In my opinion, this mosaic is the most beautiful piece of artwork in the entire church. It depicts the crucifixion, anointing and burial of Jesus, from right to left. The detail is unbelievable. 

Me at the altar over the site of the crucifixion 

Very blurry photo of the temple-like structure built over Christ's tomb, which is situated in an even larger dome. Hey, I think it looks cool. 

This is a little cave that I didn't even see the first time. Apparently they allow people to crawl into it if they want, maybe so they can see people's reactions when they encounter a large pile on bones crammed in there. That'd be my reason, anyway. :) 

One of the paintings on the walls 

This door leads to an underground little altar/cave. 

Kinda blurry picture of the cave-y place that door leads to. The mosaic on the floor there is amazing. 

Close-up of the mosaic on the floor 

One of the numerous altars set up along the halls. I'm still not clear on which Stations or concepts each respresents. 

One of the back hallways 

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

It's funny that I keep visiting all these Christian holy sites with Anna, and even though she's Christian and I'm not, I'm always more impressed by them than she is. The beauty and the historical significance of the churches and sanctuaries and gardens we see, as well as by how much they mean to so many people is amazing to me, but I would have thought it would be even more impressive to her, since she has actual beliefs tied up in the things that happened here. Granted, her objections to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are more aesthetic than anything else - she thinks some of the lamps and decorations look tacky - but Nari's the same way. They both like visiting Christian holy sites, but they're not overly interested in them.

Despite her killjoy presence (just kidding, Anna) I really do love the feel of the Holy Sepulchre Church. Even my Jewish roommate Beth said she was very moved by it. The place is controlled by Greek Orthodox priests and Franciscan friars, I believe, who have been feuding for decades if not centuries. As a result, not a lot of new renovations have been done in a while (I've even heard that the two factions can't agree on an interior decorator, but that might just be an amusing myth). I really think that only adds to its aura. I said before that it feels like some recently excavated church, and I like it that way. It's dark and dank in places, smells of old wax and old stone, and sometimes the sound of friars doing the chanting liturgy thing they do echoes around the halls. Every time you turn a corner there's some new altar to commemorate a Station of the Cross or a mosaic or painting on the wall or a small cave leading somewhere, and hundreds of oil lamps hang down from the huge vaulted cielings. It's awesome.

Some of my pictures are weirdly blurry, but I think it makes them look artistic. :) The only real story I have is when Anna and I were sitting on a bench on the raised platform where the altar over the cricifixion site is located. We were waiting for a big group of tourists to leave, and some priest (I don't know which faction he was with) was yelling at a guy who was on a cell phone, and rushing him out. On the way, he kind of tapped both Anna's and my knees really hard, and we uncrossed our legs, not knowing what he wanted but kind of reacting on reflex to having our knees whacked. He moved on, and I was bewildered, but Anna remembered you're not supposed to cross your legs at the Church of the Nativity either. Apparently it's a sign of an "outgoing woman" or something. She didn't know for sure. I thought it was funny, even though it kind of hurt. :)

The entrance to the Basilica of the Agony 

Garden of Gethsemane 

The golden onion-domes of the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. There are seriously like four visiting hours a week, and it wasn't our lucky day. We pushed open one of the gates, since it wasn't locked, but shut it before a nun could see us. 

The friar who was pacing around the entrance to the chapel, in the Sanctuary of the Dominus Flevit. 

Yep. Lots of blindingly white graves. These look in good shape, but some looked like they'd been the victims of graverobbers. 

Me, seated in what is probably a sacred throne of some kind. Good thing no one was around. :-) 

Marble effigy of someone. Possibly Joseph. If anyone knows who "Paternoster" refers to, that might be him. 

Some of the many, many tiles with the Lord's Prayer written in different languages. 

