First Galilee field trip- aka one of the best days ever!

Our first field trip was SO much fun! It was so amazing to get our first taste of Galilee and see all of the important sites that are significant to the Savior's life. We started our day by going to the church of the beatitudes- which is where the Savior taught the sermon on the mount. It was a really cool church and Brother Harper gave us an hour there to sit and contemplate life and such, which was really nice. As I was sitting there I couldn't help but eavesdrop on a Christian group next to me. It was a group of older people having a moment where they were sharing how their trip to the holy land has changed them and what it has meant in their lives. And I was so incredibly touched to be listening to all different kinds of Christians sharing their experiences of how much they love Jesus and how they have felt the spirit in this holy land. And this sounds really obvious, but it is just really cool to hear Christians that aren't mormon sharing how they feel of the spirit because sometimes I forget that we aren't the only ones that have spiritual experiences! Here's a pic of Amy and I in front of the church:

We then went to the church of St. Peter's primacy- which is where Christ commanded Peter to feed his sheep. It is right on the shore of the sea of Galilee and it was very very pretty. Here's a pic of me on the shore. Jesus walked on that water!!
Inside the church is also a large bedrock that tradition says Jesus served the food to feed the thousands on. Not really sure how that works... but hey that is the tradition.
We then ate our sack lunches- and guess what was on our water bottles! Angry birds! So of course I thought of my little brother Ethan. So I had to put this pic of as a little shout out to him. Love you E!
After that we went to the church of the loaves and fishes, which was a reconstructed Byzantine church. This is a pic of me in the courtyard- notice the fish:
After that we went to Capernaum, which is the town of Jesus! And also Peter's home town. We saw Peter's house there and a synagogue, which was very beautiful.
And then we made a quick stop at a Greek church on the coast, which was very pretty. I'm not sure it has much more significance than that. But it had cool trees outside of it!
Our final stop was at this museum that had a boat that was discovered from the time of Jesus! Here is a picture of it:
And THEN the best thing ever happened. We took a leisurely boat ride on the sea of Galilee while listening to Christian rock music. We were singing and dancing and just praising God in the loudest way possible, which was really fun! Favorite song of the day: Our God is an Awesome God! It has pretty much become our theme song of the Galilee trip. Or maybe this entire semester.... haha
That night we went to Tiberias for some ice cream, which was a lot of fun. Here is Jen, Hannah and I drinking our milk shakes. Overall, I'd say this makes the list of best days ever!

Galilee- the adventure begins!

So on our way up to Galilee 2 weeks ago, we stopped at a few sites, one of them being Bet Shaun, which is an ancient city full of... you guessed it! Ruins. Haha but it was a really big one and the ruins were really cool. And there was an entire section full of Egyptian stuff- which is shown in the pic below:

We also went to Nazareth- Jesus' home town! Basically there are 2 main churches there- one dedicated to annunciation to Mary and the other to Joseph. The churches were of course so beautiful and full of amazing mosaics. This is Janae and I in front of the church for Mary. Outside there were different works of art depicting the annunciation and birth from different countries all around the world, and that was really cool. Mary and Jesus were depicted in all kinds of different nationalities, which was really cool. Who knew Jesus was Asian? :)
We then got to our resort En Gev in Galilee and it was literally on the shore of the sea of Galilee- where Jesus walked on water! So exciting. There were palm trees and hammocks lining the entire shore- and let's just say I spent many hours on those hammocks relaxing and just enjoying life. The weather was absolutely beautiful and I couldn't get enough of it! And thus ends my first day in norther Israel. More to come

Tel Aviv!

So I just got back from Galilee and it was incredible! I first need to tell you all about my trip to Tel Aviv the Sunday before we left- so literally the day before we left. A huge group of us went up in vans- it is about a 45 minute drive. Here are all of the girls in front of the city- ready to start our day of adventure! We didn't stay in the group the whole day though. I ended up hanging with Jarom, Travis and Amanda all day, which was great!

We started out by going to the Carmel market, which is just a really really big shuk with tons of stuff to buy and look at. It was pretty awesome! I didn't end up buying anything. I tend to have this problem. When I have SO many things to look at and buy I just get overwhelmed and end up buying absolutely nothing.... awesome. But hey it was still fun to look around and watch other people buy stuff :) I didn't end up getting a pic of the market... which is kinda dumb on my part. I have really been slacking on taking pictures lately... I guess I'm all pictured out. But don't worry- I still took some!

