Jerusalem, the Old City

Tuesday June 12,2012  This is a black and white picture of the Tower of David

This morning, we were taken by someone here in Jerusalem, on a tour of the Old Jerusalem to show us the stones used in the buildings.  The guy is named Eric Gerbelsky.  He is the one who we came to see about the stone for the temple.  Instead of showing us buildings and telling us about their historical significance, he went around telling us how the stones tell stories.  And man, do they ever!

As Americans, we have it so good!  You forget sometimes that our country, is quite a young one.  This trip to Jerusalem has reminded me, not only how many privileges and wonderful conveniences   have we in America, like ice(who know we were so spoiled to have ice?), but also my testimony has been strengthened about Jesus Christ and his role as our savior and redeemer.  And surprisingly enough, I have also seen the confusion that Joseph Smith must have felt as every religion tells you something about what they believe, and quite convincingly, but you know that each one is contradicting the other, or just giving a different version of the same story.

This Gerbelsky guy, was quite animated.  He was so excited to show us his city and show us how his family has contributed to a legacy of stone work that has lasted through centuries.  In Jerusalem, they have many buildings and walls that tell the tales of being conquered and reconquered.  When there was a place of historical significance, like where they thought Jesus was born, or where they thought he was buried ( remember some religions do not believe he rose from the dead, so even though there is an empty mosalium, lines of people wait to get in to see where Jesus MAY have been put to rest) most of the time a church is built over that place of significance. What? A building built over a place where they think, or have heard Jesus laid after being crucified?  It reminds me of that game you can play where you whisper something in someones ear and they whisper that thing to the next person and so on down the line until the last person says what was told to them.  The information from the beginning is always different than what the person hears at the end.  That is what if seems like  here.  There was some truth in the beginning, but after being retold and retold, it gets warped and incorrect.  Journaling seems very important, just to get things correct, as they happened.  So this entry is a little OCD on details.  Sorry!

 Did you read that?  There are churches built where they believe the earth started, where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, where Jesus was born and where they believe he was crucified.  Churches! Whole buildings are standing around these points of ground.  Some places have been rebuilt after they were partially destroyed.  However, there seems to be one exception, the place where he rose from the dead.  But we will get to that in two days.  See I’m behind in my journaling, but we are leaving for Turkey today and I knew I would forget things about this place, so I’m up at 5 a.m. typing away on Todd’s laptop before we leave today at noon.

This is a picture inside the walls of the city.  This was in the early morning and not very many people are out and about.  One lady dressed in Isrealie dress, wagged her finger at me when I snapped her picture.  I still don’t know what she said, but by her body language she didn’t like me taking her  picture.

This is a man dressed in typical fashion, although there were thousands of different people dressed in all sorts of dress.  We did stand out like sore thumbs.  People would ask, “Where are you from?” we would answer, “America” they would say, “Yes, that is obvious, but where in America?”  The stones shown in the picture are smoothed from constant walking.  They are about 2000 years old.  Hmmmm, who was around about that time? Cool, huh.  I thought so too!

Oh, yeah, and this dude is on a cell phone.  Strange to see something so old, like his traditional dress, mix with something new like a cell phone.

This door led to a long flight of long stairs that led to a place called the Holy sepulcher.  It was a church built over a large mosulium that supposedly held Christ’s body.  Yeah, I know I thought that was a bunch of WHAT? Myself!

 Courtyard of the church.  The doorway to the church is behind Todd.  This doorway was nice and large.  There were a lot of doorways I had to lean over to get into.  Me, I’m 5’4”.  Those were little doorways.

The slab where Christ SUPOSEDLY lay after his death. Apparently people come from all over to just touch this slab of marble.  It was really smooth from all the people who had touched it.  There were women who had their foreheads pressed against it as we left the building.  There was also some guy who drove a mini tractor right into the building and parked it to the left in this picture.  All the while there were people who were having what they thought was a spiritual moment, and a loud tractor, which spewed noise and fumes everywhere, went by.  I realized how nice it is to be reverent in Holy places.

 I also thought how convenient places where to each other.  Right behind us, encased in the next room is a rock that whatever religion this church was, believed  Christ was crucified.  First of all, it was a ROCK! Who is able to put a long beam into a rock deep enough to hold up a person?  Enough of me ranting, I will just add more pics.

