Safe in Europe...Somewhere in Europe...

Well the life of Europe started out crazy when the passport went missing while exiting the plane from Tel-Aviv to Vienna. Yes. Missing. Gone. We can't figure out if it was stolen, or if it was lost... or if someone else from BYU saw it on the ground, thought it was theres and then put it in their stuff. Anyway, a travelers nightmare came true. After a long day, and no sleep that night..and stress trying to pack...and sadness leaving..and then being told by police that I had to go back to Tel-Aviv and couldn't go anywhere, I was brought to tears right in the Vienna airport. Luckily though later in life things got figured out. My friends' mom Mary saved my life there. AND the Jerusalem center luckily gave us copies of our passports to carry around and I had one. SO after convincing the 3rd patrol man, I was allowed to cross the border out of the airport and go into Vienna. But no where else. An illegal immigrant in my new country of Austria.
I can't believe the excitment there. I have so much to blog about and so much to say to people. I want to scream and shout and have everyone I love here with me because this town is amazing. The sights, the smells, the people. It is so fun. After spending plenty, and plenty of time at the US Embassy there, I luckily was issued an emergency passport for 100 euro's...and now we're safe in Prague, Czech. We're staying at this funny posh hostel and sharing bunkbeds with people we've never met before..but it's all part of the adventure. I just tried duck for the first time for dinner cause very few places are open this late. But we are excited to shower in the morning and scope this town inside and out tomorrow. I can't believe that this Europe thing is a reality. I can't believe how lucky I am to have gotten a new passport. I'm depending on the spirit for a lot of things lately, and I'm learning a lot. Just because school is out in Jerusalem, doesn't mean I'm not still learning halfway across the world.
I can't wait to share the adventures. I'll update on here when I get back to the states.
As for now we're heading to bed, after socializing with our bunkmates. We're given a free complimentary beer for staying here, but I don't think we'll take them up on their offer.
I love adventures. I love this world. I love not knowing what we're doing, where we're going, or who is the person standing next to us. That's what makes life good. We picked up a friend on the Prague train from Australia and she's hilarious.
Love to all who actually read this. :)

Fast Day. Shalom Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom

These are actually from the June 7th Sunday.  I'm just barely trying to get updated on this blog business.  Right when I think I'm caught up...more exciting things happen and then I'm all skeewompus and outdated on here.  This Sunday was fun though because the travel group of the week had a variety of people from Colorado Springs where my grandpa and grandma live.  I felt famous for a day as I kept getting introduced to knew people who loved the name Savio.  They were extremely nice people.  It was fun too because I saw them later that week out in the market.

Everywhere we go, they call the Jerusalem center the "Mormon University"  And lo and behold, we even have our own sign.  We went for a walk in the city afterwards and went to the pool of Bethesda.

here is me down in the cistern..with a candle to light our way...

Here I am letting life pass me by... Or just enjoying a quiet moment amidst the hustle and bustle.

We also went and tried to get into church, but it was closed when we got there, so we just took fun pictures and walked through the Jewish quarters..

Just a Good Day in the life of Jerusalem.

  We went to this cool place today.  We had to pay to get in but there's like 2 millions dollars worth of bible stuff in this building.  It's part of this Jewish religion that is waiting to build the 3rd temple on the temple mount.  They went through the bible and built all the things that are described in the bible for the ancient temple.  All of it is in these locked glass walls just waiting to be put in the new temple that they pray can be built everyday.  They have pure gold things, in the exact measurements and all the stones with the 12 tribes on them..and everything.  it was crazy cool to listen to their beliefs and see the actual things...ready to be used someday.

 

 

We walked around the city afterwards.  Got locked accidentally into a church where there was a private mass..and took cool pictures.         Here's Walter and I in front of a cool door.

Bread is really sacred here.  With significance to Christ being the bread of life, and for other significance reasons... you will never see bread once on the ground.  It doesn't matter how clean or poor, rich or dirty the community is: there will never be bread on the ground.  It always is put up on walls or stuffed up in a window or put somewhere where it's not on the ground.