After the market, we walked down the board walk along the coast and found a prime beach spot for eating our lunches. We found some more people from the JC there and decided to join them. Here's Lee and I striking a pose at the beach: It was such a beautiful day!!!!
We the headed over to Historic Old Jaffa, which was really awesome. The architecture was great and all of the shops were also great. I found a friend there:
We also went to the flea market in Jaffa, which was very cool. Here is Amanda and I on the streets of Old Jaffa with part of the flea market.
After that we headed over to the wishing bridge and Tel Aviv look out, which was so cool! Here is Jarom and I at the look out:
The wishing bridge is this ancient legend, where you touch your zodiac sign- as represented on different plaques all across the bridge and make a wish as you look out to the sea. If you do this, your wish will come true. So here we are making our wishes! I'm a sagittarius in case you are wondering :)
We then headed to the beach and spent the rest of the afternoon there soaking up the sun and playing in the water and sand. We stayed there until sunset which was absolutely gorgeous- as seen by this photo:
We ended the night with dinner at Moses' burger- which was SO good! You want to know why it was so good? Because it was non kosher burgers! And that means multiple things: first of all you can get cheese on your burger, second of all you can get bacon on your burger (amazing!) and third of all there is blood in your meat- which makes it taste so much better! Never thought I'd say that! And I also never realized how much I missed bacon... haha. But it was so freaking good. I didn't realize I missed American food so much. I got a bacon guacamole burger and it was divine. To say the least. Here's travis and I enjoying our non kosher meal:
So yeah, overall a great day!! Tel Aviv is amazing. We def didn't see everything there was to see, but hey it was still great and the beach was amazing! Stay tuned to hear about my Galilee adventures!

Bethlehem

And the blog-a-thon continues.... This past week we went on a field trip to Bethlehem and it was incredible!! It was a little tricky getting there, since it is in the West Bank and all, but we made it through and had an awesome time!! We started our day by going to the milk grotto, which is this church dedicated to where Mary breast fed Jesus and tradition says she hid from Herod before they fled into Egypt. Tradition also says that the babies that Herod killed are buried at that site... interesting, no?

After that we headed over to the church of the nativity, which is the main site there. It is in a little place called manger square. The church was SUPER touristy- but I didn't mind because it was so beautiful!! There were a ton of people there. You go into the church and then you climb down some stairs and touch the actual place where he was born- or so tradition says. Here's a pic of me touching the spot:

We then went to some other churches and sang some hymns and had a devotional. We also had a few minutes to shop around- and I found this nativity worth $50,000. Crazy! Here's a pic of it in case you are wondering what you can get for $50 grand these days:
After our trip to manger square, we all went out to lunch at the tent restaurant, which is basically restaurant inside a bedouin tent. And the food was pretty good! From me going clockwise, it is David, Claire, Janae, Becca, Loie, Brennan and Bonnie. Good times!
After that we went to the church dedicated to the shepherd's fields- which are behind this church. Here is Shaleigh and I:
And then we went to the LDS site for shepherd's field, which is where this pic is. David and I took a pic together since I'm wearing red and he's wearing green, going along with the Christmas theme and all.
Overall it was a fantastic day and I definitely would say that going to Bethlehem was worth it!! I wish I could go back! Welp, I'm still in Galilee and loving life- more on that to come! :)

First day Back in Jeru

Well after sleeping in, we woke up and had a sacrament meeting for all of the students, since we didn't have the Sabbath on the Saturday due to travelling. After church a group of us headed back out to explore some more. We started our adventure at Dormition Abbey, which is the church dedicated to the burial place for Mary, the mother of Christ. Of course the church was magnificent and decked out in tons of amazing mosaics and art. One of my favorite mosaics is pictured below. It is of all of the important women in bible. This mosaic is on the inside of the dome over the tomb of Mary. So awesome.

We then also went to the cinotaph of King David- which is just a place dedicated to the tomb of someone, but isn't the actual tomb. Here is Loie and I with a statue of King David outside of the site:
We then went to the Jewish quarter and got some bagels at Holy Bagel- which is sooooo good! Holy Bagel is a chain restaurant all around Jerusalem- and probably Israel. And it is way good. I got an everything bagel with pesto cream cheese and it was divine. Definitely want to go back there a LOT.
And then we went back to the JC to work on our Palestine finals... (so glad that's over). Pretty much an awesome day!

Day 6: Our final Day in Turkey :(

Our final day in Turkey was back in Istanbul- one of my new favorite cities! We began by going to Haggia Sophia, which definitely was not a disappointment. I cannot describe the beauty to you. It was simply majestic. So big and so ornate and so amazing. Here is a pic of Janae and I with our tour guide Negyp outside of the site:

And once again, the pics don't do it justice, but here is a pic of me inside:
After the Haggia Sophia, we went shopping at one of the bazaars and had free time for a little while. We ate at a fish restaurant on the coast that night. Apparently the fish was really good, but I'm not the biggest fan of fish, so I didn't really think so. Don't worry Mom and Dad- I DID try it! Still can't handle fish though.... maybe one day. Then we flew out of Istanbul at like midnight that night and got back to the JC at 4 AM. So crazy! Turkey was a wonderful experience and I definitely would recommend going there to ANYONE!! so GO!

