Peace...Shalom...Salam

Hey all!

So, I wasn't ready to post a lot, but I figured I'd put a few pictures up for my mom's sake.  So, yeah, here are some pictures from our adventures thus far.  I have lots more I want to put up, but the Internet here is being fishy.  It will come in time, I promise.  

We went down into the Old City of Jerusalem today and walked through the souk, which is the underground marketplace.  I guess the only way to explain it in our American schema, without the pictures I tried to load just now, is to compare it to Aladdin.  Yes, Aladdin.  You walk down these little cobblestone alleys packed with people and goods.  It smells deeply of spices and freshly-made pita bread.  You see lots of hanging tapestries and beautiful clothing.  It's really cool!  We had an awesome exclusive tour with a guy recommended by Bishop Younan, who we met later in the day.  This guy, named Albert, gave us a brief history of Israel, then took us up to the roof to show us Jerusalem via rooftop.  It was amazing.  We went for hummus and pitas afterwards, which was twice as amazing.  Fresh hummus with olive oil and pine nuts...YUM!  I'm really overjoyed at the food we've had thus far: tons of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, real yogurt (not banana flavored!), fresh pitas, hummus, fruit, etc, etc.  We also saw what appeared to be a herd of kindergarten boys running through the little streets, all clad in Spiderman bookbags.  Two of them started to wrestle in a pile of cardboard boxes in the street; it was so adorable!  The bus system is interesting here, because the Israeli buses are nice, air-conditioned coach buses, while the Arab buses are rather old and tired looking red buses, with open sides.  I'm sure I'll learn more about that.  

We're headed to the West Bank tomorrow, so I'm really excited for that.  I'm a little nervous about passing through the checkpoints at the "security fence," but I gather that Americans, especially us blonde/blue-eyed Americans, are ushered through rather quickly and painlessly.  I think this will be hard to watch Palestinians wait and get denied entrance though.  

We had an interesting conversation with a man who is a legal consultant for the United Nations yesterday.  He was not optimistic about the whole situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  In fact, he quoted Peace, Shalom, Salam, and said that it wasn't possible.  This resonated with me, because we had sung the song, "Peace, Shalom, Salam" for our morning devotion yesterday.  Although, he's lived here for a very long time, so we're thinking that he may not hate it as much as he says, but maybe has hardened himself to dealing with the every day sights of people struggling to find justice in the world.  Not really sure about that one.

Alright, I am pretty tired, as it's midnight here, but 5pm at home, so I'm going to find sleepytime.  These captions are messed up right now, but please use your best judgement in figuring them out for now until I'm more coherent to fix them.

This is a view from the top roof of the apartment of the President of the Palestinian branch of Coca-Cola.  We had an exclusive tour of Jerusalem via rooftop.  It was pretty sweet.  You can see the gold cupola is the Dome of the Rock, where the Muslims believe Muhammed ascended into heaven.  You can also see the three towers in the background on the horizon.  The furthest left is for Hebrew University.  The middle one is for the Christian Ascension Church, where the Christians believe Christ ascended.  The furthest right one is where the Jewish people believe Christ ascended.

Another view from the roof!