The place where they believed the cross was.  This little alter is over that place.  People were in line to get under this thing and kiss the ground.  EEWW!  How gross to kiss someplace someone else has.  And look at all the ornamentation.  Could there be another hanging something?  Doesn’t look like it.

 I forgot to mention that I was having a black and white day.  I had decided that morning to shoot most of my photos in black and white.  This church was architecturally magnificent!  So many stone pillars and works of art in the stone! And for some reason the light in this building was amazing!  This room was a huge dome room over a mosalium of where they believe Christ was entombed.  People!  There is no body!  Get a clue!

People waiting in line to see an empty place.  Senseless, it seems. But I also realized that these people need something to believe.  Something to hang onto, to fill that empty place inside us all that Heavenly Father used to fill when we were with Him. 

After we left the church, and by the way, I took soooo many pictures of that place because the building was so beautiful, and I could add many more, but it would take too long on this, anyway, after we left the church we were shone lots of streets where different districts were.  There was a Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Armenian market places running up and down these streets.  These boys were Jewish, if you can’t tell, and one was chasing the other.  The kids everywhere were so darling.  I think I miss my own kids.

The far wall, with the vegetation growing out of it, is called the Western Wall or the Weeping wall.  It is hard to see in this picture, but it is separated down the middle by a fence.  The area on the right of the fence is for women, the area on the left of the fence is for men.  This wall is what is left standing after Jerusalem was conquered yet again, and the conquers  came in and destroyed all of the walls except this one.  They call it the weeping wall because the Jews go there to mourn over the loss of their temple.  People go there and write things on pieces of paper and stuff the paper into the cracks in the wall.

This was taken behind a lady who was sitting as close to the women’s side of the wall as she could.  You can see the white pieces of paper in the cracks.  They looked like wads of gum to me.  But the people take this wall so seriously, that they do not turn around when it’s time to leave.  They walk backwards for at least ten steps, to show respect for the wall and so their behinds don’t face the wall.  Ok, whatever, when I was there I turned around and showed that wall my big behind!  I refuse to worship a wall!  Not to be disrespectful of what they believe, but I’m not that religion.

Our group of wives that got to come.  We are sitting in chairs near the wailing wall.  The first lady on the left is the wife of the main Architect for the Gilbert temple.  Her name is Rebecca Lambert.  And 2^nd from left is Angi Williams, her husband is the other project manager for Okland.  Then me.  Then the next two ladies are named Heidie Glen, and Linda Elder.  These two ladies are the wives of the men who are doing the tile for the temple.  The company they work for is called Caffall tile.  It is fun to get to know these ladies.  But I was also glad when we got to be with our husbands.  I thought maybe I had matured enough to be able to do well with groups of ladies, but I realized I had not.  They were wonderful in every way, I just got tired and wanted to go back to the hotel sometimes.  It was hard to meet everyones needs, and because we are all mothers, sometimes there were just too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Or some days it was the other was around. Not one chief and we all behaved like Indians waiting for someone to tell us what to do.

This is our guide Eric Grebelsky.  He was funny and very glad to show us around.  We were shown so many wonderful things here.  It’s like the Bible came to life after seeing all these places.  Imagine, we were in the city that the Saviour lived in.  Where he may have taught, walked, healed and preached.  Even if we didn’t see the exact spot, I didn’t care.  It was enough for me to get to just be there!

Todd with his whole fish!  This was one of the best meals we had while we were there.  The guy at the far end of the table is going to take us on a tour of his tile factory tomorrow.  He is another tile manufacturer.  His plant is in Bethlehem!

Todd and I at dinner. Thanks Coley for letting me borrow your earrings! Remember? You left them at my house and they haven’t made it back to you.  But hey, they have made it to Jerusalem!

Me and my fish!  I really didn’t eat the head.  But it’s eye was bulging at me! The fish itself was very good, but it was strange to be watched by a fish eye the whole time I was eating it. 

After Dinner with the fish watching me, we went into Old Jerusalem to see a few things and walk off dinner.  We got lost.  It’s like a maze down there.  Here is too many chiefs  looking at the map trying to get outta there.  Notice the guy leaning against the pillar.  He is one of the Architects with us and I know he was so tried of so many controllers.  His body slumped against the pillar is hilarious!  He seems to be saying, “I give up, you people are too much!”

