Well hello from the Holy Land everyone! Shalom! I, fortunately, have an incredible sister who is willing to post all the emails I send her on the blog so that all of you can see them, even though I can't update it myself. The security on these computers is really tight, they have blocked a lot of sites. I was honestly quite surprised to find that facebook was blocked, considering I had seen previous students get on it during even the spring semester! But that's okay. I don't really mind because I'll spend a lot more time getting to know new people rather than trying to stay connected to people i've known already for a while. Ok, so I'm looking at this keyboard and it's ridiculously cool because it has Hebrew letters on the keys as well as English. :D! I can't figure out how to get it to type that though...
Anyways, today is sunday for all of you. You will all have to go to church and stuff and I get to have my MNE 2 class which is taught by a Muslim Palistinian guy... I can't remember his name. Please excuse the way I introduced him, it wasn't meant to be rude or disrespectful or anything. So after class today I am planning on going with a bunch of people to the Old city to explore and do fun stuff. I'm going to get my money changed to sheckles (hooray!) and buy some more skirts to wear in Egypt, because it turns out, as much as I hate skirts, they tend to be much cooler than pants. Go figure. ;) haha. And in 120 degree heat, that is very important.
Yesterday I went to a fireside given by a teacher at UVU named Blair Vandyke. He was AMAZING, and totally reminded me of the character of Wilson on the TV show House. Sorry Kristen, he is married and has 7 kids ;). I thought of you though before I found out he was married. Actually, he married the girl he sat next to on the plane coming to the Jerusalem center when he came here! Freaky, haha. It was a cute story. Anyways, he told us all about 7 particular places in the Holy Land that have particular significance to LDS history, many of these were places where the Holy Land has been dedicated. It's been dedicated a total of 11 times! Wow. It must really be an important place. We had the firieside in the incredible auditorium where they hold concerts with the gorgeous organ and huge windows facing west towards the city. I had a hard time paying attention becasue I kept getting distracted by the sunset reflecting off the gold roof of the Dome of the Rock... (maybe that spelling is inacurate, I'll figure it out eventually though).
Everything here is amazing! I was glad I finally got to talk to mom on the phone last night, Mom, I hope you and Roger had fun at the Cabin and didn't get eaten by bears. Jeff, I hope mom told you about why I think about you all the time here. If not, write me an email and I'll respond to you with a personal one telling you all about it. I'll respond to you either way if you write me an email, but you particularly would LOVE it here. Dad, you'd better start saving up your money so that Jeff can come too! :) I will be so jealous. Oh Jeff, also, i told Katy Seely that you said hi, and she told me to say hi back. She's adorable.
So yesterday we ("The Chicago 20" as we have been so fondly dubbed [excuse the split infinitive, the other way sounded too weird to me]) went on our "orientation tour" of the Old city. Dr. Seely took my group of 10 and Dr. Draper took the other group. Dr. Seely was so amazing and funny, and I loved being with him. He kept taking us places and showing us things by saying "Now, I really shouldn't be doing this, but..." It was great. Even though it was Shabbat, I got to try my very first Fallafel! (I have no idea how to spell that). It was SO good, and kind of unexpected. When I first heard the word "fallafel" I thought it would be something sweet, or desserty, kind of like a "waffle". I was surprised when it ended up being something totally different, but still quite tasty. It's hard to explain kind of. They take a pita bread thing and slice it open, and then proceed to shove into it all kinds of vegitables, plus some squished up beans or something that have been squished into balls and deep-fried and then they shove a bunch of french fries and on top of it all they put some kind of sauce or something (i think maybe hummice? again, another word i can't spell). We even got to go inside the church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was amazing, and the bells were ringing and we even saw a procession of priests that Dr. Seely thought were Greek Orthadox, and one of them was oh his cell phone and it was funny. It's fun to have such close proximity to people who know so much about the Holy Land and you can just ask them anything and they'll tell you!
