Jerusalem to Nazareth (Sept. 1)

We picked up our rental car early in the morning and packed up to head to Nazareth. Rachel behaved horrendously all morning. I was trying to get things ready to go and she was clinging to me and crying; when we got in the car she continued fussing and screaming whenever anyone so much as looked at her.

Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep. At least she was quiet.

Andrew planned a bit of a biblical tour for us on our way to Nazareth. Our first stop on our way, which was kind of out of our way, was Caesarea.

I navigated on the way there and only got us lost a couple of times. Driving in Israel isn’t too bad, really…not that I drive, but the traffic really isn’t that bad and most of the signs are in English as well as Hebrew and Arabic. Sometimes they are only in Hebrew, other times only in Hebrew and Arabic, but most of the important routes are marked in English and tourist destinations are very easy to find.

The minute I pulled Rachel from the car seat, I knew why she had been grumpy all morning. She had developed a high fever in the few hours we were driving and was absolutely miserable.

We decided to visit Caesarea anyway since they have water and restrooms, which our car didn’t.

Multimedia presentations seem to be the cool thing to do in Israel right now. Many tourist destinations have them; they really aren’t that neat or informative, although it is interesting to get the Jewish take on world history. We sat through the first half of the presentation, enjoying the air conditioning and cuddling Rachel, and then were taken up to the Artnova Gallery for the second half. When that was finished we had to walk through the art gallery to get to the exit.

The bathrooms were in the hall, so we stopped to use them.

I set Rachel down for a few minutes in a window sill since I was getting tired of carrying her. She didn’t want anyone else to carry her, so I was stuck with her…not that I mind, she’s just heavy. I was leaning against the sill, still cuddling her, when she started burping.

“Mommy! *Burp!* My tummy’s *burp* poppin’ *burp*!”

And then she threw up, drenching her shirt and skirt and splattering my shirt and pants as well. Luckily she missed the art.

I rushed her off to the bathroom and hollered for Andrew to help me. No one was around so he just came right on in and together we stood in the women’s bathroom in a deserted art gallery in Caesarea.

She threw up a second time in the sink, and so we rinsed it all down the drain, stripped off her clothes and washed those out in the sink as well.

We didn’t want to leave since we had already paid the entrance fee, so we carried her around for a bit wearing nothing but her underwear. We draped her wet t-shirt over her back so that she wouldn’t burn. It didn’t take long for us to realize that all of us staying was a ridiculous idea.

Andrew took her back to the car and I continued through the park with Patrick and Joseph. I’m not sure who got the better end of the deal. Patrick was Mr. Humbug and woudn’t go see any of the Roman ruins. He said that seeing Roman ruins in Israel was lame and that if he had wanted to see Roman ruins he would have gone to Rome, which is on his list of places to visit, anyway. He doesn’t want to spoil any surprises Rome might hold and thought that spending money to get into Caesarea was a waste of money. He was such a grump that I could hardly stand to look at him; he scowled the whole time we were there.

Joseph, on the other hand, wanted to see everything. I had to keep reminding him that Rachel was sick and I needed to get back to her, we all needed to get back to her, so that we could get to Nazareth and get her taken care of.

I felt like the biggest nag, dragging one “child” through the park and trying to reign the other in so that we could make it to the exit.

We walked through the Roman baths (well, Joseph and I did; Patrick wouldn’t set foot in them), saw the Hippodrome, and visited the Temple Dais, as well as the hall where Paul appealed to Caesar.

Admittedly, it was a bit of a whirlwind tour and I would have liked to stay longer myself…but it just wasn’t practical given the circumstances. It was refreshing to be by the sea, but I think we all left with sour attitudes, anyway.

It took me so long to herd those boys to the exit that Andrew and Rachel came back from the car to look for us. Patrick grumbled his way back to the car, Joseph almost turned to a pillar of salt he was longing to go back so badly, and I told Andrew I was ready to pull my hair out. Andrew just cranked the music up in the car and we spent a while sitting in silence until the mood dispelled.