So, some of my favorite things about Jerusalem, is how Christ was here, and their showers seem to have amazing pressure to them.  So showering is a delightful bath standing up.  The food hasn’t been as great as we thought it would be, (we are hoping Istanbul will be better) they eat a lot of vegetables here with hummus.  It was very unusual to find meat.  There was some but not a lot.  And their fruit is amazing!  I did however order a fruit plate on night at dinner and they brought me a small salad size plate with a whole orange, two small whole pears, a whole apple, and two brown and bruised bananas.  This was all together wrapped in saran wrap.  We were all tired and laughed at that fruit platter because he brought us almost rotten bananas.  Latter on we learned that that is the only way they have bananas, is brown and over ripe.

As strange a comparison as this is, that banana was like the city of Jerusalem.  There may be something good inside, but it’s hard to get to because all you see is at first glance is brown and buised skin.  Kinda like how there are so many religions competing for the position of ‘the true one’.  It was a good day, even if it ended with a brown banana.

A-Team day!

I should have known the day would be interesting when we got on our elongated bus thing, and as we drove from Tel- Aviv to Jerusaleum, over the radio was playing the theme song from the old show that my kids may or may not know, called the A-Team.  Yes, that started an overlying strangeness to our day.  We arrived at our hotel, that we couldn't check into until latter, and left our luggage there.  We were going on a tour of a hill called Masada.  We got back on our bus van, (it held about 10 people in what looked like bucket seats) and traveled along our way, all the while listening to our guide who seemed to sound like 'Teviah' from Fiddler On The Roof.  I kept on imagining him saying something vigouriously, like 'tradition' or something.  He gave us so much information that between that and my jet lag, I had only been on the van bus for about 15 minutes, when my head started bobbing.  Suddenly, there was a loud thudding and I jerked awake to hear them speaking very fast, something like vekrjoa;lksejroiajdflklwkejro;iu,  then in English, 'we seemt to ave pop-ed a tire'.  Sure enough, we had blown a tire on our bus van.  We had to wait while  they changed the tire, in a little gas station near the tire shop. There were so many cool candies, that we had to take some back to the shelves because we couldn't buy them all.

The candy didn't dissapoint!  we found our beloved Kinder Eggs!  They were a little different from the ones my brother brought home from Australia back in 98'.  Those had a plastic capsel inside a chocolate egg,  with a small toy in the capsele, that you assembled, after eating the chocolate outside.  The eggs we found were divided in half and wrapped together .  One side has the toy in it and the other has a creamy chocolate you eat with a small spoon.  I bought five and ate one before I left the store.

We had to wait awhile longer, apparently other countries have tire repair men lie to them as well as we do.  We went across the street to a Mall.  After we went through the metal detector, yes we had to go through a metal detector to go into a Mall, we found all kinds of oddities.  They had foods out in the hallway of the Mall, uncovered.  Oh, you may say, whats the big deal? but really  these were wet foods, like olives and more olives! Well anyway,  I did buy some apricot fruit leather and decided it was good but not as good as my mom's.  All the fruit and vegetables here are so fresh, they could label everything they make or sell you as organic and they would be telling the truth. 

These were in what our guide called a Mall!?!

Also just out in the open, waiting for a small child to put their fingers into!  I was told that Turkey will have amazing spices, so I'm waiting to get mine there!

After we ate at the mall we started on our way to a huge mesa/bluff thing called Mesada.  Supposedly King Herod, (remember baby Jesus had an order put out to kill him when Jesus was little?  the King that sent out that order was King Herod)  Apparently, as our guide told us King Herod was a brilliant, paronoid Architect and ruler.  He murdered 12 of his own sons who he thought would steal the throne from him and killed his own wife as well.    This plateau called Mesada is next to the dead sea.  Now the dead sea is called the dead sea because it is so full of salt that there is no living life in it except bacteria.  Yuck.  But even back in King Herod times that was a big resource to have because you could preserve so many things with it.  So we drove to Masada and took a tram ride to the top and saw lots of ruins and hear lots of things about history and things like that. I'm not going to elaborate too much because, if all that info made me fall asleep, I'm thinking it would do the same to you.  I really didn't mean to fall asleep,  I was just so tired!  Imagine walking around in heat that you usually just pass through in Arizona.  We were all over the place on that plateau in the blazing sun!  Our guide was so knowledgeable, but didn't seem to notice people in his group seemed to be falling down a lot and I finially let the group go in front of me and snuck away to the bathroom.  When I came out I saw our group from afar and Todd saw me and waved me over, but I shook my head no, and headed back to the main gate were we came in.  I'm a rebel.  But with good reason.  Jerusalem is at some elevation of around 2,500 feet and the Dead sea is at a -1,300 feet below sea level.  We found out that we were walking around in 109 degree heat!  I don't do that on a normal day in Arizona!  I think our guide, who was a instructor at some university, had a 'man crush' on King Herond because he was such a popular figure in history and our guide couldn't stop talking about him.  Well, I apologized for leaving, but I really felt ill!  One lady in our group from Utah said that she loved that tour, with the heat and all.  I've decided I'm a pansy.  And obviously because I left our group even after Todd was waving me over, I must be ok with it.  Here are some pics