The culture here is so different from anything in the United States. It's really hard to try to break the habbit of looking people in the eye, when i've been taught to do it for so long. And the men here have no qualms about looking at women, long and hard. It is very creepy. Especially the teenage boys. They just stare at you and I think a lot of the times they stare right at your eyes hoping that you'll make eye contact with them so that they can have an excuse to do something. It's pretty scary, but i'm glad that we go everywhere in groups and the guys are so nice and willing to go with us and i'm sure they'd protect us if they needed to. Anyways, I'd best be off cause I have class in a little while, but the rest of my day will be pretty full and exciting! I miss and love you all and hope everything is going well on your side of the world! I love you!!! I'll try to update again soon. :)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Update!
Ok, so Chelsey is in Jerusalem safe and sound but she is not able to log in to post all her updates! :-( So sad. Instead, I will be taking her emails and reposting them here so everyone can stay updated on what she's busy doing. See below to catch up on the last couple of days. Enjoy!
Can't figure out blog, but at least I made it here!
Ok, so looks like along with blocking facebook, my blog (at least the part i needed to write on it) is blocked as well. There may still be a chance I can figure it out, and i'm working on it, but for right now it looks like the emails are all I have. I hope someone will save them so i can put them on my blog later or something.) Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might like it who didn't get it from me in the first place :)
Hello Family and dear friends! All right, well first things first. As many of you know, (due to my many phone calls that I made last night), I made it safely to the Jerusalem Center :D! It was a hectic and crazy few days, but we're finally all here and all settled. The flights were long, and I didn't sleep for more than an hour (total, usually sleep was in 10 minute increments). Customs was a HUGE horrible line, where I finally realized I was not in the states anymore... (this was made easy by the fact that all the signs were first in Hebrew, then Arabic, and THEN English). Another shocking wake up call for me was the much much much smaller idea of 'personal space' that Europeans have... haha. Usually people space themselves fairly distantly from each other in lines, but in customs, the man and his family behind me were honestly about 2 centimeters away the whole time. Don't worry everyone, i was careful and very aware of the possibility of pickpockets and kept my backpack on the floor in front of me. That still didn't stop the overpowering feeling of personal space bubble being squished quite harshly... haha Let's just say some fruity-smelling chapstick would've come in handy... :).
Anyways, I can't tell you how absolutely amazing and relieving it was to get out of the airport and see Brother and Sister Huntington there waiting for us (He is the 'doctor' and does basically everything). They are both absolutely incredible, wonderful people and I love them with my whole heart already. We were all completely exhausted and felt relatively disgusting after wearing the same clothes after who-knows-how-long, and several girls along with myself got relatively sick on the airplanes. I don't think it was motion sickness... i just kind of felt like all the air in my stomach behaved as did the air in my water bottle... you know how it gets all contorted after going up in the air and landing again? Anyway, I felt seriously bloated and gross (thank GOODNESS mom told me to pack my toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant and a change of underwear in my carry-on! Thank you mom! you're the best!) I would've been so horribly disgusting (even moreso than I was). Anyways, we had fun even though we were all gross and tired and stuff.
I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH JERUSALEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! basically, i would live here forever if I could. I've only been here for less than a day and already I love it here so much, with my WHOLE heart, the thought of leaving makes me cringe and cry inside. (Not that I don't miss you all so much). You should all just come over here and live with me! Everything is amazing here! This is by far THE most amazing and wonderful and exciting and terribly perfect thing for me that i've ever experienced in my life. I don't think i've ever been so happy to be in a place, or felt more like i belonged somewhere. Ever. I feel like I am home. No joke. I was a little bit worried that I might experience some homesickness, but as I went to sleep last night, i was so unbelievably happy and everything felt so natural and comfortable and I kept thinking 'I never want to leave!'. I heard the 'Call to prayer' last night about an hour before I went to bed, it was SO amazing, tears were coming to my eyes and i didn't know what to do I was so happy! Luckily, I was able to quench my tears for the time, so that the other students didn't think I was overly emotional... even if that may actually be the case. I was awakened by it again in the middle of the night, about 3 or 4, i don't remember, but it was very cool. I'm excited to go to my class taught by my Palestinian Muslim teacher so I can ask him if they wake up at that time to pray. The call to prayer is so beautiful, everyone! It's WAY prettier than the one I have on my blog... that one is crap compared to the one they play here.
