Travel Scribblings: This Year In Jerusalem

Last Sunday, around 4:30 a.m. Chicago time, I was aroused from a Dramamine-induced delirium—the closest thing to sleep I had gotten in almost twenty-four hours—by the bouncing of our tiny plane above the clouds. Here, somewhere above the Middle East where we were, it was 12:30 p.m. and my classmates and I were slumbering helplessly in the throes of jetlag. We hadn’t slept much on the big plane.

Already there were tangible reminders that we were not at home anymore. At the front of the plane, bathed in the blinding afternoon sun, stood three men in black clothing, with starched white collars and wide brimmed black hats, each with two long curls hanging just in front of their ears. They conversed with each other casually in Hebrew, while their wives sat nearby soothing babies and sleeping. It might have been a scene in some old Jewish neighborhood, not 25,000 feet in the air. And when I looked out the window, I could see the Judean Wilderness far beneath us. Home was long behind us.

We touched down in Tel Aviv after a bumpy descent and our jetlag momentarily fled. We were wide-eyed with wonder as we strode under the grand entryway into the airport. It drew our eyes upward with huge stone artifacts, set into the wall, and the sign which read “Welcome to Israel” in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. And then we passed through and beheld the army of customs officers.

The study abroad coordinators had warned us over and over about this part. “Tell them you are tourists,” they said. “DO NOT say you are students.” If we did, they would check us for student visas and, not finding any, detain us. I held my breath and prayed that I wouldn’t slip up.

The officers behind the glass looked unfriendly and intense. They asked what I was doing here (“Touring the country.”) and how long I was staying (“Two and a half months.”). Those two answers didn’t seem to line up, so they scrutinized me in Hebrew before grudgingly letting me go. I sighed relief and slipped through to the other side.

Now, officially, I was in Israel.

...

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Everyone back home was ecstatic over it, more excited about this than anything else I had ever done. They all planned to live vicariously through me, to watch my Facebook feed with bated breath, reading the blog posts and liking the pictures with wild abandon. And I would love to say that I was also bouncing off the walls with excitement, that I was shaken to the core with awe and wonder as soon as I stepped off that plane—but the reality was, I didn’t really feel any of those things. I felt tired, and apprehensive, and numb.

We followed our professor outside to the bus that would take us the rest of the way. The air in Tel Aviv was warm and smelled of salt. The Mediterranean, I thought as I breathed in. I allowed a tiny smile to creep in as I hefted my suitcase onto the bus. This was pretty cool.

Dr. Sanchez stood at the front of the bus and took role. One missing. He left to search for her and we prayed.

“We just prayed in Israel,” one of the guys said, and the rest of us rolled our eyes.

Sanchez found our missing sister delayed by the customs officer, and stayed behind to see her through. The rest of us were driven an hour away to the place that would become our home for the next two months: Jerusalem.

...

“Don’t fall asleep,” my roommate cautioned me as darkness fell and my eyes grew heavy. “You’ll be jetlagged tomorrow.”

I’m jetlagged tonight, I thought, and for a few minutes, I allowed my eyes to close.

When I opened them again, we were winding our way through Jerusalem’s busy streets, and I was surprised. This was not the Jerusalem of movie sets and museum reconstructions. This was not the Jerusalem of Jesus’ day. The pictures and books and movies had painted it as old and holy, retaining an ancient charm even in this modern age. But the Jerusalem I saw now was a real live city—developed, urban, congested. If this was the land where Jesus walked, then it had shed it’s skin a few times since then.

We pulled up to the hostel—our home—and the driver waited only long enough to let us grab our bags before pulling off into the rain. We rounded the corner and found the door, longing only for food and warmth and sleep.

An hour later, Dr. Sanchez joined us with our recovered sister, and we all sat down to eat. Then it was off to bed at long last, for classes started tomorrow.

...

The study abroad program I had chosen was divided into five sessions of two weeks each, with a tour thrown in for good measure. Two classes were held during every session except the one in which we toured, and students chose which one they would take. For the first session, I had chosen an advanced communication elective called Performing Scripture as a Dramatic Text.

In my three semesters at Moody, I had gotten involved in a hundred things, all of them away from the theatre crowd, and I missed acting. Performing Scripture wouldn’t have normally fit into my program as a counseling major, but study abroad opened up all kinds of doors that were usually closed. When I found that the other class in the first session was one I had already taken, I was excited. Finally, there was an opportunity for me to act at Moody.

Class began at eight o’clock every morning in the dining room, right after we had cleaned up the breakfast dishes and pushed back the tables and chairs. It continued until lunchtime, with one break in the middle. On that first morning, we circled up our chairs and did stretches and vocal warm-ups for a few minutes before diving into a lecture on technique.

