The Old City

Today is Sunday, but there was no church!! We have church on Saturday, so to day was a total tourist day. We left for the city around 9am to have an orientation tour. One of the faculty showed us around until 11:30 or so. We saw the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a hostel with some REALLY nice bathrooms, and my favorite: Saint Johns church. I guess that Saint Johns usually is only open Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning when we have class. We were really lucky, when we walked by it was open! It was BEAUTIFUL inside, the walls were covered in paintings and mosaics. It is a greek orthodox church and it was very ornate. There was such a feeling of reverence and awe there, I loved it. Everyone was silent when we went in and they hadn't turned on the lights, so it was all in natural light and it was serene and peaceful. All of my favorite places so far have been churches. I don't know why, probably because they are very beautiful and peaceful. You can tell that the people there think that they are on holy ground, and they are so happy and in awe to be there. For example, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, right inside the doors there is a raised stone slab on the floor that they say is the stone slab where Jesus' body lay in the tomb. We passed by it reverently but kept on walking into the church. When we were walking out, I noticed three people who had just walked in. When they saw the stone, they fell to their knees and were crying as they touched and kissed the stone. I started to tear up a little too. To many Christians the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the holiest site in all Christendom. To see the emotion and faith that those pilgrims had meant a lot to me. 

After the tour with our faculty member, we were able to stay in the city for a couple of hours. You have to stay in groups of at least three when you go outside the center, and there were six of us that were walking around. The Old City is amazing. The part that we were exploring was awesome! It's these really narrow alleyways with little shops on both sides, with people taking and trying to sell you stuff from every direction. You can buy everything there: candy, clothes, food, olive wood carvings, jewelry...it was amazing to see. I'll try to send some pictures because words aren't really doing it justice. Just know it was awesome, and I am really excited to explore some more. One of the coolest shops that we saw was a shop that was selling spices. We got to try some and they were so good! There were special spices to put on bread, in rice, on meat along with the regular cumin, cinnamon, cloves ect. If I can, I definately want to bring back a big bag of the rice one because it was SO GOOD!!! Hopefully I'll be able to find that shop again because the shop keeper was really nice, and was going to give us amazing prices!