A Not Too Important Day

Church of the Redeemer

Looking to the Northwest

Dome of the Church in the foreground and Dome of the Rock in background

Well today wasn't a busy day. I did have class to day, just one, Islamic Thought. Which was quite interesting when we were talking about the prophet Muhammad and his talks with Jesus, Moses, and Adam; along with negotiating the amount of prayers people should do in a day, which was from 50 times a day to 5 times. After talking about the "ministry of Islam" and of Muhammad's life we just had discussion. Class ended and I was free for the day, so I went with some other fiends to climb the bell tower of the Church of the Redeemer. At the top we had a great overview of the Eastern Hill, so basically the Temple Mount and all of the quarters of the Old City. We then got down and walked to our local friend, Shaban, where we talked for the next 40 minutes till lunchtime back at the campus. He told us some of his stories of going to Shiloh and not liking it, and then taking tourist to the West Bank and the IDF stops him because he is Arab and the IDF officers just let him through cause Shaban is a well known guy in Jerusalem and many other cities. He also told us about the First Infatada.

We got back had lunch and I read and did some studying, then relaxed and took a short nap. Tomorrow is Shabbat and then on Saturday our Physical Settings class is taking a day trip to Bethlehem, Herodium, Mount of Olives, and other places. This will be my first time in the West Bank and going through checkpoints. And to be honest I'm kinda looking forward to it.

My initials on the bell tower