Hezekiah’s Tunnel –Jerusalem, day 4 (Aug. 30)

We woke up early again this morning, though not so early as we did on Saturday, in order to try to go to the Dome of the Rock again. This time, we were successful.

We had to go through security, once again, to get there. Andrew’s had Rachel in the backpack, which is a pain to take off and unload Rachel, force the backpack through the x-ray machine, walk through the metal detector and reload Rachel. It’s just too much of a hassle when you have to walk through them so often, so Andrew just gave up. Every time we had to walk through any metal detector Andrew would just waltz on through with everything still in his pockets and Rachel strapped to his back.

He decided the hassle of being patted down was more desirable to the the hassle of taking off the backpack and unloading his pockets.

Jews are not allowed to visit the Dome of the Rock, not because the Muslims wouldn’t allow them to, but because Jewish law forbids it. They consider the site so holy that it shouldn’t be walked on, specifically because they are not sure where the Holy of Holies is and they don’t want to accidentally tread on that. There is a sign at the bottom warning Jews that it was verboten.

It isn’t forbidden to us, though, so we walked up the ramp leading up above the Western Wall to the Dome of the Rock. We saw where the police keep their riot shields for Friday prayers and several heavily armed police officers, walked past all of that and entered the complex to a view of the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is rather bland but apparently has a stunning interior. It’s very famous in Islam; it’s where Mohammed visited in his Night Vision and Assent. Because of the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa, Muslims prayed facing Jerusalem for the first few decades of Islam.

The Dome of the Rock, on the other hand, really is as cool as it looks. Stunning, really. It’s an absolute Byzantine gem.

We aren’t allowed inside the mosques as non-Muslims, a rule that Israel decided on, so it was a pretty quick stop and then we were on our way to Hezekiah's Tunnel.

Hezekiah’s Tunnel is a pipe of sorts, really. It was dug by Hezekiah to divert the water supply of an aboveground spring to be underwater in order to insure that the city would have water during the 700 BC siege of the Assyrians.

It’s narrow enough that you can only walk single file and everyone has to carry a flashlight. You wade through water the whole way, from ankle to thigh deep. There was a big sign warning against the use of backpack carriers and saying that the hike is not recommended for pregnant ladies or those suffering from claustrophobia.

Unfortunately, that sign is at the bottom of a long passage way to the tunnel, after you’ve already paid for your ticket and when you’re basically at the point of no return…unless you walk through the Canaanite tunnel, which is a one-way hike to the exit with no chance of re-admittance.

We decided that we’d try it, anyway. None of us are very claustrophobic, though you can’t help but have a few claustrophobic thoughts while making your way, hunchbacked, through a pitch black tunnel no wider than your shoulders, and I figured that hiking through Hezekiah’s Tunnel couldn’t be any more strenuous than hiking the Mount of Olives. If anything, it was going to be less strenuous and I couldn’t really see how it would endanger my pregnancy. As for the backpack carrier, we decided we’d just try it, anyway, since no one at the top had warned us that it wouldn’t fit and now we were stuck at the bottom with it.

It didn’t fit. Andrew couldn’t bend over to walk through the first part of the tunnel without risking decapitating Rachel. So he slowly backed out of the tunnel and we debated what to do while we were blocked in a little passageway by a huge tour group.

Eventually a worker came to tell the tour group to move on and asked us if we needed help with anything. We told him about our backpack dilemma. He told us that we could still take Rachel through the tunnel, just not in the backpack…for the very reason we had already discovered.

I was the lucky one to carry Rachel through the tunnel. Andrew carried the baby backpack with our water backpack strapped inside instead of Rachel, along with all our other hud.

Rachel screamed for the first half hour of the tunnel. We tried to tell her how much like a Dora adventure this was, but she wasn’t about to fall for anything like that. And then I hit my shoulder on the side of the tunnel.

“Whoa! Ooops!” I said while I ping-ponged between the walls of the tunnel, trying to reclaim my balance.

Rachel burst out laughing.

She leaned back and bonked her head on the wall.

“Whoa! Ooopies!” she laughed.

