Monday morning was our first day in Jerusalem. We started off our day at the Temple Mount. Now, I've seen pictures of it before, but what I saw there pretty much blew my mind. The Dome of the Rock is just absolutely incredible. There are barely words to describe how gorgeous it is! They basically used all the colors that I think are the absolute most beautiful colors to use together, like it was designed just for me! Except I'm not Muslim, so that probably isn't the case....whatever.
Also, someone pointed out to me that Arabic is written with the tops of all the letters looking like swords and spears. I thought it was pretty amusing. This is the best example, seeing as it's right on the top of the Temple Mount.
Though we are allowed to go up to the top of the mountain and poke around and look at the
outsides of all the buildings, we were NOT allowed to go into any of them without converting to Muslim. Which is actually pretty easy to do; all you do is say a certain prayer in Arabic two or three times over in the presence of a couple of Muslims, and you are officially Muslim. That's actually kinda scary to me, seeing as they consider it the "one true religion" and once you convert you are never allowed to go back on it. Yikes! Anyway, our tour guide told us that he once pretended to be Muslim in order to get inside of there, and it worked pretty well until he had to do the prayers and he was really close to the feet of the person in front of him and he said the three worst things in the world happened. 1. He started throwing up 2. He took off his head covering and 3. He used it to catch his vomit in so that he wouldn't get it on the carpet. I guess they started freaking out and probably would have killed him, but the friend who was there with him who was actually Muslim weaseled him out of it, saving his life. But the way that our guide told the story, it was totally hilarious sounding and he forbid us to laugh because we were in "a holy place". Psh. I think he just didn't want us laughing at him, because there were tons of little Arab children running around playing soccer up on the Temple Mount.
After we came down from the Dome of the Rock area (the Muslim part of the site), we stopped at the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall). It is part of the retaining wall that Herod put in around the temple, and is the closest that Jews can get to where the temple was when it stood there. The wailing wall serves as their temple in Jerusalem right now, yes, a wall is their working temple. The women go on one side and the men on the other side, you walk up to the wall and pray and people stick little prayer notes into the cracks. There was a bar mitzva happening on the guy side, so all of the women were standing on chairs looking over the separating wall and cheering and throwing candy. It was pretty interesting to watch.
With that, our time on the Temple Mount was complete and we had a free afternoon in the Old City. Which really is kind of like the Old Port, but actually not at all haha. There are all these windy little streets that are completely covered in these tiny shops and have stuff for sale all around. It keeps surprising me that the "streets" actually are streets, because it all seems indoor, like a mall or something.
Unfortunately, two things are required of women in the Old City marketplace: modest clothing and male accompaniment. I know, lame. So I spent the afternoon walking around with my friends Jonathan and Stephen, both of whom go to the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield. We decided that the first order of business was eating, so we made our way all through the market to find a restaurant we'd seen advertising "BBQ". (And Mama you'd be proud--
I was the one who got us there effectively. Guess I'm not as directionally challenged as we thought!) In retrospect, it really didn't matter that much, because it was the same shop as every other, type of food and they just had barbeque as a sauce option. Dang. And when I asked for it, the guy acted like really surprised like nobody ever gets it! Anyways, I got this GIANT meal that I couldn't even finish at all, which really isn't even like me. The fries tasted like fair fries though, which was a pleasant surprise of home-likeness.
Not long after lunch, I had to go to the bathroom like crazy. So I asked the guys if they thought there was a bathroom nearby...they said no. About five minutes later I said "If I don't find a bathroom NOW, I am going to pee my pants!" And I think they got the message that time. So Stephen turned around and decided there would probably be a bathroom in the church type building right behind us. In fact there was, and I didn't even mind paying the two shekels to use it. The boys decided to save their money and wait for me on two comfy chairs in the entry way. When I got up the stairs, I was awed by the beauty of a surprise secret garden courtyard. It was
totally awesome! After I went to the bathroom I took my time getting some pictures. It was just this lush little courtyard in the inner square of this church administration building. Back in the lobby, the receptionist man let Stephen and Jonathan come back and see it without paying two shekels. I think they were pleased with the stop in the long run :)
It was also in the Old City that I saw the
official cutest kittens of all the kittens I've seen on this trip! There were three of them, all orange and white like this one, and they were each only as big as my two hands. They must have been really young; they wouldn't come anywhere near me. They looked potentially diseased, but they were so pitiful and adorable that I decided to pat them anyway, but as soon as I reached out they scattered. So sad! They just broke my heart right to pieces.
The best purchase of our afternoon was Sir Stephen's two shofars. Shofars are animal horns turned musical horns and are used in religious services or whatever over here, or at least they were traditionally. Now I think they're mostly for tourists. But they come in all different sizes and are crazy expensive! Someone on our trip bought one of the big ones for $100. Stephen managed to get two that size for only $120. We were pretty impressed. I'm making him do my bartering from now on. But he had rather bad purchase timing and had to carry around those to beasts for the remaining three hours that we chilled in the Old City. I think it made him feel manly.
After hour introduction to the history of it all, which unfortunately took a whole hour, we divided into our two groups. The other group got to do the work first, so my group went to see some sights in the area for 45 minutes while we awaited our turn. I'm not really sure why we went to the sites we did other than they were an acceptable distance away for us to get to them and back. We went to the to graves that are considered the sites of the graves of two people that I don't remember. But honestly, it doesn't really matter because there is like a .03 % chance that the sites are legit. Sooo whatever. 
There were tons of Israeli soldiers out and about over these several days though, because I guess they spend a fair amount of time getting the military involved in Israeli pride and possession. Makes sense to me. See, in Israel there is mandatory military service required of everyone unless that person is legitimately disabled. Guys serve three years and girls serve two and this service is immediately after high school. I guess after all the stress and tension of it all most kids work for a bit and then go abroad for like a year after that. So people here don't generally starting working on the direction of their life until they are like 24 or 25ish. The reason there were so many soldiers around during these few days specifically is that June 1 was Jerusalem Day (kinda like our 4th of July I guess?) and there were big celebrations. Lots of people were around, but especially touring groups of military. 
