Tuggles Bolden

Our Rush video for Intramural's 2011 (a spoof of Brandon Bolden's 'Preparation' video):

Jerusalem 3rd, 4th, and 5th day

So the day after the night of bad decisions (Wednesday I think) we decided to just sleep late and then take a bus to Bethlehem. We did as such and arrived in Bethlehem in the early afternoon and decided to hire a cab to take us to the sites. We were really only there to see two things: the wall that separates the West Bank from Israel and the famous graffiti renderings of Banksy in Bethlehem and on the walls. The taxi driver knew all of the paintings and took us to each one. The wall is extensive and very long and is covered in anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian propaganda.

After that he took us to the church over the place that Jesus was born. It is the oldest known originally Christian church in the world. Behind the altar there are stairs that lead down into the caves under the church in which it is believed that Jesus was born. It was pretty cool, I could definitely imagine the whole scene happening in that cave. I was unable to take a good picture because it was dark and filled to the brim with people.

Crowded place of His birth

Church

Outdoor market in Bethlehem

Our taxi driver was Palestinian and we spoke with him in Arabic for most of the journey and at the end he offered a lower price than we had originally agreed upon because our Arabic was so good and he enjoyed speaking with us. Who ever said that Arabic never got me anywhere?

Thursday

Next day was our full day of going on top of the Dome of the Rock, going into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Israel Museum, and Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum) We woke up early and walked directly to the Temple Mount and got in without waiting in line. We walked into a very clean area around the base of the Dome of the Rock and could walk around without difficulty and see the entire Temple Mount. Well about 20 minutes in I lost Gideon, because I headed immediately to the Eastern Gate, that Jesus is prophesied to return to his temple through. The Muslims bricked it up a while ago and prophecy says that He will break through the barrier when he returns. 

Anyways I lost Gideon and I wondered around the Muslim Quarter for a while after that and got lost but eventually made my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This is built over the sight that was traditionally Golgatha. I was skeptical at first, but after doing some research I found that actually there is a really good chance that it was in fact Golgatha and that Jesus' tomb is on the same premises is also very possible. After spending lots of time in front of the rocky outcrop that traditionally held the cross and the tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, and near the crack in the mountain from when Jesus died, I made my way back to the hostel and lunch. 

I grabbed a bus to the Israel Museum and after paying an arm and a leg I saw numerous archaeological evidence from the first humans in Canaan and weapons from the Romans, mummies, scarab beetles, coffins, and Greek pottery. Then great works of art from the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Gaugin, Monet, and Rodin. Also would have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls but the exhibit was closed for the day.

Then I jumped on a bus and headed to Yad Vashem which was a very sobering experience to say the least. And if you want to know my true opinion about it, ask me in person because I don't think it would be wise to post it on the internet. Besides that, some of the impressive things I witnessed (that I remember because there was just so much) are: a whole gallery of anti-semite Nazi programs, stickers, board games, pictures, banners, books; a circular room about two stories high with the walls made of book shelves and filled from top to bottom with books filled with names of the deceased from the Holocaust and that was only half of the total Jewish victims; a case filled with shoes; halls filled with possessions of victims; pictures and pictures and pictures; exhibits about the criminals and there fate; and a particularly powerful collection of videos that related personal accounts of survivors.

I ran into Gideon at Yad Vashem and we agreed that it was the most sobering experience of the day. After that went and ate and fell asleep pretty early actually. 

Friday

So we slept in a bit and we split up again, I headed straight for Succat Hallel, a 24/7 Christian prayer and worship center in Jerusalem near the old city. I walked in and the first song playing was Fire Fall Down by Chris Quilala off of the Jesus Culture soundtrack. I have this song on my iTunes and it is one of my favorites, anyway I worshipped and the music continued with what I think was the rest of the Jesus Culture soundtrack. There were several people there, but the stayed in the back for most of it. I read a lot of Psalms and the ends of the four Gospels and parts of Job after some worship. After that awesome experience I basically grabbed a slice of pizza, some pastries, and went back to the hostel to chill out.