We kept her laughing until the end of the hike using slapstick comedy. Andrew would stumble, I’d trip or bump Rachel gently into the side. Rachel would laugh and laugh and laugh.

When we stepped out, blinking, into the late morning sunshine we asked Rachel if she had fun in the tunnel. She said she did. We asked her if she wanted to do it again. She said she did not.

Later she told me she was afraid there were going to be bats and that’s why she was screaming.

The tunnel exits at the Pool of Siloam, where Jesus healed the blind man. We stood on the pillars in the pool and did some yoga. Not that that has anything to do with healing the blind, but there were pillars. We had to.

After that we made our way, squelching our wet feet, to the Citadel museum. We had gone to the light show the night before and bought a combined ticket, which let us into the museum for free, basically. The museum had a lot of displays, kind of like a science fair, but lacked many real artifacts. I guess most of those are in the Israel museum and we never made it there, unfortunately.

The Citadel did afford us an excellent view of Jerusalem, however, and it was fun to walk along the walls.

By this time in the day we were all starving, so we hurried through the rest of the rooms, filled up our water bottles at the lovely drinking fountains they have all over Jerusalem, and headed out to find something to eat on our way to the Garden Tomb.

With it being Ramadan, it took us a long while to locate anywhere to buy cheap falafel. We kept winding our way towards Damascus Gate, which is near the Garden Tomb, hoping to find lunch along the way. Eventually I told the boys that I was giving up. Rachel and I parked ourselves on a set of stairs, out of the way of traffic, and sent the men off to be hunter-gatherers.

They returned with warm bread and falafel, and some delicious humus. Thinking we were isolated from most of the hubbub of the streets of the Old City, we started passing around food.

I was ravenous (have I mentioned lately that I’m pregnant?) and claimed the first loaf of bread. I had just ripped off a piece and was about to pop it into my mouth, too hungry to bother with falafel or humus, when some Muslim boys, probably between 11 and 13 years old, surrounded us, brandishing sticks.

“Inte mujnoona?!” they shook their sticks and shrieked at me, “Are you crazy?! It’s Ramadan!”

“Yes,” Andrew told them in Arabic, “But we are Christians, and besides, she’s pregnant.”

They threatened us with their sticks again, told us that they didn’t care, that they didn’t want to watch us eat, and chased us off. We found refuge in the Christian quarter. Religious intolerance is rather prevalent in Israel, it seems, almost encouraged—institutionalized racism. It keeps people afraid of each other.

Truthfully, we shouldn’t have been eating in front of Muslims but in our defense we were out of sight of the boys when we brought out the food. Must have been the smell that drew them towards us, although I don’t know why that would be the case since bakeries and restaurants remain open during Ramadan so the streets are constantly flooded with delicious smells, anyway. Besides, I am exempt from fasting by Islamic law because I’m pregnant.

I don’t know why they were so upset that they stumbled upon us (well, me) eating in a secluded stairwell leading to the Christian Quarter, but they were, and not wanting to be beaten with sticks (I doubt they really would have touched us) we left to eat around the corner, which was miya-ba-miya in the Christian Quarter instead of border lining the Muslim Quarter.

When our hunger was satisfied, we made our way back to the Muslim Quarter and wandered around until we found Damascus Gate and from there wandered around until we found the Garden Tomb, only getting lost a couple of times.

It was closed and we were a little baffled by this until we remembered that we had gone to church on Saturday, which meant that it was now Sunday, and the tomb is closed on Sundays because it is a Christian site.

We’re so used to going to church on Fridays that we could have sworn it was Saturday. At least we knew were the tomb was, right on Conrad Shick Street, just paces away from Damascus Gate. We made note of the hours to make sure that we wouldn’t mess up the next day, and left to go back to our apartment. I was wiped out.

The boys all left to go back into the Old City after dinner. Rachel and I stayed and relaxed (ie: used the Jacuzzi bathtub and then slept) in the apartment. It was the most wonderful evening!

Jerusalem Center and Orson Hyde Park – Jerusalem, day 3 (Aug. 29)

We woke up super early on Saturday morning so that we could stop by the Dome of the Rock on our way to church. Both of our guidebooks said that it was open for tourists Saturday through Thursday, which makes sense since Fridays is the Islamic day of worship.

