I’ll repent for never emailing. It’s weird how the limited free time we have here, most of us spend studying for our ridiculously frequent tests and quizzes, or running to the Old City to see as much as we can before its dark and we can’t be there. To my credit, some kids have only called their mothers like once. And I’ve called at least once a week, usually more. So that’s nice of me….. and a justification. Ill change my ways, next week :)
We spent last week in Jordan, and it was lovely. Hot, but lovely. Petra was really cool. Turns out Petra is a place I never knew I’ve always wanted to visit. It just amazes me that people so long ago thought “lets hike up this mountain, then carve this amazing thing into it, then abandon it.” I barely can get myself up four flights of stairs every morning knowing full well a breakfast has already been made for me and is waiting for my arrival. The kids in Petra are so sneaky and stole my heart. The law in Jordan says these kids should be in school, so BYU asked us not to give them any money when we came. But that didn’t stop me from giving them candy and playing with them :) I also got to ride a camel, which is not as fun as I thought because they are actually so freaking scary and children are the ride operators. I could have died. Ammon was a little less exciting, but we was some cool castle thing, so that was exciting. We got to see the site where they say John the Baptist baptized Jesus, which was pretty neat. People were baptizing themselves in the brown river on both the Jordanian and Israeli side. Some students were having reverence issues because once the baptized members came out of the water, their white sheets became sheer. I’ll let you use your imagination on why they were giggling. I was so nervous about eating in Jordan, because I am not known for having the most advanced pallet, but the food was great! We ate at really nice restaurants, and the hotels made us yummy food also.
I decided for my birthday I wanted to get my hair done, like getting my roots touched up. I would like to fully admit I’m an idiot. So I asked the hotel guy how to schedule an appointment at the hotel salon to get my hair done. Well he was so excited to hear it was my birthday and that a white girl was going to get her hair done by a Jordanian he scheduled it for me. So I walked up to this ghetto salon, and this guy motions for me to sit. He states he doesn’t speak any English and points to my head and says “browns or yellows?” yeah…. Promising. So I say “my hair is brown, but I want to keep it yellow.” He nods, and off he goes. Well I text Sara wigging out because my head is burning so bad, whatever he put on is FOAMING, and he left me for over 30 minutes to go SMOKE over by the sink. Sara is also panicking and telling me to get it off my head. I’m prepared to be bald. I motion as rudely and loudly as I can in Jordanian for this man to wash my head. He tells (motions) he’s smoking. Basically my actual nightmare. So I sit by the sink, and he comes over and starts to wash it out. I see in the mirror my hair is the woman from 101 Dalmatians, tooootally white on the roots, and yellow from where he didn’t touch down. So he starts to panick too, and calls 3 other Jordanian people over, who spent FORTY minutes mixing potions with shampoo on my head, and when I left the sink, it wasn’t quite so bad. But I am beyond grateful I am not in America because seriously I look so ghetto. So I walk downstairs and EVERYONE is in the foyer, and is like “cute hair Katie.” “oh youre so brave to get your hair done here, it looks nice.” Yeah, riiiight.
The next morning at breakfast, the same hotel guy who helped schedule my birthday hair massacre told the kitchen it was my birthday Friday (the next day) and so he asked them to make a gigantic cake. He stopped breakfast and made an announcement “I see in ancient Greek ‘Katherine has special 2-3 birthday on Friday. Not to celebrate in Jerusalem, allow Jordan to special her birthday. Bring in cake!” Then everyone sang happy birthday and it was awesome. At the center, they don’t make you a cake so I’m the only student all semester that gets a huge cake! It was so nice! We left Jordan that day, and came back to Jerusalem. My actual birthday I found out that the reason my back and side had been hurting all week was because I have SHINGLES. So I took a midterm, then spend the rest of the afternoon being half nude in the Center Dr’s office and then driving with him and his wife to the pharmacy. My cute roommate Ali did request the kitchen to make French toast for breakfast because it was my favorite, then she had a huge group of kids watch While You Were Sleeping to celebrate. It was an awesome birthday and I was celebrated all week.
Yesterday we went to Jericho. I’m learning that most of our field trips are just like Mom predicted “a lot of fields.” It was cool to see, but literally it was like rocks, and dirt and field. We are told great Biblical stories; we get to read the bible in the locations they think things happen, it’s all set up to be an awesome thing. But we are sweating to death in the dessert looking at dirt and rubble now. So it’s a give and take kind of thing. I learned they can’t find any evidence that the walls of Jericho fell like Joshua said, so that was interesting. So either they rebuilt the wall, and that’s why they can’t find it or it was symbolic. We also saw Herod’s winter palace, and I just think he is gross and took zero photos of the whole day. A lot of places students take photos of I just think, “google it and you’ll get a better photo” or why on earth would you be smiling at such a sad or holy place. I just keep feeling in awe that I am at that location, and don’t want an irreverent photo there. If that makes sense.
We are in mid-term mode for a lot of our classes. They do that so our classes can end and we can switch from Old Testament to New Testament, and we can have more field trips towards the end of the semester. So I have shingles, I’m studying for midterms, basically the only food I enjoy at the center is pita, and I have ghetto blonde hair. Pray for me, and pray for the Holy Land.
I love you all, and promise to write more.
Kt
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