I am ready to go back home. Originally we were going to the Sea of Galilee but it turned out to be pretty expensive, so we decided to take it easy today, but today during worship I had the strongest desire to go to Galilee. It was, however, too late by then for the buses to Galilee and tomorrow everything is shut down because it is the Sabbath. So tomorrow we are going to Tel Aviv to kick it on the beach for the day. Shared taxis are still running tomorrow and I just want to do whatever I can to help pass the time to get back to the U.S.

See everybody soon I hope (59 hours to go by my count)...

Jerusalem 2nd day

So yesterday was really interesting. I slept in as long as I could to finally grab a full night's rest (which is impossible in Irbid). We did not go to the museums as planned, because it was still part of that holiday, so they were closed. Instead we walked to and up the Mount of Olives to try and find the Garden of Gethsemane. After walking around the old city, we climbed the thousands of steps and hills beside the cemetery of Jerusalem with its rows and rows of grave markers. At the top is a spectacular view of all of Jerusalem. After that we made our way along the top of the mountain towards the large steeples that seemed to say, "Hey look at me, I am the Garden of Gethsemane. They weren't. Eventually we gave up and asked a man in Arabic where the garden was located. He kindly informed us that it was down the mountain. We descended the mountain passing small villas and large gardens, not expecting to find Gethsemane, but woe upon our expectations we saw an engraved sign that said "Hortus Gethsemane". (Right next to the Lion's Gate of the Old City. We could have avoided all of that mountain climbing business) With olive trees that are aged at being there at Jesus' time of prayer, that was definitely the best experience that I have had here.

The 2000 year old Olive tree

We were pretty tired after all of this because we had just climbed a mountain and descended so we decided to mosey on back through the old city and grab a bite near the hostel. On the way I found an Ole Miss shirt in Arabic, Coca-Cola shirt in Arabic and a few surprises for the fam.

Also stumbled upon some pro-Palestinian graffiti in a part of the city, was quite beautiful.

Backgammon in the Old City

So we got back to the hostel and decided to try and find a bar to get a couple of beers, eventually we settled on one about five minutes from our hostel. And it became one of those nights...

One of those nights where the only guy sitting in the bar has a mohawk and is really friendly and speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Finnish, and English fluently and he is only 18 and he runs his own business and he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America at age 16 and where it is happy hour for 7 hours and you drink two pints of beer because the second one is free and the Finnish guy thinks you are funny Americans and buys you a glass of Finlandia, his favorite vodka and you drink it to be polite but he says the conditions for him buying is that you have a second vodka and keep up the conversation and you don't want to be rude so you indeed drink a second one and he invites you to a bar near your hostel where Israeli blues is playing where they have free shots and you go and have a beer and with the beer comes two free shots of something foul but everyone around insists that you take them so you don't want to be rude so you take them and you realize that you never ate dinner and all of this is on an empty stomach so you begin to feel really drunk and you smartly make your way back to the hostel and pass out feeling like a loser...

Yay Jerusalem

Jerusalem- 1st day

So instead of boring you with all of the intricacies of getting through the plain-clothed security at the Israel-Jordan border, I will just tell you the cools things that happened afterwards. We finally arrived at our hostel, which is clean and filled with young, progressive Europeans (did I mention some are mind-blowingly hot women?)

Abraham Hostel

We stowed our bags and walked out to find something to eat and lo and behold we found ourselves in a clean neighborhood with shops and restaurants all around that could have been in Germany or Holland or something like that. After an expensive lunch we returned to the Hostel to grab a free tour of the old city of Jerusalem just to get our bearings. On the tour with us was just one other women, a very short Indian women from New Delhi. She spoke amazing English and here is a sample of our conversation:

Me: "So what do you do?"
Her: "I work for Wikipedia."
Me: "Ha Ha seriously, what do you do?"
Her: "I work for Wikipedia, I am one of the only 70 employees."
Me: "AWESOME."