At least Andrew and Rachel were happy.

Rachel fell asleep minutes after we took off on our way to Megiddo, which is where John said the nations will assemble for the battle of Armageddon. The word Armageddon is actually derived from the name Megiddo, or vice versa.

We decided not to actually enter the park since all Rachel wanted to do was cuddle, but we did use the restrooms and randomly ran into Brother Emmet and the other BYU-Jerusalem Center professors who were also out touring before the students arrived. We also took a few snapshots from the top of the hill and picked some pomegranates…I’m not sure we were supposed to do that. I wasn’t exactly involved, though, since I was in the car cuddling Rachel.

Fifteen minutes later and we found ourselves in Nazareth. We met up with Marie Jean, who we thought would be a nice, grandmotherly nun since she works at the Sisters of Nazareth Convent and her name is Marie Jean, which sounded kind of nun-ish to us. She’s not, though, but that’s okay because she also had a different idea about how we would be.

Marie Jean rented us her husband’s dead grandmother’s apartment, without permission--and really with express disproval—from his relatives, who happened to live in the apartments in the next few floors above our apartment.

The convent wants to start renting it out on a regular basis. The family doesn’t want this to happen, so we were given a cover story.

Marie Jean told her husband’s uncle that she visited us in America when we had our first baby and now we were visiting Israel and needed a place to stay. Turn about is fair play, after all, and Arabs are all about wusta.

The only problem was that she visited America in 1996. I hadn’t even met Andrew then. I was eleven years old and living in Canada still. He was only twelve. Somehow, though, we managed to have a baby in 1996 so that she could visit us and our new baby.

We decided to tweak the story so that Marie Jean visited my older sister to help her with her baby. That story really is believable because I did have a sister who was bearing children then and have a 12-year-old niece. I don’t think anyone really would have believed that Andrew and I were the parents of a 12-year-old. Besides, family is family, connections are connections, wusta is wusta. It doesn’t matter how remotely related you are or how many degrees of separation there are.

As far as her relatives were concerned, we were in. The uncle, who is the most opposed to using the apartment as a hostel of sorts, only ever smiled at us and went on his way. Another part of our cover story was that we didn’t speak a lick of Arabic; and he didn’t speak a lick of English so it worked out.

The apartment was wonderful. Mary Jean had stocked the fridge and pantry with fresh fruit and vegetables, cookies, cereal, milk, juice, bread, cheese, meat, and almost everything else imaginable. She borrowed a crib for Rachel to sleep in and set up hide-a-beds for Patrick and Joseph in the living room.

I sent Andrew and Patrick out to find a pharmacy soon after we arrived and just sat on the couch holding poor little Rachel. The pharmacy must have been really close to the house because they came back after what seemed like only a few minutes bearing medicine and, as an added bonus, a slushie (to help lower her fever and replenish her fluids, Andrew said). Rachel willingly took her medicine, drank about half a slushie, and then climbed off my lap and wandered into the bedroom.

“I want sleep mommy-daddy’s bed,” she said and then noticed there was a crib. “Ooh, my twib. I want sleep my twib.”

I got her set for a nap and lifted her into the crib where she slept and slept and slept the afternoon away.

The boys went back to the slushie place to take pictures of the car on the roof and get some slushies for everyone else. Mango-strawberry slushies. Best ever.

Garden Tomb, West Bank, Yad Vashem –Jerusalem, day 5 (Aug. 31)

The Garden Tomb was by far my favorite place in Jerusalem; there is a sacred, peaceful feeling in the garden. Even though it was full of tourists when we visited it in the morning, everyone was quiet and respectful, and it was just beautiful. Unfortunately we didn’t spend very much time there because it was so crowded, but it was still nice.

It is very near the bus stop that we used to get to Bethlehem. In fact, the bus stop is located right under Skull Hill, so it was easy to find after we’d walked to the lookout point in the garden and saw it.

