Friday's

I love Fridays!! They are the day before Shabbat, and a very interesting day in the city and the center. We had class all morning, and so far my favorite classes are Old Testament and Arabic. We have only had a couple classes in Old Testament so far, and we are already plunging into Exodus. SO much reading every day!! Seriously...we get like 100 pages from all of our teachers EVERY day!!! Way too much. This morning we had Old Testament, and before every class, our teacher, Brother Masters tells us a story that he continues every morning. It is so funny, and we all get there early to make sure we are there to hear it. This story is about him getting a snake bite, and having to go to the hospital. Then we had Ancient Near Eastern Studies with Brother Skinner. He is an incredible teacher, and a very famous scholar. We usually have two hours of this class, which is hard to sit through the whole time, but today was only an hour! It flew by! I love only hour long classes. Then I had Arabic, and oh how I love Arabic!! Our teacher is hilarious, and it is so funny. I laugh through the whole class at his jokes, and I think he likes me for it. He taught us how to say "my love" in Arabic. Not really sure how that pertains to what we can be saying to natives, but it is fun to learn nevertheless. So how to say "my love" in Arabic from a girl to a boy is "habibi" and from a guy to a girl "habibti". So my teacher likes me because I laugh so much (and because I'm from San Fransisco), so now he calls me habibti. I laugh super hard every time. I think I am just one of his favorites. It's obvious who is and who isn't. But since I am, I love it! Then we had lunch and waited till we could go out to the city. We aren't allowed out of the center until three on Friday's because it is a religious day and that is when something dangerous could happen. So, when it turned three, we went out to the Old City (for the first time in days) and had a good walk. We had to be back by five because we had a class about the Western Wall. We were walking around the city, and looked at the clock, and it was 4:45, and we realized to make it to class in time, we would have to RUN! So we ran all the way home, and even up the 6 flights of stairs to class. We were sweating like crazy in class, crazy! We had dinner, then got ready for going to the Western Wall. We walked as a whole group of 80 people with our security guards driving by us. The Western Wall was beautiful. The genders are divided, and the guys side all have to wear something on their heads. The guys all dance and sing on their side, but on the womens side, the women are very sacred and spiritual. I loved going there, and the feeling there was incredible!! When we were walking back, we realized that we didn't have a couple of people, so I called security on my handy cell phone that I'm not allowed to use, and had them track the people down. Finally we found them, and I felt very resourceful, and we came home. The walk from the Center to the wall is about 40 minutes, so it was quite the walk. Especially with all these hills!! But today was awesome, and I loved getting out of the center and being able to know my way around the city! What an opportunity!!! I love this city!!!!