Mount of Olives

Silly me thinking we'd take a taxi to the Mount of Olives. If there's not an international border, a canyon or, say, a fifty-foot high wall between where we are and where we want to be, Anna doesn't feel like a taxi is warranted. Not that it's a ten-mile hike from the university to the Mount or anything, but we picked the hottest day in weeks to go there, and we have to pass through an all-Arab section of town, which means long sleeves. Yipee.

So we eventually got to what Anna said was the Chapel of the Ascension. Me, I was skeptical that she had the right place, since it was missing the distinctive feature of the Chapel, namely a big-ass belltower, visible in the next photo. Despite my skepticism, we explored the place, and ran into a few problems identifying it. There's a main courtyard, a few smaller courtyards on either side, and a chapel, and on practically every wall or flat surface that wasn't floor, there were big tiles with the same text written in probably every language still spoken by man. And I saw Sanskrit, so dead languages too. We looked for an English tile, or a Spanish one, or even one written in dumbed-down, simple Hebrew (not likely), hoping it would at least contain the name of the place, or an explanation of its significance. We got sidetracked by the small church and the marble coffin with a marble man on top, and then found the English tile, on which was written the Lord's Prayer, but no information. Time for Plan B: asking the two people who work there and were, I think, French. They spoke passable English, so I think we were in the Church of Our Father, or the Chapel of the Father, or something with Father in it. So the marble man might have been Joseph, or something. I'm still confused, really.

Down the street from that place is the road that lines the top of the massive Jewish graveyard, you actually have to take some steps off that road and go straight down through the graveyard to get to the garden of Gethsemane. Well, there are other ways, but not very safe ones. Anyways, the little road leads down through the graveyard, passes by a small place I thought was the garden but is actually the Sanctuary of the Dominus Flevit, and the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. Gethsemane is at the bottom of the Mount, turns out, right in the Kidron valley, you could go up Mount Moriah and reach the East wall of the Old City in a short time if you wanted. The garden itself is a small little squarish thing, walled-in and simple, with a few olive trees and some flowers.

Connected to it is a sanctuary and a beautiful church called the Basilica of the Agony. It's a relatively large and high-roofed church with intricate mosaics all over the floors, the back wall and the cuppolas above. It was too darkened inside to see the mosaics on the cuppolas in much detail, but the three mosaics on the back wall depicted, if I recall, the kiss of Judas, Jesus in agony and something like "Ego Sum, I Am," whatever that meant. The side walls had huge stained glass crosses but no pictures, and there were multiple marble columns that sprouted from the ground to support the cuppolas. Where the altar would be in a regular church, in front of the wall with the mosaics, there was a little pulpit and some whitish rock coming out of the marble and tile floors, that was surrounded by small wrought-iron grates. Apparently this is the Rock of the Agony. The mosaic of Jesus in agony on the wall had him lying propped up against a rock, so I'm guessing that was what this was. There was very little light in the whole place, mostly around the pulpit and the rock, and only two people in there besides Anna and myself, a guy in Franciscan friar robes and another guy who looked like nothing more than a shaggy-haired college kid, both of them sitting in chairs praying. I didn't feel like it would be right to take pictures, because of the darkness, and so I wouldn't disturb them, but I kind of wish I had. It was really very beautiful.

Walking back up the Mount was not fun, but we made it up and back to the dorms with only a few stops. Stupid long sleeves.

The tower of the Chapel of the Ascension, which was very much missing from the place Anna took us to. Oh, now look who knows everything, Miss I-Lived-In-Jerusalem-Before? :-P 

The Augusta Victoria tower, one of the three towers visible on the "mountains" on the northeastern part of Jerusalem, and supposedly the tallest point in Jerusalem. The other two towers are the Chapel of the Ascension and a tower on the Hebrew University campus. 

Courtyard of the Augusta Victoria hospital. The place was built by Germans apparently, and is still controlled by a German group today. 

First day of school for my UCSD buddies

You bastards. I just took a final and you're starting school today? Not fair. Oh well, I'm on a three week break now before I have to set foot in another classroom. :)

I'm a little sad about the end of ulpan though. It was an interesting class, and I learned a lot.

