"2 tons of angry pot roast"

That was Brother Skinner's assessment of bullfights in ancient Mesopotamia. Hehe.

Today it was finally sunny and beautiful out!!! It made me so happy, it felt so good to be out on such a gorgeous day. It's been gross and freezing for about the last week and a half, so sunshine was a refreshing change. :)

Today we went and poked around in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I think some people were hoping to find like a secret passageway or catacombs or something. We didn't find anything secretive or hidden, though. But that church is huge and a lot of the places we went into I hadn't been before. And I had my camera this time, so I was able to take some sweet pictures.

Then we went up to another little annex that was the Coptic Monastery. Coptic = Egyptian. It was kinda cool, they had a painting with the pyramids and sphinx just chilling out in their courtyard (which was on a section of the roof of the Holy Sepulchre). But the really cool thing was this cistern that's down under the monastery. It actually has quite a bit of water in it. I couldn't tell you exactly how much, because I don't know how deep it is, but it looked like at least a good 8 or 10 feet. But the acoustics were incredible. Like, we've been singing hymns on field trips in a lot of different cisterns and caves and various acoustical wonders, but this was really something else. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that we had less people, but it was awesome. It was mostly me and the boys singing... But when we sang in parts, the deep harmonies filled out the cavern underneath my melody and it was so cool.

Then we walked out through Lion's Gate into the Kidron Valley, which is between Jerusalem proper and the Mount of Olives. We actually walked past Gethsemane. And we kinda just wandered around in the valley. It was so great, being out there in the sunshine, and this valley is practically untouched. We were looking for some caves to spelunk in, but we ran out of time, since three of us had to be back for Arabic at 4:00 and we left the Old City at 3. We found a couple of holes that we poked around in, and a couple of the guys climbed through a short tunnel. Mike decided that he wanted to climb through a huge piece of piping that was lying around over on the Mount Scopus side of the valley. Haha. We didn't realize there were people like, just on the other side of an outcropping of rock and right as Mike climbed in, this guy comes over and is like, "What is he doing?" And we were like, "Uh, ya, you know, he's just... playing." It was great. And we made it back in time for Arabic.

Ballroom night was fun. :) I had to coerce a couple of guys into coming, and even then only about 10 of them did, but it was actually really low key and the girls all just kind of danced with each other. I was kind of expecting to have more of a class, but it was more like a workshop, I guess. Everyone said they loved it and had a lot of fun, though.

On Friday I went to the Jewish market, called the Sukh, with my friend Eliza. It was really fun, we decided we needed a girls' day, so we went around trying on silly things (like rabbi hats with fake curly sideburns attached, lol) and just wandering around. We bought a shabbat bread and ate the entire thing between us. And I mean, it was big. It also had this kind of sweet glaze on it, though and it was sooooooo yummy. That's why we got one, because we could smell it. And then we got 4 strawberries for 1 shekel. And they were big strawberries. And delicious. And we saw some guys rapping, and it was like, inspirational Jewish rap. Lol. It was fabulous. Ooh! And then we got our religion teachers to put on the hats with fake curly sideburns, once we all met up as we were leaving, and it was kind of priceless. Then we stopped by the pita factory on the way home and had fresh, hot pita. I was uncomfortably full of bread by the end of this outing. But it was mostly worth it. :)

On Saturday it stormed again. It was actually really cool being in the Auditorium for sacrament meeting with all the big windows and the thunder and lightning and rain pelting the glass. But I don't think the heat was working properly that day, because it was frigid in every public space here in the Center. Not cool.

On Sunday we went over to the olive wood shops. I can't decide which nativity set to get! I took pictures of the ones I'm deciding between, though, so now I just need to prop them up side by side and make a serious comparison.

Tomorrow we get to go wade through Hezekiah's tunnel. It's going to be freezing. :D