Shalom Shabbat

Our first evening, we stayed in a tiny hotel in Jordan. E and A decided to explore the town while I grounded myself by practicing half of the primary series of Ashtanga. Afterward, I battled jet lag by joining E and A on their walk through New Jerusalem. It’s strange not knowing any of the language here, but luckily for us, there are three languages all the citizens learn: Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Pretty much everyone we met can communicate in English.

It was the Sabbath in Israel, so the city was like a ghost town! All the shops were closed, but it was a nice walk nonetheless. We decided to walk farther and explore the Old Jerusalem, which is the area where Jesus walked in and died in. Because a huge portion of the Old Jerusalem is now Christian, a lot of the businesses were open. Almost the ENTIRE CITY was converted to vendors and shops, which was really sad. There was a little portion that was still the temple and schools for the children.

Since we were leaving for Jordan for 3 days, I had to buy some clothes for that part of the trip because I wouldn’t be able to retrieve my luggage during that time. While E and A took more pictures, I split off to do some shopping. Haggling was fun as always. One thing I learned is that the Israelis LOVE the Asians. One shopowner who I bought a dress from asked me if I had a boyfriend. I answered no, though I HAVE to start lying about that! He then proceeded to say “do you like me? I be your boyfriend. I free in 3 hours and you join me.” “Um, no…but thank you for the dress.”

I got lost in Old Jerusalem, and ran up and down the streets looking for E and A. Luckily one old man understood what I was looking for “Where’s the small pizza stand????” even though there were probably 10 pizza stands in the city. We ended up grabbing dinner before heading home (BEST hummus I’ve ever had) and going straight to bed by 8:30pm and slept almost 11 hours straight.