Flashback

During the four or five weeks of my slacking non-blogging era there was one particular event that deserves being recorded, although it is almost entirely unrelated to the land of Israel or the Bible. That event is Thanksgiving dinner.

Now, by Thanksgiving dinner I of course mean the true Thanksgiving dinner. You see, every Friday night our school did a Shabbath - Sabbath - dinner where everyone dressed up and we ate a nicer dinner than usual. Not wanting to make two of these dinners in a row, Thursday and Friday, they instead combined the two into one Friday night event, thereby transposing Thanksgiving to Friday night. Some of the more Southern students at JUC found this to be wholely unacceptable, though we couldn't balme the school since unfortunately the idea makes logical sense.

To remedy the problem we determined the only available course of action for us to follow was to hold our own Thanksgiving dinner on the real Thanksgiving night. The idea was planned by my fellow celtic/southern brother Matthew Semler and myself., with Ben joining us that night for the roast - insert manly grunt here. As could be expected there were a few minor difficulties we had to overcome; namely, we had no kitchen, food, or idea how to use either even if we had had them. Like I said, "minor difficulties..."

Our solution was as follows: there is a fire pit outside, it will work plenty for our kitchen; food could be purchased in the Old City, we just have to hope it won't be carrying some mortal bacteria; and it's Thanksgiving for goodness sake, it doesn't necessarily have to taste good, but we must have turkey! Our meal consisted of a turkey complete with head and innards donated from a generous family who lives on the school grounds, along with ten kilos of potatoes - ok, my arabic is only so good and sometimes things get slightly groggy in translation, give me a break - and a bagful unshucked corn on the cob, all of which was to be cooked over our fire. We felt terribly manly. - insert another manly grunt.

We drowned the turkey in a red wine mixture with spices that we concocted and buried the potatoes and corn in the coals. Here's how it turned out....

the cooks...

meet ochmed, your friendly jewish turkey

we became close friends

until Ben took a knife to him and we started the marinating process

Ok, so it was a bad idea to put something that big on the fire, but hey we're guys; what more could you expect?

Look at that beautiful dinner. You know you want some...

The cooks.... with the cooking utensils - a knife, a spatula, two saws, a hacket, and a backhoe

sadly, I'm telling the truth.

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination" ~Mark Twain

- well, if we have to choose one...

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem...

Dreams for me can sometimes be so real that I cannot destinguish between dreams and reality. I wake up in an odd daze not entirely sure where I am or what is actually happening. The intensity of the feeling typically lasts about thirty seconds and then fades off during the next hour or two.

I am on the fourth day of those thirty seconds, and yet likely less than half way through. The down side of living in Jerusalem is the strange imprint it leaves on your mind when you leave to go home. Somehow it claims a piece of your grasp on reality for itself, utterly refusing to let go. I finally got home this Monday around two o'clock after traveling for to many days back to back. I realize, of course, I haven't written anything for a month now, and I apologize. I have spent the past few weeks finishing papers, taking in the last breaths of Israel I might ever have, and traveling the breath of Egypt, hence the pictures below : )

I am glad to be home again; I've been gone for quite some time now. Still, I cannot grasp the dreaming/waking sensation. I expected that on coming home my mind would be full of rapid fire thoughts and that the difficult part would be sorting through all of them. Instead, I have been left with a daze I don't understand and a strange feeling that something inside me is changing that I won't understand until it is done. As a result I feel as though I have little to say right now. My only consistent thought is that God is good, truly good. I am deeply grateful for how generous He has been to me the past few months. I have been allowed to see what most westerners will never see in their lifetime. I have travelled the land of the Bible at such a young age, and now I have the rest of my life to reap the benefit of seeing the Bible in this new light. I cannot possibly hope to express how drastically differently I see the Bible now that I have been there. If you ever get a chance to go, go. Ignore the media; they're lying. Just go. JUC offers short term groups. Go to their websight right now and sign up before they fill. Oh yeah, and take me with you if you decide to go. I would have no hesitation going again.

Enough of my rambling. Here are some pictures of Egypt:

Ahhh... the age old symbols of egypt, the pyramids. Yup, they're pretty small : )

Ok, so maybe their not that small. This is, of course, myself, Jess, and Ben. We're like three peas in a pod. Ben a great friend and Jess is my twin.

How about that? Riding camels in the Egyptian wilderness!

Ben and I paid off the camel guys - a total of five dollars - and they let us ride solo while everyone else was paired up in doubles. We then proceeded to kick our camels as hard as we could to race them past everyone...

Interesting note: have you ever noticed how arabic music seems to follow a strange rythm? It is patterned after the steps of a camel.

And you thought Napoleon was the one who took off the nose. Ha!

The highlight of our Egypt trip was climbing Mount Sinai at 2am in order to be at the top by 5am when the sun rose. This is a few of us attempting to stay warm shortly after the sun came up. I love these girls. They're basically family! From left right: Karen, Jess, myself, and Meredith.

We gathered as a group after the sun rose and Ben Post quoted Exodus 13 - moses' encounter with the burning bush-, Ben Zipf quoted Exodus 19 - at the foot of Mount Sinai -, and I quoted Exodus 20 - the giving of the Ten Commandments. What an honor to speak the Law of God at the place where the Law was given! Like I said, God is good.