Since we had to be to the BYU Jerusalem Center before 10 AM, we decided to hit up the mosque at 8 AM, which meant that we had to wake up with enough time to walk over there after getting ready for church. Our goal was to leave the apartment by 7:30 AM, but as per the usual we left a little late.

I had a little wardrobe malfunction in which I shattered the zipper on my skirt while I was trying to do it up. Not just broke, shattered. I don’t know what happened; it fit last week. At this point it seems like I can almost watch my stomach growing.

I had another muumuu-type dress with me, but I had washed it and it was still drying and far too wet to put on and have it dry on my person. That option was out. We poked around for a while trying to find a safety pin or some other doohickey to hold my skirt up and ended up coming across a needle and thread, so I sewed myself into my skirt.

We had been up for less than twenty minutes and I had already broken Shabbat. As I remember being chastised by my aunt when my cousin and I would sneak off to do cross-stitch on Sundays, “Every stitch you stitch on Sunday comes out your nose in heaven.”

Personally, I don’t think sewing on a Sunday is a sin, but even if it were, I think it would be forgivable if you have a wardrobe malfunction. (My mom once had to sew up her dress at church using some woman’s emergency sewing kit. She was the organist and had slipped out during a talk to nurse Patrick, stepped over a bench in the nursing lounge, and ripped her skirt right up the seam. She finished sewing just in time to walk back into the chapel and up to the organ to play the next hymn like nothing had happened.)

Andrew also had some wardrobe issues and played the part of what we like to call the “inactive father.” He had no belt, no tie, no Sunday shoes, no black socks. He looked so cool in his Sunday pants and flip flops, with his shirt gaping open where his tie should have been.

We left the house much later than expected, but that turned out alright because the Temple Mount ended up being closed, apparently due to Shabbat.

“But why?” Andrew asked the guard.

“Because it is Shabbat. Shabbat. You know?”

“Yes, but,” and Andrew actually said this, “Friday is their special day, not today. So why would their mosque be closed on your special day?”

The guard mumbled some sort of incomprehensible answer and we left, after Rachel and I went up to touch the Western Wall because we hadn’t been able to push our way through the crowds of women the day before to get there. Being there bright and early on the Sabbath, however, guaranteed us a spot at the wall.

We also got to hear some of the men wailing, which was interesting.

And then we left because there wasn’t anything else for us to do. We wandered around for a bit trying to figure out where the Jerusalem Center was so that we could walk to it; but we gave up in the end and took a taxi, who drove us the long way around to get up on Mount Scopus, where the Jerusalem Center lies.

We had nothing to do, but at least we had washrooms and drinking fountains nearby. We wandered around, played the piano, and took pictures to kill time before sacrament meeting started.

Slowly, slowly branch members began filtering in. We met the Geublers, who lived in the Cairo branch five years ago; the Lewises, who happen to know the Perrys, who are in our branch now; Brooke and Max, who I’ve been corresponding with for over a year now; Brother Emmett, who taught one of Andrew’s geography courses at BYU; and Jeremy, my Russian 101 teacher who was there with his wife—they’d been in Amman for the past six weeks working.

It’s a small world, after all.

By the time sacrament meeting started, Rachel was beyond all reason. She was exhausted and tired of us telling her to be reverent and she wanted a snack. Unfortunately, we forgot to pack a snack.

“Maybe animals crackers?” she asked, “Maybe fishies? Maybe pantoes [pancakes]? Maybe apples? Maybe candy?”

“I don’t have any of those snacks, Rachel. We forgot to pack snacks today. You’ll have to wait until nursery; maybe they’ll something to eat there.”

“Ummmmm….maybe nursing?”

Obviously the child was getting desperate. She has good logic, though, choosing something I can’t forget to pack. Too bad there’s no milk left for her (will she ever understand that?). Andrew had to carry her out screaming; he brought her back asleep. She slept right through the end of the three hour block of meetings.

When she woke up she asked me if I would take her to nursery.