Bus number 124 drops you off at the checkpoint, so although my friend Brooke recommended taking bus 21 (which would take you around the checkpoint), Andrew insisted we take # 124, just so that we could have the experience.

The bus ride was quick and luckily we didn’t have a hard time at the checkpoint, either. The minute we’re identified as Americans we’re waved through pretty much anything.

The wall though, is awful. It’s a concrete scar zigzagging across the landscape. It seems to promote fear and hatred more than safety and peace.

The Israeli side is quite pristine; the Palestinian side, however, is covered in graffiti and smeared with human defecation.

The religions listed on this hand are Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, in case you can’t make it out. And sorry about the swear word…the people are angry; I can hardly blame them. I wouldn’t want to be cut off from my homeland and livelihood and be forced to live on a little strip of land behind a huge wall with snipers looking down on me all the time like I’m some kind of criminal just for being alive.

We hired a cab from the wall and he drove us to all the touristy sites before depositing us back at the wall. He didn’t want to drive us to just one place and we couldn’t convince him to just drop us downtown, but it ended up being fine. We made friends with him and he ended up shooing all the other taxi drivers trying to get us to go other places away, telling them all about us, what we were doing, that we’re Mormons and don’t drink tea or coffee or alcohol, that we don’t smoke, and that Andrew’s been studying Arabic for years.

It was nice to have someone else waving away the cab drivers for us!

Our cab driver took us to the Shepherd’s Hill, which is supposedly where the angel came to the shepherds to tell them of the baby Jesus. There’s a chapel marking the spot, but I’m not sure how exact the location is.

It was fun to look out over the hills, though, and imagine what it would have been like to be a shepherd there on that holy night. We even saw a shepherd herding his sheep and goats on the hillside.

We also visited the Milk Grotto, where supposedly a drop of Mary’s milk fell while she was nursing baby Jesus. There are a lot of traditions surrounding this event—one that Jesus caught the drop of milk and that is what gave him his power, and another that the milk turned the stone white and that mixing it with your drinking water will make your breast milk stronger. There are probably other tales.

Next we went to Manger Square and visited the Church of the Manger. It is built over the spot where tradition holds the baby Jesus was born; the church is one of the oldest churches in the world and has written records dating back to around 100 AD marking it as “the place,” so it likely is.

Although I doubt the star on the floor marking the exact place the Savior was born is really the exact spot. I tried to imagine marking the exact “spot” Rachel was born and couldn’t figure out anyway to really do that.

We also visited an olive wood shop that sold overpriced carvings. We didn’t buy anything there, but Rachel and I did go up onto the roof to use a doorless bathroom guarded by a dog.

Our taxi driver wanted to take us to visit some monasteries as well, but we had other things on our itinerary so he dropped us back off at the wall. We kind of got stuck going through the checkpoint because we couldn’t figure out how to get past the turnstiles. None of them would turn.

Finally a Palestinian man who was at the checkpoint with us yelled for us to come to a different turnstile than the one we had been standing at. We had been periodically checking them all. There are red and green lights above them and you can only go through if the light is green. They were all red…until now.

“This one is working!” he yelled, “Come quickly!”

So we ran over there and made it back to the Israeli side after being “stuck” in Palestine for about 20 minutes.

We caught bus 124 back into Jerusalem and got dropped off at Damascus Gate around 1:30, whereupon Rachel announced she had to go to the bathroom and was very, very hungry. And thirsty.

I asked her if she could hold her business for a half hour until the Garden Tomb opened again so that we could use a clean restroom. She said she could, so we found another falafel place, bought some lunch, and went to eat outside the gates to the Garden Tomb.

When it opened we were just finishing up our lunch. Two or three other people arrived and went inside before we did. It was perfect; I highly recommend showing up right when the gates open. If the garden was peaceful before, now it was absolutely tranquil. We were able to take some better pictures by the tomb and spend some time pondering and feeling the spirit.

Opening the door to the tomb and finding it empty inside was very powerful, much more powerful than being herded in and out of the tomb in a line of tourists. I’m so grateful for the atonement of the Savior, for the gift of resurrection, and for the hope of eternal life.

