dance like a real Israeli! And let me tell you, I am quite envious of the way Israeli people dance. It's just like you see in the movies! A simple, catchy tune with the one word lyric "lie" to which everyone claps and holds hands and goes around in circles. We JC students watched from a distance, but the high energy and expanding circles eventually enveloped us until the whole room was dancing together to celebrate the word of God! It's way better than Mormon stake dances. But here's the surprising part: boys and girls are separated during this whole thing. So while the girls were dancing in circles in one room of the building, we were dancing with all the boys in another. But no one had any quams about grasping hands with their brother and joyously dancing in the middle of a circle, almost like a country dance. It was one of the most remarkable, worthwhile experiences I've had here yet!

Jericho and Photospheres!

Today there's lots to tell about, and I probably won't be able to do it all before I need to go to Arabic class. So there's three main things I want to touch on. Here we go!

1 - Jericho Field Trip
Monday is our regular field trip day so far. We only had a half a day, so we really rocketed through the sites we saw. This week we went one of only 3 times to the West Bank. Paranoid people, don't you worry. We had security and are always aware when we go. Here are some of the sites we saw:

• Tell Jericho: Home of The oldest city in the world... that we know of - Just in case you don't know, a Tell is a mound of earth, covering layer after layer of civilization. They are everywhere in Israel. I kind of didn't believe they existed at first, because my American upbringing just can't see the reason why someone would build new stuff on top of a bunch of old rubble. There are a few reasons why they did this throughout history, but let's just say the easiest one to understand is fortification. It elevates the city above everything around it, giving it a defensible position. That being said, below a photosphere (more on that later) on top of Tell Jericho. It doesn't even begin to explore what's there, but it's a start. We got to walk around this tell, look at the oldest standing structure known to mankind, the Neolithic tower, and even take a look at a trench dug in the tell, which let us see all of the different layers of earth. One particularly interesting layer is a black one, when the city was burned down and left in ashes. We could also see remains of a wall along the outside! Lots of cool stuff.

Tell Jericho (Photosphere)

The Neolithic Tower: The world's oldest known standing structure. 

It goes deeper down on the inside

• Herod's Winter Palace - This is the Herod that was king of the Jews during Christ's time. You know.. the one that killed all the babies... and his wife... and his kids. He was a megalomaniacal, paranoid man. Lots of dead people around him. But he was also a brilliant builder. He built like, dozens of palaces, I swear. Some of the tallest mountains in the area are man-made. He would build up ridiculous amounts of earth and put a palace on top. The Herodian was the biggest, grandest one of these, and it's where he was buried. Some archaeologists just discovered his tomb about five years ago, and it's on display in a special exhibit in the Israel Museum right now. I've seen it. It's pretty cool.
• Judaean Wilderness - (Matthew 4) This is the area where Jesus went to fast for 40 days to be with God. Notice the almost absolute barrenness of the landscape. Not much to eat other than rocks. On the way there, I had an experience I'll never forget. Those of you who have been on a road trip with me know that I don't get sick for anything while traveling. I can read a book while looking backwards in a car for 8 hours with no motion sickness. But as we were driving to this overlook at around 11:30 AM, I started feeling a bit queasy.  Lucky for me, Sister Woods had a little bit of bread for our bus when we got off. It only took 5 hours after breakfast and I started feeling sick as soon as I entered the Judaean Wilderness, but the Savior had no bread and no water out there for 40 days in the hot sun! I can attest from personal experience that it would have taken immense self-control to do what He did.

Judaean Wilderness Overlook (Photosphere)

It is so useful in my gospel study to be able to see the places that I read about in the scripture! It's fun to stand at the top of a little hill and your teacher point a few feet away, saying, "When Joshua came to conquer Jericho, his spies went to check the place out. Rahab the Harlot helped them do this. She lived right along the wall, so it would have been in this kind of a spot along the wall."  It's amazing!

Photospheres

Okay, so if you don't know about photospheres, you obviously haven't been around me much in the last year or so. I love photospheres! They are like a 3D picture that puts you in the center and lets you look all around you. One of my specific responsibilities on the memories committee is to take photospheres in some of the great locations worth capturing. This album is now public, and I update it weekly as we journey to new sites. So far it includes locations such as the Temple Mount (Dome of the Rock), the entrance to The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Beer-Sheva overlook in the Negev Desert, Jericho, Judaean Wilderness, and maybe 1 or 2 more I can't think of right now. Check it out!

Jerusalem Photospheres Google+ album

There's always more to say, but never enough time to say it all. Until next time!

CJ

Soccer with the locals!

Today I played soccer with some of the kids that live just down the hill! I had originally planned just to do homework with all of my free time today, but when the chance came up I knew I needed to go and be with the people here. And I'm so glad I did! There was about 10 of us from the center there, and about 20 kids. Some of us played soccer in our small, trash-covered dirt field, while others sang songs and played party games with the little kids along the sidelines. Their parents and older siblings would contentedly watch all of us from their balconies. They have obviously had lots of exposure to our students before. Suddenly I understand so much more why the little kids always like to wave at us and shout hello when we walk by their homes!

There was one little boy, Yasan, who decided he really liked me for some reason. I couldn't possibly say why! I wasn't even that great of a player. But he chose me anyway. There were a couple of times when I tried to swap out the goalie so they could go out and play, but as soon as he'd see me in the goal area, he would animatedly tell me to get my hide back onto the field! What a fun little group. I'm sure I'll be seeing more of them while I'm here :)

Free day in Tel Aviv

Oh, what a great day of release! And what a strange schedule we have here. Weekends don't really exist for us out here. Instead, we have more of a... weekbegin. While all of you are having fun on Friday night, we are in church. But then by the time you get out of church in Sunday, like you are probably doing now, we're coming to the close of our free day. Today we went to the sea side city of Tel Aviv, which contains the ancient Port Jaffa (yes, think of the oranges).

According to Greek mythology, the king of Jaffa tired his daughter Andromeda to the rocks (left side of my picture) to sacrifice her to the sea god, Poseidon, in order to appease his wrath. Then along came some Greek hero whose name I forget..He skew the sea monster sent by Poseidon and married Andromeda! Story telling hasn't really changed in the last several thousand years, has it?

Like I said earlier, today was a free day, so we got to do whatever we wanted! I stuck with a group that went to a few small museums, toured the bazaar (which looks like a giant garage sale full of random, mostly useless trinkets), and finally ended on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. It was REALLY salty, and actually quite warm. That was my first time swimming at my leisure in the open sea. I had snorkeled before, but that's a little different.. turns out it's really entertaining to just keep jumping into the endless waves that come to shore. Maybe I'll get the chance to try surfing another day if I end up going back.

On our way back, the bus driver turned in some techno music. The two girls sitting in the back started rocking out to it after a while, and so he turned the music up a little more. Then they danced harder, and I joined in. The driver giggled to himself and bumped up the Vikings another notch. After a few minutes, he turned the lights down low and we had an all-out dance party going on in our bus! My ears hurt by the end, but it was so much fun!!

What a relaxing day on the sea side. And now I'm back in Jerusalem, winding down and preparing for another crazy week. Classes begin tomorrow, starting with a field trip to the south to see Negev, which as brother Woods says, "it's so hot the lizards wear canteens for water!" Yay for being sweaty...

Would I rather be anywhere else in the entire world right now? Not a chance.