“You missed it, babe,” I informed her.

She wasn’t very happy about that because she wanted to play with the kids and have a snack. Lucky for her there was a mix and mingle after church and we crashed it. We forgot to pack snacks—what else were we supposed to do? Besides, several people asked us to stay for it so it wasn’t technically crashing, although I did feel mildly guilty for not contributing to the pot luck.

We ate and visited and played around in the yard. Rachel had a blast. She ran around on the lawn in bare feet, singing made up songs of nonsense words, and laughing her head off.

One day? We need a yard. With grass.

After wandering around the grounds we got to walk down to “Level 1” with the nursing professor so that she could let us out of the gates down there—the missionaries gave us directions to the Orson Hyde Memorial Park…we had missed it by less than 100 feet on the day we couldn’t find it!

We kind of fell in love with the Jerusalem Center after “touring” around it. All we could say was, “Those lucky, lucky Jerusalem Center kids!”

Their experience in Jerusalem must be so different from the experience we had on our study abroad in Amman where we were dumped off in the city and told good luck. Talk about pampered! Those Jerusalem Center kids have a library, a gym, a cafeteria, dorms, church, school, gardens, everything! Everything is right there when they arrive in the city. And everything is beautiful and doesn’t smell like scary-apartment-smell.

Andrew said that one day (mark his words) he’d teach at the Jerusalem Center. Whether that be through BYU or while on sabbatical from another school, we don’t know. We don’t know if it will even happen, truthfully. We still don’t know where we’re going for his PhD program…but it’s a nice dream. The Jerusalem Center is amazing and we’ve fallen in love with Jerusalem! We’d love to spend more time there.

It only took about fifteen minutes to get to Orson Hyde Park from the Jerusalem Center, and that included a stop on the way for Rachel to visit with Wall-E. These yellow pipe things (fire hydrants maybe?) are all over the city and Rachel insists that they are all Wall-E. “So many Wall-Es!” she says.

Orson Hyde Park was pretty cool. We weren’t expecting it to take up the whole mountainside. That kind of makes the fact that we couldn’t find it even more embarrassing! It is so close to the Garden of Gethsemane. To get to it from the Garden of Gethsemane you just start heading up the Mount of Olives and veer left, and keep veering left at every opportunity. Eventually you’ll come to a small parking lot of sorts. There’s a red gate of sorts; you go through that and find yourself at the bottom of the park.

Of course, that means that you’d then have to walk uphill to walk through the entire park. The directions we got from the Jerusalem Center led us to the top of the park so we got to work our way downhill, which was kind of nice. We made Rachel walk the whole way; not that she minded. She had a great time!

We took a lot of pictures, obviously. I promise we weeded through them before putting them up, but I think we probably have so many here that you feel you walked down the Mount of Olives with us.

We walked from the park to the Old City through Lion’s Gate and walked down Via Dolorosa again, stopping at a few churches on the way back to our apartment.

At the Church of the Flagellation, there are flagstones on the floor that have little charts carved into them. These are apparently like the game boards that the Roman soldiers used to gamble away the Savior’s clothes.

The apartment that we stayed in was only a five minute walk from King David’s Hotel, which is not to far from Jaffa Gate. There’s a pretty big hill that we had to climb everyday to get home from the Old City, though.

We wanted to see the light show at the Citadel because we heard that was a show not to be missed, so while Joseph and Andrew went to acquire some tickets for us, Patrick, Rachel, and I began the long climb up the hill to “David the King” street. Rachel walked the whole way; quite the feat for such a little girl.

When she got to the top, Uncle Patrick offered to give her a lift the rest of the way home. She was pretty exhausted and could hardly even hold on, so he threw her over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. In spite of her tiredness she was pretty excited to be “up-down” (translation: upside down). She loves her Uncle!

By the time we made it home, Andrew and Joseph had caught up with us. Pregnant ladies and two-year-olds must walk slowly…Rachel and I had a long and luxurious nap to make up for all our walking when we got home, in preparation for Saturday evening’s activities (the light show at the Citadel, which I'll blog about when I finish uploading the video).