Any who... we saw just about all of the old city, but didn't get to go into the major sites because at that time the lines were too long or they were closed, so we spent most of our time in front of the Wailing Wall, the last remaining part of the original temple built by Herod. Yesterday we arrived on an amazingly lucky day to be in Jerusalem, as it was the anniversary of the first temple being destroyed and the second temple being destroyed. They were destroyed on the same day separated by a few hundred years and yesterday was that day. So on this holiday all of the stores and restaurants close and thousands of people visit the wall and pray over it while mourning the loss of the previous temples. You know all of those pictures you see of thousands at the wall crying? Yeah I was there, right in the middle of it.

So that was pretty much my first day, first impressions?

- Israel is overwhelmingly aggressive on all fronts, religiously, militarily, socially.
- There is a lot of contradiction between there traditions and the modern Israel (as far as I can tell)
- Arabs are nicer to Americans than Israelis
- Even though no one spoke English in Jordan, and everyone speaks it here, I could get around and communicate better in Jordan
- Israel's Old City is freaking sweet
- Israel's Old City is extremely photogenic
- Israel's Old City is awesome, one of the coolest places I have ever been
- I will return here to find a wife, the women here are on the same level as the Grove at game time, no lie

So I am going to the Holocaust museum today and the Israel national museum (Dead Sea Scrolls) so I will update again when I take some good pictures (like this one):

Jerash

So Jerash is the second most visited ruin site in Jordan behind Petra, some pics from it:

Hippodrome

Roman Bath

Christian mosaic on the floor of church ruins

Wadi Rum in detail

So this happened a few weeks ago but I finally decided to write about it (A little corny at times, I know):

I fumbled and dropped the small stone that I was using in an attempt to elevate my camera’s lens for a self portrait. The full moon was bright enough for me to snap the shot with just a one twentieth of a second shutter speed. I set it up successfully and set the timer to ten seconds. I walked forward and I could heard the shutter snap close and open again. It turned out pretty well with the mountains of Wadi Rum outlined by the moonlight and my kafaiya’s colors showing up as well. 

I took a few more and sat on the waist high stone fence that outlined the Wadi Rum tourist camp. I could see miles and miles ahead of me, flat gray desert with little blobs of black shadows every ten meters or so from the desert scrub. I turned back to the camp filled with rows of white tents with cots on the inside. I ran into Peyton, Gideon, Byron, and Chase on the way back and we decided to go find a geocache a little over a mile away from camp in the middle of the desert. We left camp and along the way we lifted rocks to look for scorpions. We took a turn to cross the road, and we went over a sand mound. In front of us stretched undisturbed desert, raw wilderness lit up by the lamp-shade-toned light of the moon. 

Our shadows walked with us to our right as we gradually shut up and allowed the sand to speak. Towers of crumbled, sharp rock blocked out the stars and surrounded us. We followed Peyton’s gps to the geocache in an outcrop supported by dunes. We climbed it and easily found it under a rock. We wrote our names, put it back and sat down to admire the view. The silence was so impressive. The only sounds came from the constant breeze shuffling sand. There was no life, but everything seemed alive. In front of us was rolling waves of sand with the occasional brush. Two dying mountains were on the horizon, below the moon. 

We made our way back after a while and got up just a few hours later before dawn to greet a man and his four camels for a two hour ride through the desert.

 I got on the absolutely ugliest but funny creature I have ever seen. They spit, burp, chew, chew, chew, fart, bite, gurgle, chew and throw up not stop; and they are slow and awkward. They are awesome. A bedouin man lead us to a small shady spot and made us traditional bedouin tea. We saddled back up and towards the end of the ride, the man allowed us to give the camels a bit of a giddy up and we raced back to camp. That hurt. 

Wadi Rum was, well, Wadi Rum.

Pictures from this weekend

So this weekend I went to Petra and Wadi Rum. Eventually I will post my adventures, but it will take forever to type, so for now the pictures will have to suffice...