Here we are wandering through the Armenian quarters..just enjoying the pretty streets.  These people feel like family sometimes.

A T-shirt in the T-shirt store that we cracked a smile over..  What a country.

Us enjoying smoothies at our favorite cafe in new Jerusalem:Sambooki.

   

We decided to be adventurous and watch a movie in a foreign country.  Getting out there, I know...

We waited and took a taxi..watched a little boy be dragged down the street and got a good laugh...and then headed to the movie theatre in a crazy taxi.

We finally got to the theatre...and picked our movie.  We felt Indiana Jones would be appropriate since we would be going to Petra next week...and it just fits the setting we're in over here on the other side of the world.

The power went out at one point in the theatre for about 10 minutes and it was absolutely pitch black... It also had an intermission in the middle of the movie which made us all laugh very hard.  It was definitely a really good day.

 

YAD VASHEM

The next day we also went the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.  It was intense the feelings we had there.  Instead of focusing on numbers and things, it focused on these people as individuals.  People with hopes and dreams.  Just trying to make something of themselves, just like the rest of us.  This really was an influential thing to experience.  We all were more solemn the rest of the day and I think it effected all of us.  I've never been to a more intense, detailed museum.

The Dead Sea. Been there, floated that.

After Masada, we took the bus over to the dead sea.  It's 1300 feet below sea level, the lowest point on earth.  Did you read that right?  I floated on the lowest point on planet Earth.  Every day 6 million tons of water evaporate off of this salty body of water.  I have never seen so much salt in my life.  The rocks on the side looked as if they were covered in snow from all the salt coated on.  We stripped down to our swimsuits and started walking out into the famous slimy water.  What a weird experience to bounce around without touching anything...and to literally just float. 

ClaireStein, Matt, me, and Heidi just floating around in the dead sea..

THEN THE CANNIBALS CAME OUT...

We swam around a bend and got out and started covering ourselves in the mud.  It was von rankus smelly and we loved it.  We looked like scary savages from a lost tribe.  It was so dang fun.

When I first showed up, I immediately had people start to cover me in the famous, smelly mud.  Ha.  I look not too happy in this picture... But I definitely was.  It was just my at first unsure face...

The boys got a little Cougar pride and took a BYU body picture...Exclamation included.

 

Yep.  Savage.

A bunch of savage females..

Sara concentrating on trying to get the mud out of her head...

AFTER THE DEAD SEA....

We hiked to another waterfall.  A place where David and his army hid from Saul...

    

AND THEN AFTER THAT.....

We went to the place where the dead sea scrolls were written....Qumran.  What a good day.

If you click on the picture you can see it bigger.  But the cave behind me is where they hid some of the scrolls.

   A few of my favorite people and I.  Katie Rencher, Matt, Kelly, and Sam.  The cave is behind us...where they were hidden.  As well as in the picture above.

Tuning in on different high class headphones to listen to Brother Draper talk about the sea scrolls..  and laughing at the same time. 

What a good day for field trips.  Days are so much longer here because we do so much.  I'm feeling really sad to leave and go back to normal every day life.  Life is fantastic.

Masada. I'm trying to think of a catchy phrase, but nothing really rhymes with Masada...Pasada.

We took a field trip out to Masada.  Luckily though BYU kids get special treatment and don't have to hike up the whole mountain. Sometimes we're so well taken care of here that I feel really famous.  All this security.  High class places we stay at where people greet us with live music and juice on trays... It's wonderfully fun.  Go Paparazzi. Masada is a huge fortress on top of a mountain where Jews used to live and King Herod built it.  It was one of his last resorts if people were after him he would go back up here to live.  It's huge.  HUGE.  and high.  Romans eventually took over.  (as they always do). 

On the tram up to the top...

A view near the top.  The water in the top left of the picture is the dead sea..where we went right after this.

Jordan pushing me off the edge...  I can't believe how dry it is..

A few of us girls found a cave of shade to hide out in..

One of their many water cisterns...They had to haul water up the whole mountain often to keep the cistern filled.