Day 5: More of Turkey

Well I'm going to have to be a little more brief than usual as far as my Turkey blogging goes. Mainly because I have much more to blog since a lot has happened in the past week or so. So yeah... Day 5 involved more travelling of course. We stopped in Sardis and saw an ancient gymnasium- as seen in this picture below. It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we had a lot of fun. This pic is of Bon Bon and myself- shake your bon bons!!

We then went to Iznik, which is modern day Nicea. We had a little lake side devotional talking about the Nicean council, which was really great. This pic includes Becca, Loie, myself and Sarah.
That was pretty much it for our day. It was a good one- even though we didn't do too much. Now onto more Turkey!

Day 4: Still Delightfully Happy In Turkey

We started our 4th day at the church of St. John- which is where tradition says that he is buried. A lot of the church is still in tact, compared to other churches at least. So that is really cool. And then the tomb is there, which is also really cool. Tradition also says that John wrote his gospel in Ephesus.... or so they claim. So it was cool to be there. Here is a pic of Claire, myself, Sarah, Janae and Becca at the church:

After that, we headed over to Ephesus! And that was really cool, of course. We went to the theater where the story from Acts 19 occurred and we reenacted it, which was a lot of fun. What is cool is that we KNOW that this story occurred in this specific theater, which is actually pretty rare. Because most places are like "oh tradition says" or "probably somewhere around here." So that was cool.
Here is me in front of the famous party of Ephesus, which is the library.
Here is our boy band pic at Ephesus- don't we look so legit? Mark is on the far left with Sarah, Claire, Janae and myself.
Our next stop was Prienna, which was more ruins! haha. The cool thing about the temple at Prienna is that ALL of the pieces for the temple are there, and if they had enough money, they could completely rebuild it. So there are just pieces of the temple lying around everywhere. Here is Loie and I in front of the few standing columns. Are you noticing the column theme yet?
We then went to see the temple of Artemis, which was really cool. Here is Loie and I showing how much we LOVE columns. You can't help but fall in love with them when they are freaking everywhere!! These ones were cool because they were SO massive. So that was pretty cool.
We then went back to the same hotel in Ephesus and got ready for the next day!! More to come.

Day 3 in Turkey: Another Good One

On the next day of our beloved Turkey trip, we spent a lot of the day on buses, continuing our trip down the coast of this beautiful country. Our first stop was at Assos, which is a place mentioned in the bible, where Paul landed one of his voyages. Assos was so gorgeous. It had an amazing view and was full of cool ruins as well. Here is a picture of me loving Turkey: Don't mind the hair in my face... haha. It was windy!

We got to spend some time reflecting, which was really great to just look out onto the sea and think about life. And basically I just thought about how incredibly blessed I am. I know I keep saying that, but Turkey just reminded me of it every single moment of every single day. We seriously lived the life. We were fed incredibly well and stayed in awesome hotels with awesome people and visited awesome places. Jealous yet? :)

After spending even more time on the bus, we finally got to our next destination, which was Pergamom. The home of the "sleepest teeter" in the world. That's what our tour guide, with a think Turkish accent called it. That just means steepest theater, in case you are wondering. haha. We had to take this air lift capsule things up to the site, which was really fun! Here is a pic of myself, Jake, Madison and Kyle riding up to the site:
The ruins were really great and once again the weather was really great as well. Here's a pic of Madison, myself, Amy and Loie in front of the city of Pergamom. Pretty sweet, right?
That was pretty much our day. Because after that we had another long bus ride to our hotel in Selcuk, which is the modern day name for Ephesus. And it was another hotel on the beach, which was awesome. Our hotel looked like a large cruise ship on land. It was weird, but cool. And it was HUGE. Plus we got to go to the beach again, so hey I was happy. And the sunset was gorgeous. OMG I LOVE TURKEY!!!! I want to go back sooooo bad! Anyway.... that concludes day 3 of our trip.

Turkey: Day 2

Day 2 included us taking a ferry over to the Asian side of Turkey and starting our travels down the coast. It was the most relaxing day of the trip, and I definitely didn't mind because I felt lie I was actually on vacation! This is Travis and I about to get on the ferry across the dardenelles. Look how blue the water is!

We then made our way to Troy, which was a lot of fun because there was a wooden horse there! Mainly good for photo opps, but hey that's what we came for, right? :) Travis and I are in the 3rd window from the right, in case you can't see me.