Jerusalem bombing

It seems stupid to say that bombings affect you differently when you're right next to them, as if everyone else hasn't already figured that out. And it's true. When I heard the explosion, I was concerned for a few minutes. I thought it might have been a shotgun firing, and Beth thought someone may have found a suspicious object, and called the police in to dispose of it (which they apparently do by blowing the things up). Then a few minutes later Beth got a call from a friend who'd been listening to the Israeli news, and heard it breaking that it was a suicide bombing. I was pretty shocked. The Be'er Sheva bombing was bad, and technically way worse in terms of death toll, but I'd actually heard this one. What was most surreal was waiting for all the news reports to flood the net. I think Google has over 215 related links on the story now, all with different words and slightly different takes on the story. But I was here when no one outside of Jerusalem knew about it, when it was just something that affected Jerusalem residents, instead of world politics and the Middle East at large. I don't think I've ever had such a clear experience of knowing that some event I was connected to, however distantly, was shortly to become major news all over the world.

But aside from those emotional differences, not much about this bombing has affected my life differently from Be'er Sheva. There's a flood of news, everyone shares a few parts with each other, and then goes on as usual. I'm studying for my Hebrew final right now, for Christ's sake, even though five hours ago some woman blew herself up near a bus station and checkpoint not five minutes away from me. And so is everyone else in this building. No evacuations, no hysteria, just sirens and helicopters for a few hours before nightfall. I wonder how many residents of French Hill will be getting up tomorrow and going to work as usual. That is, if the strike's not still on. Sheesh.

Latest from Google at 8:00:

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aPKzJxySUKVs&refer=top_world_news

Some Israeli politics

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/479862.html

There's an organization of public-sector workers in Israel called Histadrut, which can call public sector strikes pretty effectively (and apparently does so fairly often). They called one this morning.

These are serious strikes, I've never heard of anything like it. The main phone (Bezeq), electric and water companies won't fix problems, banks are shut down, mail isn't delivered, government hospitals are closed except for emergencies, nothing in the sea ports is being loaded or unloaded, and most disturbingly, garbage isn't collected. Lovely. The airports are also affected. Airplanes already in the air were supposed to land in Ben Gurion today, but four El Al airplanes had to land abroad. Those that did land at Ben Gurion won't have their baggage unloaded until the strike ends. I'd be spitting mad if that happened to me. It kinda did, but this is way worse than what I experienced. Nari's boyfriend was supposed to come this Friday for vacation, but he may have to cancel entirely.

From what I can tell, the strike was called to protest both the government's failures in paying the wages of public employees, and the cuts in wages and layoffs that will result from the 2005 budget. Some government people are saying that Histadrut has been obstructing reforms that would allow for the payments, and blaming the Shas party for allowing corruption in local governments in the past, which created the financial problems. I don't totally understand it, and the article goes into it more.

In any case, this makes the supermarket strikes we had at home look laughably impotent. I should do some research into this type of strike and see how well or how badly it's worked for them and for the country.

Hey, that's funny

In Israel it's common to give children nicknames by adding לה'- le to the end of their name. So you get stuff like Danny-le, Tamar-le, etc.

Mine is חנה'לה - Hanna-lei.

(For anyone who doesn't know, Lei is my middle name. Not really a very funny story without knowing that. :-) )

View from our balcony in the morning. 

Left to right: Anna, me and Maddie. Even though I do feel taller in this country (Israelis are shorter on average), I only look it here. Anna's standing behind the rocks rather than on them. 

Everyonce in a while you run into some pretty laughable English in Israel. This sign, which is right below the balcony of our rooms, says "Education Brining Up and Mature Center for Children" All spelling and grammar errors recreated as is. :) 

Sunset on the Jordanian mountains, with the city of Aqaba at the foot of them.