weekend in Jerusalem

Thursday we didn't have Ulpan because we went on a tiyul to Jerusalem. The trip was actually much better than I expected it to be. I figured we were going to have a "Birthright tours the old city, again," but it wasn't like this. By this i mean seeing and learning about mostly only the Jewish aspects of the Old City (the Old City is what Jerusalem consisted of a long time ago), but we learned and toured places that are holy and important to all the three major religions there. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, walked through the Muslim quarters, and learned about all 4 religious people living there, the Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Armenians.
A bunch of us decided to spend the night/weekend in Jerusalem instead of going back with the group. Once we found our hostel, which was quite the expedition as it was in some back alley way in the Old City, we were pleasantly surprised at the condition of our room. If we had spent more time there or had it been warmer we would have enjoyed our own private terrace and we were nicely secluded from the rest of the guests. We went out in Jerusalem Thursday night to a pretty cool bar and then a really fun dance bar with sweet 70's music. It was really interesting to see a bunch of religious Jews hanging out drinking in the streets, as Tel Aviv is quite secular and this doesn't happen. Friday we bummed around the old city shopping in the markets of the different quarters. A few of us got lost in the Muslim quarter for an hour. I didn't think the old city was even big enough to get lost but once you start turning corners everything looks the same and eventually you find yourself being denied enterance to the Dome of the Rock, twice. Only Muslims can enter and we were clearly lost tourists, not muslims. After finding our was back to Jaffa gate I went to meet allie in the center of Jerusalem. Allie, Darya, and I ate at an amazing little restaurant just before shabbas started. It was super cheap, the service was unbelievable for Israel (kind, considerate, friendly, etc) and there was great live music. Anyway, later on Allie and I walked about an hour and a half to eat Shabbas dinner with a woman that I met here and her family. Dinner was delicious and the company was great, her husband was really funny and so nice and they have a 7 month old baby who is adorable, of course. The only downside was we had to walk back and it started raining quite heavily towards the end. ze b'seder, it's alright, Israel needs all the rain it can get. Saturday Allie and I ate Shabbas lunch at her and Abe's friend Alana's place. Again, great food, met new people, good times. This time, however, we took a cab as it was downpouring, still.
So today we submitted our form for our classes and started our last week of Ulpan. Tonight I'm going to Rivky's class again for more religious discussion and free dinner. (side note: this is who's house we ate at for Shabbas dinner). I'm going to try not to stuff my face just because the food is free...I'm having a hard time with that concept.

-Lauren