The style we were learning was called oral interpretation. I had seen it done a few times, and it was different than any other method of acting I had learned before. It took passages of Scripture and made them into monologues, offering the actor the chance to teach by telling the story, rather than preaching through it. For twenty Moody students, who had long been instructed in the ways of proper exegesis and three-point sermons, it was a new and challenging way to experience the Bible. And that was a good thing.

From day one, we had two very large challenges: Number one, most of us had never done this before. Number two, our first performance was on Friday—and most of us had nothing memorized.

By the end of the first day, we knew we had our work cut out for us.

...

If class had been the only thing we had to worry about, it would have been easy. But we were adjusting to a whole new country and a whole new group of people, while battling both jetlag and the sickness that swept through our group as soon as we arrived. And Dr. Sanchez, our guide to the country, was in charge of orientation.

Dr. Sanchez had been at Moody for three years, and in that time, he had become a celebrity among the students. He was brilliant, dynamic, and engaging, and most of us blessed the ground he walked on. To spend our first two weeks in Israel with him was the opportunity of a lifetime—and it was also a lot of work. For the first couple of days, we left the hostel at 1:30 on the dot to wander Jerusalem—no resting, no naps, no sitting around. I wondered sometimes if it was a ploy to keep us from sleeping and prolonging our jetlag. No one could nap with all that we did. Everything was a blur of sights and colors and smells.

I think that was what I noticed the most during our first week: the smells. From the rich, spicy scent of our Mediterranean meals, wafting up from the kitchen twice a day, to the startling aroma of incense and shawarma in the Old City, to the too-sweet smell of the grocery stores on the corner, Jerusalem was a city that greeted you first in the nose, before anywhere else.

Sights and sounds always followed, of course. On Friday afternoon, I wandered the city with four other girls, trying to find a coffee shop that was open on Shabbat, and we stumbled upon an overlook. Suddenly, the entire Hinnom Valley was sprawling in front of us. We traced the ridge of the Mount of Olives and the wall that separated us from Jordan, and far away through the haze, we could see the mountains of the Judean Wilderness. We stood there for several minutes, in awe that this was our new life.

“Every time I think I’ve seen the best view,” someone said later, “I turn the corner, and there’s another one.”

As much as we all complained about the busyness, it was hard to regret being here when Jerusalem was stealing our breath away.

...

In the midst of homework and touring and culture shock, I found myself hit with homesickness by the middle of our first week. For the first few days, I hadn't let myself feel anything, afraid I would panic and fall to pieces in the presence of strangers. But slowly, as the nervousness melted away, I began to long for the familiarity of my life in Chicago.

I hadn't counted on the stripping nature of studying abroad. In Chicago, I had spent a long time cultivating a life I loved. I had a wide circle of rich, deep friendships that was forever expanding into a whirlwind of fulfilling interactions every day. I had a job I was passionate about, that allowed me to spend most of my days caring for the community around me. I had influence that put me in the thick of exciting reforms. I had freedom and confidence to roam the city on my own. I knew the language, the social norms, the coffee shops. Life in Chicago was dreamy.

Here, I had none of those things. I had two close friends with me, who I clung to and thanked God for, but everyone else was essentially a stranger. It was hard to know my place in the group without a title or a wide circle who knew me. My accomplishments meant nothing here. Thanks to Dr. Sanchez, I had a general understanding of the geography by the end of the first week, but I still had to take others with me to be safe enough to leave. I didn't know the language, the social norms, or even the coffee shops. Every time I looked out on the Jerusalem skyline, my awe was tinged with sorrow. I couldn't ever imagine feeling at home here.

And yet I knew it would. When the time came to leave, I wouldn't want to.

When I first came to Moody, I felt all of these same things. I remember sitting in my RA's room one night, feeling lost and hopeless, wondering when it would feel right to be here. "Jessi," she told me, "I think you're just gonna fall in love one day, and it's gonna happen all at once." And it had.

So it would be with Israel.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop just outside the Old City today, and it is raining. I'm sitting with two roommates and another friend, sharing the little connections that have the potential to grow into life-long friendships. The view from here is vast and beautiful, and one of my roommates just looked up and said breathlessly, "We live here."

I gazed out the window at the cypress trees and lovely limestone buildings, and smiled. "Yeah," I said, sighing hopeful contentment.

"We live here."

...

For those who are interested, here's a list of the places I have been so far, along with links so that you can learn about them!

Machane Yehuda Market, also known as the Shuk
Liberty Bell Park
The Mount of Olives
The Garden of Gethsemane
The Basilica of the Agony
The Kidron Valley
The Basilica of St. Anne's (and we did try out the acoustics--I wish you could have heard it!)
The Pool of Bethesda
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
The Via Dolorosa (This article is a little bit faulty, but it will give you a good explanation of the route)
The Garden Tomb
The Temple Mount
The Dome of the Rock
The City of David
Hezekiah's Tunnel
The Pool of Siloam
The Southern Steps