Here is Loie, Amy, Madison and I spelling Troy with our bodies. We tried to spell all the places that we went, but it didn't always turn out the best. So Troy turned out pretty good, which is why I share this picture with you. Aside from the Trojan horse, there was just a bunch of ruins there (like everywhere else) but it was still really cool and beautiful of course. The weather was once again on our side and I was enjoying soaking up the son.
From Troy we drove down to our hotel, which was a private beach resort where we were the only ones there. And it was soooooo amazing! We didn't swim because it wasn't that warm, but it was just so nice to be able to spend time relaxing on the beach. And that is pretty much what we did for the rest of the day. Seriously incredible. So we took some awesome sexy beach hair photos, as seen below:
This is the view from my room. Pretty sweet right? I seriously loved that day just as much as the days that I spent viewing important historical sites. Because like I said, we were on a real vacation for a day! And the beach was just gorgeous. So amazing.
After spending all day on the beach, we watched the sunset, which was so awesome and lovely.
And then that night we had a bonfire/dance party on the beach! And it was soooooo fun! I couldn't help but feel so incredibly blessed during that night. And how grateful I am to be having these experiences while I am young. I will have these experiences to look back on for the rest of my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have made some of the best friends of my life here, and I'm so glad that I have this experience to share with them as well. There's nothing like a international trip to bring people together! And fire and dancing too of course.
C'est la vie!

Turkey. Best time of my Life. Literally.

Alright everyone. I just got back from Turkey. And as my title suggests, it was amazing!! I seriously cannot believe how much I loved Turkey. I want to go back. Pretty much ASAP. So let me just say now that my Turkey trip is going to take a series of posts to blog about. So I'm breaking it up by day. This entry will cover the voyage over there and then our first day.

Our flight left from Tel Aviv in the late afternoon. Our flight was delayed like an hour or so, which apparently is normal when dealing with Israeli travel. Here is Lee and I on our way to the gate!

The flight was like a 2ish hour flight. And Turkish airlines are very nice! They fed us a meal and everything! Pretty crazy for such a short flight, right? We eventually landed in Istanbul, as seen below. From left to right is Jen, Megan, myself, Brennan, and Claire.
That night we just went to our hotel and got ready for the next day full of adventure. We started our day in the morning with our tour guide Negyp, who stayed with us throughout the remainder of the trip. We started out by going to the hippodrome and the blue mosque. Let me just say that Istanbul is seriously beautiful. It is on the coast and the water is blue with the blue skies and then the city itself is just beautiful and so clean and well kept. I was very impressed! Istanbul covers both Europe and Asia with the bosphorous dividing them. We spent all of our time on the European side.

Here is a picture of me in front of the blue mosque:
Let me just say that the blue mosque cannot be justified in any pictures. The inside of it was just insanely ornate and gorgeous. I could not believe my eyes. I probably could have just laid on the ground and stared at all of the walls and such for hours on end. But unfortunately we did not have the time. When I go back to Istanbul, I will have to do that.

Inside of the Hippodrome (A hippodrome is where they had chariot races, FYI) were a bunch of obelisks- which were gifts from Egpyt back in the day. Here is my Turkey roommate Danielle and I in front of one of them. By the way Danielle is freakin awesome! My time in Turkey was definitely much better because of having her. Love her!
We then headed over to the Topkopi palace, which was insane. On the way, Loie and I got a quick shot of the Haggai Sophia- which we didn't actually go inside until later in the trip because it was closed that day. But here is the pic:
The Topkopi palace was so awesome. There was a museum there showing off a bunch of precious gems, including an 86 carat diamond!! Crazy!! Everything was so cool and full of luxury. The palace also has an amazing view of the bosphorous, which was ever so picturesque that day thanks to the amazing weather, even though it was slightly chilly. Here is a pic of me in front of it:
Afterwards we went down under the city into a cistern that was so cool! It was ornately decorated and kind of eery as well. They had this creepy music playing the whole time and then there were just a ton of columns and such. It's kind of hard to explain, but hey here is a picture of it... once again the pictures don't do it justice. It was hard to photograph because it was so dark down there. From left to right is Madison, Amanda, Loie, myself and Amy.
We then went to the grand bazaar, which is basically just a huge market place with every possible thing to buy. Souvenir wise at least. It was fun. All of the Turkish men call out to the beautiful American women- so hey at least you get to feel good about yourself! ;) I didn't really buy anything because I'm not one for souvenirs, but it was still fun to look around and get a little but of unstructured free time. Here is a pic of Dylan and I at the Bazaar: Oh and P.S.- we go by Grylan. haha
We ended our day with a cruise down the bosphorous, which was soooooooo incredible!! And it was so beautiful. I couldn't get over what an incredibly blessed life I have. We seriously lived like kings in Turkey. It was so intense. To sum up my feelings on Istanbul, I present you with this picture:
Life is good. So. So. Good.

More to come soon!