May 23rd and May 24th, 2010 (Jerusalem)

May 23rd-

This morning we prepared to leave Beit Sahour and our host families. Many, if not all of us, found it really hard to say goodbye to the generous and very welcoming families who've hosted us for the last three days. Many of us will take along with us stories of hardship and triumphs, as well as joyful experiences that we've been so priviledged to hear. This experience like no other will be remembered by all of us. After that experience, like many other persons we've met along this journey, we visited Ardie Geldman at a Jewish settlement in Efrat who is an American Jew who moved to Israel in the 80's. We heard a speech about various topics such as: his opinions on Jewish history, Judaism, Jewish settlements. Jumping on the bus, we headed to the big city of Jerusalem. First impressions of this place: big, beautiful, eye catching, many synagogues and temples and churches, historical sites galore, and a sea of many faces. It is definitely a place that holds a lot of pain and suffering to many religions, and was fought for by many peoples. The old city's streets are of stone, made slippery from centuries upon centuries of inhabitants. The group of us are staying at Ecce Homo for the rest of this trip and it is luckily not far from the market streets. Ecce Homo is a big place and the rooms where we are staying are quaint and comfortable. But, we have to remember to be quite as this is a convent and there are many other guests here. The rest of the day was open to exploration. Spliting up into smaller groups we explored the various tourist sites and markets quarters. In conclusion to this first day here in Jerusalem, we've all been quite overwhelmed by the enormity of what this city has to offer us in not only site seeing but in all the people and history behind each wall that we will be learning about. Tomorrow will be our first tastes of Jerusalem as a group and we hope to learn loads of stuff that'll definitely blow our minds!

May 24th-

This morning we met our tour guide for the day named Jared Goldfarb. He took us a top the City of David and gazed upon the Mount of Olives in the distance. From that point we could see the whole old city and the ancient city of Jerusalem. Then he took us on an extreme adventure under Jerusalem. We trenched through thigh high water in the very narrow and winding Hezekiah's Tunnel. What an amazing experience it was to travel under the city and explore the under ground of what used to be just stone. Not necessarily in order, we visited the Wailing Wall from a far and saw watched the crowds of people lined up for a personal prayer by the wall. We visited King Herod's underground water tunnel. We also got the chance to visit the Western Wall of what were the remains of it. As well, we visited the Archaelogical Park and got some more history lessons. When lunch came, we all split up once more and looked for a place to eat and relax within the four different quarters. After lunch we had a lecture by Jared back at Ecce Homo and then we once again walked under the tunnels beside which the Wailing Wall is. Coming up out from below ground, we ended up not far from Ecce Homo. This is just a very brief explanation of where we visited and is not very detailed.

Pader :)