Jess in Jerusalem

Happy (almost) Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day my only true loves are the city of Jerusalem and my mission call (which comes in less than a week!!) and I could not be more perfectly overjoyed with that. I've always loved Valentine's Day because I've always loved love. I don't like when single girls hate on Valentine's Day because I believe it's not just for celebrating love for a romantic significant other, but love for your family, friends, and all the wonderful people in your life! I'm thankful to be spending this Valentine's Day in Jerusalem with my 81 best friends!!

Okay so what's new?

1. I finally got to visit the Dome of the Rock this weekend. Well worth the hour wait to get through security, in which us girls had a deep conversation about important things (important things = boys back home/a tiny bit of Jeru boy talk).

2. I signed up for the Jerusalem 10k. I went running for the first time since being here yesterday and surprising it wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe I will be able to actually run the whole thing after all!

3. On Monday we walked through Hezekiah's tunnel. Who knew walking through a tight tunnel with water up to mid-shin could be so fun. Well I guess having a strobe-light headlamp added to it. Oh, and singing Backstreet Boy's "I Want It That Way". The night before me and Linds decided to try out our headlamps so we turned off all the lights and I crawled around the room like I was in a horror movie then turned on my strobe and had a mini-dance party. Pretty sure my roommates think I'm crazy, which would be true. Pretty much anything you do wearing a headlamp is 100 times more funny.

4. School is kicking my butt. I'm usually a fairly good student but these quizzes are gonna be the death of me. Who knew the Old Testament could introduce so many characters in a matter of 15 chapters? I didn't until we read 1st Kings. Hello. On the bright side my Judaism and Islam classes are the most interesting things in the world. I had no idea I loved learning about different religions so much until being here. Being here in Jerusalem makes me wonder how anyone could be atheist. There is a God in heaven. There is no question about that.

5. I'm officially a part of a conditioning class! I'm gonna get ripped toned!!! Today is our second class. The first one was tons of fun, we listened to 80's music while running around the gym and then would drop to a new exercise every minute or so. I love having a coach and working with people. I do so much better. It was a blast until I woke up the next morning. SO SORE! I finally feel better today aaaand it's our next class. Funny how that works out. If I stop blogging it's probably because I died.

6. I'm learning Arabic! Today we had to write 10 sentences and for the first time I felt like I'm learning how to speak it! Marhaba, esmi Jessica (Hello, my name is Jessica). Too bad we aren't learning how to write Arabic characters yet. I don't know that we ever will because....

7. OUR FIRST SET OF BLOCK CLASSES END IN LESS THAN 3 WEEKS!!!!! Hoooooray! Finals are gonna kill me but then we get a Spring Break in Turkey. Whhhhaaaat?! Too fun for words. There's gonna be bonfires on the beach, boat rides, and oh course too many archaeological sites. I'm excited already.

Happy day!

-Jess