In light of my friend Ryan’s death, I almost want to end this post here because knowing that my family has been sealed together, and that Kate and Ryan were sealed together as a family, gives me such comfort. The Savior made it possible for us all to conquer death; Ryan is not here, but he will be reunited with his little family again for all of eternity. And that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing.

We did do more in Jerusalem on this day, so I suppose I will carry on. Andrew wanted to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. Andrew has relatives who died at Auschwitz (and Nazi relatives who worked at Auschwitz…) and he did a Holocaust remembrance ceremony for his Eagle Scout project. He’s wanted to visit Yad Vashem for years, so we couldn’t not go.

Unfortunately, children under the age of 10 aren’t allowed in the museum and we didn’t find out that little detail until we got there; guidebooks need to start mentioning those kinds of things. We split up and Andrew watched Rachel while I went through with Patrick and Joseph; then Patrick and I watched Rachel while Andrew went through and Joseph continued on.

Patrick and I made it back to Andrew with three minutes to spare before they locked the doors and didn’t let any visitors in. He had to book it to get inside, but he made it.

It’s a beautiful museum with some very poignant displays. At one point there was a pit full of scorched shoes; glass covered the shoes and you could walk over them to get to the next part of the exhibit. It was amazing to see how many shoes there were.

I also liked all the interviews they did with concentration camp survivors and all the personal stories they had up on the wall.

I’ll admit to being a bit of a World War II fan, myself, and for years my favorite book as a child was Number the Stars. Fan is not really the word I’m going for since I think the Holocaust was a terrible thing and that war, in general, is horrible…I suppose it’s hatred that draws me to the subject. I don’t understand how one group of people can collectively hate another group of people so intensely. Hate is a difficult emotion for me to understand at all. I understand fear and anger and frustration, and I suppose all those things fuel hatred, but I still don’t get it.

Walking through the museum was confusing for me, as well. Words like “emancipation” and “freedom” and “rights” were being thrown around, telling of the Jews struggle to gain such things.

I realize that the Holocaust was much worse than what is happening to Palestinians in Israel. However, as the museum itself pointed out, the Holocaust started by defining people as “others,” by putting those “others” behind walls, and then slowly taking their rights and livelihood away until they are no longer thought of as citizens, or even as people. I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Who is building walls now? Who is promoting fear and hatred of ‘the other’ now?”

At the same time I admire the strength and bravery of the Jewish people for enduring such harsh treatment for so long; I think they deserve a place to worship freely and to rebuild their traditions and culture. I just don’t think they should trample on the rights of other people to do so.

Have I mentioned recently...

...that I love Andrew? Because I do. I'm so lucky to be married to such a wonderful person. Andrew is my favorite.

...that I love being a mom? Because I do. It's hard, that's true, but it's the greatest thing I've ever done and Rachel is such a joy to have in our home. I love her so much! I already love baby Miriam, too, and can't wait to meet her.

...that I love my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and in-laws and grandparents and aunts and uncles? Because I do. My family is amazing.

...that I love the gospel? Because I do. I love the Plan of Happiness and am grateful that the Savior lived and died for me and atoned for my sins so that I can return to live with Heavenly Father again. I am so thankful for temples and sealing power so that our family can be together forever.

...that life is fragile? Because it is.

I just wanted to make sure that I said that recently.

My friend Ryan, who I went to high school with, died yesterday in a car crash, on the scene. His wife, Katie, who I supervised in Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU, is in the hospital, unconscious, with serious injuries. Their new baby, Cora, is fine. Ryan's parents are on their way to pick up baby Cora; Katie's parents are in the hospital with her.

This is my worst nightmare. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Andrew saw me writing this and asked if it was in case I died. And it kind of is. Because if anything like this ever does happen to our family, I want my children and husband and extended family to know that I love them. But it's kind of also because I'm alive, too. Because sometimes it's just important to tell people that you love them.

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!