This week was filled with finals. I studied, took a test,
studied some more, in a recurring cycle until all 6 tests were done. Monday, we
took our Ancient Near East midterm (this is our only class that spans the whole
summer), Tuesday was Israeli Culture, Wednesday was Hebrew Conversation,
Thursday was Palestinian Culture, and Friday was Old Testament and the field
trip class. The best final was definitely the conversation class. We took a
field trip to the Biblical Zoo and our final was to give a 10 minute
presentation on one of the animals. We had to talk about facts about the
animal, where the animal is found in the Bible, and whatever else we wanted to
talk about. My animal was the monkey, which is found in 1 Kings 10:22 and 2
Chronicles 9:21 (the exact same scripture). Apparently having apes is a sign of
wealth in ancient times. Since monkeys are barely mentioned in the Bible, I
talked about the use of monkeys in other cultures’ literature and folklore. We
all actually went over our times, which surprised our teacher. So at the zoo,
all the animals are mentioned somewhere in the Bible, although I think they are
liberal in their interpretation. For example, I’m not sure where penguins are
found in the Bible, but they were at the zoo. Maybe they assume that they were
on the ark, even if not explicitly mentioned in the text.
Since the Conversation final was done by noon, and the next
day’s final was a going to be a joke, a few of us went to the city and
wandered. We had to get some money out for next week’s trip to Jordan and after
that we just walked around. We ended up walking on some rooftops and got some
good pictures of the Church of the Redeemer in the background. We also
eventually made our way to the Pools of Bethesda. It costs money to get in and
since most of our group had already been, they just waited by the gardens there
while Marissa and I went to see the Pools. What’s left is basically a bunch of
arches and cisterns and deep holes in the ground. But it was really nice and
quiet. We went into the Church of St. Anne, the mother of Mary. It’s one of the
spots where she was supposedly born. It was really nice having just Marissa and
I looking around. Three’s a crowd sometimes, but that’s the rule. It really
would be nice if we could just go out in pairs: it’s easier to coordinate
activities, easier to find just one person who wants to do something, you only
have to judge one other person’s boredom and readiness to leave, you don’t have
to figure out pictures for multiple people, etc. Plus I like touring with
Marissa. We try to be considerate of each other’s wants and can judge whether
or not the other is ready to go easily, we both like taking pictures and can
take pictures for each other, and we have similar interests in what we want to
see and do. But rules are rules, I guess, and we try to follow them.
We finished our last final on Friday afternoon, went to a
service project, and then a group of us rushed out to get waffles for Lauren’s
birthday. Israel has this thing where they close early on Friday because the
Sabbath starts at sunset, so we tried to get to the waffle bar before they
closed. Unfortunately, we got there as they were closing up, so Lauren was
really disappointed. But we ended up getting pizza and then wandering around
the old city instead.
Sunday, I went with a group to Tel Aviv. So I spent the day lying
on the beach reading a book, playing in the waves, and enjoying being lazy. It
was great. I did get burned, despite trying not to. The Mediterranean was so
warm and the waves were really nice. The beach has a bunch of wooden cabanas
spread out on the beach so we claimed one and sat under it most of the day. We
ended the day with dinner and watching the sunset. It was a nice vacation from
my vacation.
Okay, family! Love you all!
Kelby
No comments:
Post a Comment