Tram ride, Dead sea in the back ground

This is what King Herod built on the mesa/bluff thing, which has now fallen apart, but this is what it did look like, and here is a now picture.

This is looking down from above.  So the round roof you see in the silver sculpture picture is represented here.

It was all good, except for the heat!  We decided that a dip in the dead sea would be the right thing tod do on such a hot day.  That was weird though too!  That water had so much salt in it, that it moved like jello does as you are putting it in the fridge to set.  And salt near your eyes, is really not good.  I had shaved my legs that morning so they were stinging like crazy and I only lasted a few minutes.  Some guy was there floating along while reading a book!  I think he did that just to show off, but it really did keep you floating around like a cork!  I hadn't felt that skinny for a long time!

That's me waving in the red top thing.  That white stuff you see near the rocks is SALT!  In the end we were glad we took a dip, because who can say that they went from A-team in the morning to dead sea that  night?  Nobody, but me I guess! ahahahah. 

Ok, I had a diet coke at dinner and I'm not really sleepy, but I gotta go to bed because It's 2 a.m. here.  I will try and post again tommorrow

LOVEYOUMORETHANHERODSSALT  maw

Me and Todd in front of the NBC window (behind us) that shows up behind the anchors on the show 'Today'

Well, here I am again. I had to borrow my husbands work friends' computer because Todd's wouldn't load the pictures! and if you know me, I gotta have my pictures.  The first ones are the ones from downtown New York.  We had a five hour layover there on our way to Tel Aviv.   I didn't say much about our layover, because it's New York and even if you haven't been there, so many times it has been featured on tv, that some of this may seem like stuff you have already seen on tv.  A few things I have noticed about New York is that you can go there and be a nobody!  Thousands of people everywhere and you could just melt into any crowd and no would miss you!  or for that matter would they care if you were there or not.  I'm not saying that New Yorkers are unfeeling because they really were quite polite, but there is just so many people that it would be easy to be blended into a mass of something and not notice its there.  LIke one of those hidden pictures with something in it but you would miss it if you just glanced at it. anyway, we rode the Metro from the airport to downtown and that took and hour!  The JFK airport was quite a distance from town, but it didn't help to have too many chiefs in our group and not enough indians, if you know what I mean!  So I will skip all of the New York and show those latter for anyone who wants to see more of it there.  The buildings were so very tall and the food was actually very good, but expensive.  I saved my money, and will see what I have afterward to buy souviniers from here.  I figures I could probably get an "I love New York" on the internet or on the way back at the airport.

Had to add this one of Dad with Captian America. 

Anyway, here is the passport photo with one of a sign that said Welcome to Israel

