Amy Hill
Journal Entry
October 1
The Recovery
Monday, October 1st, 2007, was “the recovery” for the students at the BYU Jerusalem Center. We ended our September with a late arrival in Jerusalem after eight very busy, very exhausting, very exciting days. We saw much in Egypt, and learned much. We had experiences that we will never forget. But on Monday we had to learn to live normal lives again. I think that, despite the excitement of the week previous, all of us were glad to be home.
After our first clean shower in eight days, we delighted in the array of fresh fruits and vegetables at breakfast. We happily indulged in Jimmy’s French toast, hot cereal, and eggs, while piling our plates with tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, and grapefruit. It was a happy change from the rice and rolls we had eaten for every meal in Egypt.
Our only class Monday was Dr. Ophir Yardin’s Jewish Civilization class. Dr. Yardin brought in the four species of the holiday Succoth: willow, myrtle, palm and citron. Orthodox Jews use these fruits and vegetables to worship and pray during the week long Feast of Tabernacles. He taught us that this holiday was given as a reminder of God’s mercy while the Israelites dwelled in the wilderness during the exodus. As a physical symbol of their remembering, Jews eat and sometimes sleep in booths called succoth (plural for succah). They are generally wooden structures with large cut palm fronds for roofs. They end their week of remembrance by celebrating Simchat Torah, the most joyous day of the Hebrew calendar. It is a day of feasting, singing, and most especially, dancing. It is a day to truly celebrate the Torah and other sacred books of scripture.
After class, and after heaping our plates with salad at lunch, most of us took immediately to our beds. We had a lot of sleep to make up. Whatever afternoon hours were not spent sleeping were spent instead reading piled up emails, calling home, and catching up on homework.
Egypt was wonderful, but between hot, sanitary showers, an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables, and our own comfortable beds, I think we all adjusted pretty willingly to being back at the Center. Yophi!
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2 comments:
Natasha Antoniak
Brother Ludlow
Slumbering after Egypt
After adventuring in Egypt for over a week, we arrived late to the Jerusalem Center the night of September 30th. We returned only to face a full day of classes on October the first …..
However, I, along with my roommate (and best friend), Tuni did not participate in the aforementioned full day of classes. OOPS! We, through our complete, sincere, and utter exhaustion missed classes for the WHOLE day! We slept UNKNOWINGLY until 3 p.m.!! When we woke up-- late in the afternoon—we realized how hungry we were since we missed BOTH breakfast and lunch! We went on a search for a small group to go into the West side of Jerusalem for some good pizza. MM mm MMM!
We called up a taxi and arrived at ‘Big Apple Pizza’ off of Ben Yehuda Street around 4pm. We ordered the most delicious pineapple and onion pizza we had ever eaten. With our round of Fantas and freshly made-thin-crusted goodness called a “pizza pie,” we chowed it down while reminiscing of our memories and adventures of Egypt. We realized how much we had just learned from that 7 day trip and felt so grateful for the bonding and fun memories that were created. We just kept saying “we can’t believe just 24 hours again we were in EGYPT—a country in Northern Africa!” And then we would just start to laugh as we saw our current reality: that being, eating delicious pizza in Jerusalem!—another one of our lifetime goals and treasured memories.
When we got back later that evening, a lot of people congratulated us on sleeping for the whole day. They expressed their simple jealousy and how impressed they were that we could sleep so long. We, quite frankly, felt awful, even amidst silly praise and sarcasm that we had just slept through half of our day! We walked around trying to get all the notes and information from the classes we had missed but found, during our walk, a variety of people sleeping in the most random places! Along with the obvious pure exhaustion that was our group, there was a HUGE rush of laundry-doing on the 2nd floor, while others continued on with their homework, some decided to relax and watch movies, and most went to bed early to try to “catch up” on the sleep that was so direly needed!
Randomly, however, a select few who had so MUCH energy (BECAUSE they hadn’t slept in so long causing them to be on a constant 2nd wind) that were running in and out of the gym, chilling at the Shalom Shack, and just giddy from the week previous. I think the snickers and coke finally caught up with them and gave them the sugar rush we all needed from our long hours on those buses crossing the borders, yes?
On the not-so-good side, there were still people from Brother Draper and Brother Ludlow’s classes suffering from what I like to call “Montezuma’s revenge” or lack of a better phrase “the Egypt experience.” They spent the majority of their first day back in Jerusalem in the bathroom, visiting Dr. Heyes for more Immodium, and picking at their food at dinner—scared to eat. We all empathized and sympathized. However, none of us regretted our experience and embraced the consequences of exhaustion and upset stomachs that come so naturally with getting to travel amidst this Jerusalem Study abroad.
Bottom line, I think as a collective whole we were all just happy and grateful that we just returned from such an incredible experience. Even if we celebrated it by sleeping half the day away…
Natasha Antoniak
Brother Ludlow
Slumbering after Egypt
After adventuring in Egypt for over a week, we arrived late to the Jerusalem Center the night of September 30th. We returned only to face a full day of classes on October the first …..
However, I, along with my roommate (and best friend), Tuni did not participate in the aforementioned full day of classes. OOPS! We, through our complete, sincere, and utter exhaustion missed classes for the WHOLE day! We slept UNKNOWINGLY until 3 p.m.!! When we woke up-- late in the afternoon—we realized how hungry we were since we missed BOTH breakfast and lunch! We went on a search for a small group to go into the West side of Jerusalem for some good pizza. MM mm MMM!
We called up a taxi and arrived at ‘Big Apple Pizza’ off of Ben Yehuda Street around 4pm. We ordered the most delicious pineapple and onion pizza we had ever eaten. With our round of Fantas and freshly made-thin-crusted goodness called a “pizza pie,” we chowed it down while reminiscing of our memories and adventures of Egypt. We realized how much we had just learned from that 7 day trip and felt so grateful for the bonding and fun memories that were created. We just kept saying “we can’t believe just 24 hours again we were in EGYPT—a country in Northern Africa!” And then we would just start to laugh as we saw our current reality: that being, eating delicious pizza in Jerusalem!—another one of our lifetime goals and treasured memories.
When we got back later that evening, a lot of people congratulated us on sleeping for the whole day. They expressed their simple jealousy and how impressed they were that we could sleep so long. We, quite frankly, felt awful, even amidst silly praise and sarcasm that we had just slept through half of our day! We walked around trying to get all the notes and information from the classes we had missed but found, during our walk, a variety of people sleeping in the most random places! Along with the obvious pure exhaustion that was our group, there was a HUGE rush of laundry-doing on the 2nd floor, while others continued on with their homework, some decided to relax and watch movies, and most went to bed early to try to “catch up” on the sleep that was so direly needed!
Randomly, however, a select few who had so MUCH energy (BECAUSE they hadn’t slept in so long causing them to be on a constant 2nd wind) that were running in and out of the gym, chilling at the Shalom Shack, and just giddy from the week previous. I think the snickers and coke finally caught up with them and gave them the sugar rush we all needed from our long hours on those buses crossing the borders, yes?
On the not-so-good side, there were still people from Brother Draper and Brother Ludlow’s classes suffering from what I like to call “Montezuma’s revenge” or lack of a better phrase “the Egypt experience.” They spent the majority of their first day back in Jerusalem in the bathroom, visiting Dr. Heyes for more Immodium, and picking at their food at dinner—scared to eat. We all empathized and sympathized. However, none of us regretted our experience and embraced the consequences of exhaustion and upset stomachs that come so naturally with getting to travel amidst this Jerusalem Study abroad.
Bottom line, I think as a collective whole we were all just happy and grateful that we just returned from such an incredible experience. Even if we celebrated it by sleeping half the day away…
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