I hear Jerusalem bells a ringin

Shalom again. time for the weekly update from jeru. this week has been super busy - like always - but amazing all the same. once again the pics will take you through some of the stories from my life. soon i will get more creative and start writing the showing pics of unique things, but this photo journal is all i can handle at the moment. anyway, the only bumber about this week is that i have been informally diagnosed with mono (didi), strep throat (steph), tonsilitis (me), and throat herpes (kat). nasty huh. it grosses me out too. thankfully this information is coming from 20-year old students instead of from the doc - who wont tell me what is going on. its really not much of a set back at all - hardly worth mentioning actually, except for the diagnoses are kind of funny to me. enough about my ailments. life is great! see for yourself:

ophir yardin, his son - shemmai, and i after seder. pictures below have better explanations of the evening. ophir is our judaism teacher here at the jc - and a total stud at that. we spent quite a bit of time with him this week. classes, fieldtrips to yad voshem (explained later) and mt. hertzl, passover seder, etc.. he knows a ton... i guess thats his job, but hes really good at it. he really is one of the most articulate, intelligent, creative, and kindest people i know. i always imagined what it would be like for him to stand up in front of a bunch of mormon kids that know next to nothing about your religion and then gradually unfold to them your beliefs in a comprehensible manner. i guess thats exactly what i did as a missionary... or atleast tried to do. but i wasn't teaching a people that were as ignorant about christianity and mormonism as i am about judaism. anyway i have tons of respect for the guy.

me and my "hillel sandwhich" during our passover seder meal. we had a fake but real passover meal a couple of days ago. our teacher, ophir yardin, pictured above put it on for us so we could get the experience of what one is like. it was fun... and very long - prob 4 hours. i loved every sec of it and i'd do it again. a hillel sandwhich is a mixture of this sweet rice stuff, bitter herbs, and leaf, and matza - so good!
so heres the deal, that is some matza (unleavened bread) topped with bitter herbs and the beginnings of a moustachio. actually its hardly the beginnings. i've been hard at work on that thing for about a month. i've been busted for wearing thongs (flip-flops for the dirty minded peeps out there) and my hats. perhaps this is my way to rebel and still stay within the official guidelines of byu. stay tuned for more pics in the future - i'm keeping this guy for while. despite many contrary opinions (mainly by girls) i think it looks amazing.

mandy, erin, kristy, and i at our passover seder. using a little bubbly for our toast to la chaim - hebrew for "life." if you look closely you can see the beginnings of what is called my "lovestache." its been growing for quite some time now. i just realized that i posted all my pics in reverse order again, so what you're viewing is the reverse order of the way things have happened in the past week. plus i'm filling in the information of the pics from bottom to top on my blog. if you're reading this in what would appear to be chronological order then you've likely read about my 'stache.

just a cool pic of an israeli paratrooper remembering the late theodore hertzl - the man who was responsible for creating the zionist community and was so instrumental in the creation of a jewish national state.

i had to post this one. allow me to introduce to those of you who don't know... bro brown. this pic is so quintessential bro brown. he's prob one of my favorite people alive. he's the associate director here at the jc and he's a total stud. heres a few of his jobs here - world renown archeologist, documentary film director (check out "journey of faith), district president of the isreali church system, ultimate bad a. some people might be curious about this last one, but there is an evergrowing crowd of people who believe there is a wild side of bro brown that is itching to get out... or is being forcefully supressed. spend a few minutes in the oasis with him and you'll see what i'm talking about. as a side note, notice the ear muff earphones with the sunhat over them. love him
oh yeah, this pic was taken at yad voshem - "a name and a memorial" - the jewish holocaust memorial museum. i've been to the dc holocaust museum and this one was way different. good (if you can actually call a holocaust museum "good" - perhaps interesting and informative would be the more operative words) but different. if you're curious how i'll tell you in person cuz thats a topic thats way too long.

hezekiahs tunnel - you cant really tell from this pic, but the cave is actually pitch black... hence the head lamp. this was a great field trip day because we went over to muhammads house afterward for jello, watermelon, and tea... which we had to respectfully decline. muhammad is one of our cooks here at the jc. the bad part is walking around in pant that are soaked up to your crotch area. it full on looks like i peed my pants - and i must have been a camel to be able to hold that much fluid.

sexy plexy pretty little thing... michael showing some leg... some beautiful leg at that. those tree stems deserve to be shown off. notice the difference between him and me. i couldn't get my pants over my thunder thighs to save myself from getting soaked. he reminds me of one of those trees on lord of the rings that can walk through the floods.