The Flight over and Our first day in Tel Aviv

Well we made it to our flights throughout the day on Saturday.  We made it into Tel Aviv about 2:30 in the afternoon their time and about 3 a.m. Arizona time.  The Long flight over wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  Todd had made fun of me for buying a sleep mask and ear plugs, like my mom said I should, but when it came down to it, he nudged me from across the isle, (no, we didn't get to sit by eachother, but at least we were across from one another) and sheepishly asked for the 'goods' to help him sleep.  I had gone to the instacare the night before we left thinking I had strep throat or a sinus infection, and the doc said I didn't have either of those, but because I had been fighting something for over seven days, I needed and antibiotic and some cough syrup with codine.  I didn't complain, and was glad to have gotten a once over by a doc, before going to a foreign country.  And let me tell, you people out there, cough medicine with codine is a gift, on a 11 hr flight!  I had to get up after sleeping for about four hours cause my behing felt buised.  as I was shuffling down long isles, I found a place at the back of the plane to stand for a while.  A guy sat down in one of those folding jumper seats (I think that is what they are called, they just fold up against the wall of the plane)and since he looked a slight bit gay and it was dark, I slurred the phrase out at him, "are you a stewardess?"  he shook his head while crossing his leggs and asked, "do I look like one?"  I slurred an apology and found another dark corner to stand and feel stupid.  When we got off the plane and were standing in line to have our passports stamped, I tried to take a picture of the 'foreign passport' booth and the young lady inside waved her finger at me in a no-no fashion and yelled something in whatever language they speak here and I got the impression, they didn't want me to take a picture of that.  so i hung my camera around my neck, and took a picture instead of bringing it to my face.  Still got the shot but that cranky young chic,(she looked 20) will never know.
I'm telling you, you know you are in a foriegn country when; nothing is in English, obviously, and even the converstaions you hear off to your side, are in several different languages other than the one you thought was spoken there.
We called the number we were given to get out taxi service to come get us at the airport.  they said to look for a guy in a white shirt with a blue tie.  We saw one and approached him, and he waved us away, and said' I not da guy youd want'  well, 15 min latter, yes he was and he just didn't know that!  He was from a company that was call Limo service, or something with the word LImo in it.  Well, how excited was I to think we were finially gonna ride in a limo!  Of course as you may have guessed, it was just a long van with a tall box added to the top for headroom.  You know the one that you sometimes see people getting out of that have someone else in a wheechair.  So, that was strange.  Our hotel is just off the beach of the Mediterain.  As Todd is checking us in, I look around the lobby and notice the pool area just outside a glass door and there waiting to have her picture taken, was a women in a nice thong swim suit.  Yes I took a picture of her through the door.  He butt didn't look that great my friends.  No one will ever look great with that small piece of fabric
riding up their butt crack. Ever.
So we got to our room and took a strange nap, you know the one where you can still hear everything, so you know you aren't really sleeping great.  People here honk continually, everywhere, for no apparent reason it seems.  We got on our swimsuits and took our white bodies, yes we are not tanned even though we live in Arizona, and stolled along the beach.  The water was very clear, and there was enough naked babies, and scantily clad men and women there to have started a small porn shop of sorts.  So we did that quickly and got outta there. 
They were playing a great looking game on the beach with what looked like ping pong paddles only bigger and the ball looked bigger and sounded like it was a harder plastic.  I will have to look around and see if I can find some.
We came back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.  I noticed that there must have been a women with long black hair who stayed in our room before us because some of her hair was still in the bathtub.  Ah, America is way cleaner than this place!
Our taxi driver, I"m sure was trying to get us all killed.  I had to stop looking out the front window so I wouldn't start screaming!  The lines down the middle of the road to seperate the lanes are apparently only suggestions here.  People on bikes and cars and you name it were driving around like batts out of you know where! 
We made it there in one piece and where able to enjoy and interesting dinner with our group.  Now, I'm glad to be here, don't get me wrong, but that uncomfortable feeling I would get when I'm around Todd's co workers, still came with me over the ocean.  It isn't anything they are doing, it's like being the third wheel on a date.  The converstation isn't about anything you know about.  So imagine that with six men at the table and four wives who were trying to make weird small talk about something else.
I orderd crab soup, and yes , just like you I thought it would come to me with chunks of crab meat in a thick bisque of some kind, but no.  It came in a huge bowl with the entire body of not one but two crabs lying in a pool of creamy white liquid.  I did the best that I could, but got little to no meat out of it.  I realized, us Americans must be super lazy and expect the crab already out of the body, or that is the way they do it here.  I took lots of pictures thus far, but Todd's computer isn't ready my memory card for some reason, so I will try another method latter. I better go get ready for the day.  Maybe I will find more long black hairs somewhere else in the bathroom.  Wow, are we spoiled there in America!

It all went to crap early on........this is the first line of my own autobiography.

Well, this is the beginning of once in a while, I blog.  Welcome, one and all.   I did this mainly because my oldest son left on his mission and my extended family lives in Idaho.  This is a simple way to share with them specifically, and since my husband and I get to travel soon, I will be posting pics and travelmonies, of where we go in Tela vive, and Israel!  We will be leaving June 9,2012 to go abroad and get stone for the Gilbert Arizona temple.  Well, it's not really me,  it's my husband, who works for Okland Construction, who will be getting the stone and I just get to tag along.  So lets see if this works.