Getting to Know Jerusalem!

I haven't posted in a few days so I thought I would update everyone! Mostly we've just been having class but yesterday we had a field trip! We didn't have to leave until 10:30am and we already were up for breakfast so me and a few friends decided to walk to the Elvis Inn... the closest food place to the Moshav... to get coffee! It was about a 10 minute walk and we were in for quite a treat once we got there... Elvis pictures and statues were EVERYWHERE! If you want to see pictures of what it looks like inside here is the website... http://www.2eat.co.il/elvis/ ... the pictures aren't great and the site isn't in English but it will give you an idea. When you buy coffee (in our case a cappuccino) for 15 shekles (about 4 dollars) you get a free Elvis mug too! When we got back we basically got on the bus to head for Jerusalem! We went to the Jerusalem Museum first to see a giant model of what the city looked like about 10 years after the time of Jesus and pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls from 100 BC! The scrolls are invaluable because the next oldest copies of Biblical texts are from 1000 AD! From here we walked to a park (with a workout playground... so fun) and had Pizza Hut!! Now, it was still kosher but still, it was pizza! We then spent some time touring around part of West Jerusalem and we tried these delicious pastries in the marketplace...so good! We were then turned split into teams and turned lose to complete a picture scavenger hunt which was fun... and we got some money from Bill to buy some coffee at Aromas (the Israeli equivalent of Starbucks) and it was actually pretty good! It was a fun day but I'm always exhausted after field trips cause you are basically walking around all day! Today I had my four hour Modern Israel class which was pretty good... we talked about the Holocaust so it was pretty disturbing but interesting at the same time. Our professor is Israeli and his grandparents were both in the Holocaust so he told us some of the things they had told him about it.
As we've been having so many field trips in Jerusalem we have also been memorizing verses about Jerusalem and it always reminds me of how special Jerusalem really is. Bill reminded us that its not so much that the city itself is more special than any other place on the earth physically but that God chose it to be special and to be the stage for so many important events in the Bible. Our verses that we memorized this week is:
Psalm 48:8-14
"As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever. Selah We have thought on your steadfast love, O God, in the midst of your temple. As your name, O God, so your praise reaches the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness. Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgements! Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever."