Climbing Mount Sinai

From my journal, September 27th, 1989:

"Rocks and sand and stars and mountains. When we got here we had class up on a hill by the camp. It was neat. It's so much easier to understand what Moses and the Israelites went through--why they complained, why this is where they were tested, how they must've lived."

"Earlier Brother Richard Cowan [BYU Church History professor] had taken us up on a hill and was helping us identify constellations with his star chart. He's blind, so he couldn't even see them himself. He's an amazing person."

"The bus horns woke us up about 2 a.m. to head for the bottom of the trail near St. Katharine's Monastery....I never stopped the whole 2000 ft. up, just kept my average pace and kept thinking. I love hiking and being outdoors, but this was different than any other hike I've been on. I've never hiked by the light of the moon, in area that looked to me like it could have been the moon. It was neat. [I remember it being so surreal.] I counted the last 700 stairs or so. They were pretty hard on the legs. I hadn't brought my sweatshirt, so as soon as I got to the top and stopped moving, I started to freeze. It was worth it though. The sunrise was gorgeous. We all cheered when Bro. Cowan made it up.

Then we took pictures of each other on the rocks.

[After a testimony meeting] Heather and I hiked down the 3,700 hundred steps of the alternate route to get to the base of the monastery. Spaghetti legs again, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Unfortunately, the monastery was closed, so we couldn't go inside."

"On the way back out to the coast we stopped at a huge sand dune and had fun on it and took some pictures for a few minutes. The scriptures call Sinai the "great and terrible wilderness," and it really is. It isn't desert like the movies show and like I pictured in my mind....it's huge rock hills and mountains interspersed with stretches of sand. Beautiful, but terrible."

Dead Sea

from my journal, September 11th, 1989

"Our last stop [on our weekly field trip] was for a swim in the Dead Sea--I mean a float! The mineral content is like 27-30%, so you can't sink. It's a weird sensation that takes a minute to get used to, but it was fun. It feels like you are in baby oil, and when you get out it's pretty gross until you can rinse off with fresh water--especially your hair. I tasted the water--just put my finger on my tongue for a second--and it tastes super gross too."

The water looks pretty clear up close...

...but this is what the Dead Sea looks like from a distance. Those are salt deposits, not waves.

Intifada

An excerpt from my journal, Sept. 2nd, 1989:

"Tonight was a little scary. I guess some of the Arabs in the village below us set a fire in the middle of the road to cause problems--intifada. We went out on the balconies to see what was going on....About three trucks of Israeli soldiers came and a crowd gathered just above our lower gate....Heather and Kathie...heard what they thought were shots. Then Heather and I saw and heard a gunshot, then a few minutes later the soldiers all drove away and the fire was put out. Tension...should I write to Mom about this one!?!"

Jerusalem--The Jewish Quarter

Another excerpt from my journal, September 1st, 1989:

"I saw a whole new side of the Old City today. We went through the Dung Gate into the Jewish quarter of the city. It was clean, it was much less busy, more quiet, and more comfortable....We saw the Wailing Wall where the Jews say their prayers....Then we wandered the streets, which are more like alleys they are so narrow..."

The Wailing Wall is what is left of the Second Temple, or Herod's Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. The women pray on the south side. The men pray on the north side, and bar mitzvahs are held there as well. Although you can't see them in these pictures, thousands of prayers written on small pieces of paper are stuffed into the cracks and crevices in the wall.

Jerusalem--First Impressions of the Old City

Another excerpt from my journal, August 31st, 1989. It was our first full day in the Holy Land. After an orientation at the Jerusalem Center, we took a walking tour of Jerusalem.

"...we went through Damascus Gate into the Old City. What a place. Narrow streets, lots of people, shops and peddlers with everything from gold and silver to olivewood to leather to T-shirts to [cassette] tapes, to ice cream, pop, bread, spices. Strange smells, kids selling postcards that you kind of felt sorry for, beggars, tourists/pilgrims, priests, and pickpockets....We left through the Jaffa Gate and walked Ben Yehuda and King George Streets. We caught an Israeli Egged bus home for about 55 cents--one shekel, ten agarot."