What a day! what started out as a day of mindless meandering turned into the best of days ever. rach, jenna, and i randomly walked into this ceramic store in the middle of west j only to find these little flutes. you play them by blowing into their butts. jenna and i are playing pheasants or peacocks or something and rach is playing an old jewish fellow. definitely a great moment of my life. i was about to by one since i have a surprise flute solo coming up for our talent show. however this new flute would have sent me back about 50 bones. i'm too stingy. oh yeah, there is probably a few things i've learned that should be known about our free days when we find cool stuff like this: 1)travel in small packs. if you bring 6+ people you carrying far too much baggage and its way too hard to please everyone. 2) girls are great to roll with... but they shop so freaking much. you think i would have realized this over the past 25 years of living with tons of girls in the fam. 3) shopping, as painful as it can be, can occasionally (and i do mean only occasionally) lead to wierd ceramic flutes, meetings with guys named "joseph smith" (this christian shopkeeper that is going to let me box with him), and other great experiences that i can't think of because they will never happen - lesson: shopping is no bueno.

coldplay. viva la vida. "hear the jerusalem bells a ringin...". yeah, that was me. i played those bells. except i didn't play coldplay. i played "high on a mountain top" without making a mistake... in the first verse. i botched up the second verse pretty good though. bro whip had to play double time for me, but i got back on track. so heres the story. these is at the bell tower at the ymca building just outside the walls of the old city. the jc music ambassador (walter whipple - aka whip - pictured below) is the only authorized bell player for the tower. so happens that this tower houses the only set of caroline bells (i think that means bells that can actually be played by this piano-looking ringer system) in the entire middle east. in short, i am one of a very select few who have played bells that ring across the holy land - this is basically my new claim to fame. i lived on cloud 9 for the rest of the day, week, and probably for the rest of this year because of this moment in my life.

walter whip and isaac jamming out to "beethovens 9th" (i actually don't know if thats really what it was, but it was a crazy piece of music) on the caroline bells. it was an amazing number - almost as difficult and complex as my performance of "high on a mountain top."

Pics for my peeps

So heres the skinny from jeru. life has been a bit busy with tests and papers lately... i can't believe i find myself worried about still trying to get good grades being that i'm done with school. but i also can't stand worrying about school when there is so much to be do out here. in retrospect, this isn't far different than the way i felt about school back in ptown... except there isnt a dang thing to do back in provo.

our main field trip was out to the lands of shephelah this week. it was more of a military/phillistine outing than anything else. these pics actually tell the whole story of everything we did... and how we felt about it all. so without further ado:
Walt Whip and I (and the Big Cat in the background). This is probably my favorite man ever. Here's the pedigree: overcame deathly heart conditions to serve a mission, became an expert pianist and organist, played as an honorary guest for mo tab, went to poland for a violin-making apprenticeship, called to be the first mission pres of poland (because he learned polish as a apprentice... among other reasons too) (he prob went home a year before dust man went there), now he's translating the book of mormon into polish, now he's the music ambassador for the center and tomorrow i'm going with him to play the bells/organ at the ymca here in jerusalem. The whipster is one of the boys! today he fell asleep during sacrament meeting right as we were supposed to sing the closing song (hes the accompany guy)... we had a good minute of pure silence before he woke up to play the organ. I should follow that story up by saying he is also one of the most down to earth, simple yet intelligent, kind, giving, funny, and spiritual guys i know. This pic was on our way to the valley where david slew goliath.

Bet most of yall didn't know that i was caught up to heaven while i was here. this was at the bell caves which are these limestone quarrys that the peoples of antiquity made.

Steph, my cave buddy and I. Being two of the smaller people here, steph and i went spelunking through the caves less traveled. funny story - right after she took the pic of me up top, she all of the sudden disappeared. No joke, one minute she was there and the next she was gone. the only form of life left was histarical laughter. The girl, unknowingly, was right in front of a whole in the floor. when she turned to keep going down the tunnel, she shot down through the floor. by the time i got to her, 1 foot, 1 arm (holding the camera), and her head were sticking out of the hole. it was an instant classic. good thing that hole wasnt a never ending abyss.

This pic says it all @ tell lachish. this is about how interested we are when we sit out in the sun all day and listen to endless stories about a town than none of us have ever heard of before. what you don't see is me and a few others either looking for pottery shards or throwing rocks off of the walls of the city.
I found this painting buried deep in the jewish quarter yesterday. its pretty much my favorite thing ever. i tried to buy it but they want 1800 bucks. i offered him 10, plus one of the girls that was with me. still no dice.
the old city is gummi and candy heaven. i normally grab myself a hefty bag of candy before each sabath... because they don't feed us lunch. every sabath is pretty much a fast sunday. thankfully we eat at 4 instead of 6. the crappy thing is that we don't eat again until the next morning. this definatly sucks because my stomach shrinks so much that i can never eat enough not to be super hungry. i've lost all kinds of weight since being here.
This is the early morning of shavout. judging by my hair i'd say it was about 5 in the morning. many jewish people stay up all night long reading from the torah and praying. we got to the wailing wall as things were winding down. apparently it was way more packed earlier... hard to believe.