The Center!!!!!!!!! When we made it to the center, ... let me see... myemotions were... completely overwhelmed? Incredibly peaceful,ridiculously giddy, and exhausted to the max. The center is the mostbeautiful building i've ever seen in my life, although the temple wouldprobably beat it, but right now since I live here I'm completelybiased. When I first got here, i was again overwhelmed. Gorgeous. Everything is... well... perfect. The architecture is absolutely astounding, I can't wait to show you all pictures of it when i come home. It really is absolutely gorgeous though. All the buildings inJerusalem seem to be made of white stone, making the city look VERYclean, much cleaner than any major cities in the U.S. Plus it's extracute cause they all match the hills with the white limestone. There are a lot of pine trees here. It looks a lot like Utah, except take every scrub oak and put a 3 foot diameter around it and make it a pine tree, and make the ground rocky white and brown dirt. There are lots of orchards too, especially olive orchards. It's so neat. I haven't been down to the old city yet, but we are going to take a field trip down there tomorrow (even though it's Shabbat)... (Shabbat=sabbath and it's on Saturday here). We're going to get a fallafel! (i have no idea how to spell that and Brother Draper kindly went into great detail and spent about 10 minutes trying to explain it to me, haha).
Speaking of Brother Draper, i should get to that. He is my Religion teacher (for Old and New Testament) and therefore also my field trip guide. There are 40 of us in his class, 13 of which were on the plane with me. Brother Draper is Amazing! I love him so much! He is so animated and talks with his hands a lot, and is extremely passionate, not to mention incredible at working in personal stories that just make everything he talks about have a uniquely spiritual quality to it. He's so knowledgeable about everything and so happy to be here and excited to get to know the students and willing to help us with anything at all. We went on our first field trip this morning. Breakfast was from 6:30-7:30 (believe it or not, i had no problem waking up in enough time to shower and eat breakfast). The food here is good, but i'll get back to that tangent later. We then waited for the buses, which didn't show up for the very first time since the Center first opened, so we went to our classrooms for a while and talked a bit about the sites we were going to see. The buses finally came and so we piled on, 40 of us with Draper on one bus, and 40 of us with Ostler on the other bus. We went to many many beautiful sites, and learned a lot of stuff which i have to now go re-learn because my head is completely stuffed. I was mostly amazed at... well.. ok, you know how the bible talks about all these stories? Apparently like 70% of them happened within like a 15 mile radius of where I am sitting at this very moment. It's CRAZY. I had no idea that Mt. Moriah was where Isaac was supposed to be sacrificed AND so close to the garden tomb! Everything happened RIGHT HERE. Literally. It's insane, but very cool.
I'm uploading one picture (i think we're allowed to do one or two in an email) of me being kissed by a camel near a huge Jewish grave site, I think on ... I can't remember which mountain. but very near the Mt. of Olives and Mt. Scopus. We also got to sing at a beautiful (Lutheran?) cathedral/hospital... it at least had 1 lutheran missionary... and it was 223 steps to the top of the bell tower. About 20 of us were singing, A cappella, and we sang a bunch of songs... like the Spirit of God, A poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, Be Still My Soul, I Believe in Christ, and lastly, Praise to the Man, in honor of Joseph Smith's martyrdom (of which today is the anniversary. It sounded Amazing. i think maybe someone might've gotten a video of it.
Anyways, it's almost dinner time and then we're having a 'getting to know you' activity, so i have to be quick about this...and then next Friday night we are all going down to the western (Wailing) wall to welcome in the Shabbat. I'm very excited. All the kids i've met are SO nice and everyone is friends with everyone else, or at least hoping/willing to be. And don't worry mom, I'm being cheerful and friendly and fun or whatever it was that you told me to do, haha. Overall this has been an absolutely incredible experience, and even if i had to come home tonight it would've been WELL worth everything I it took to get me here. I hope this wasn't too long... I miss and love you all (despite the fact that I never want to go home), but i just didn't want to leave out anything important. :) I love you! I hope you enjoy this email and the picture.
With all my love from Jerusalem, The happiest girl in the world,
Chelsey
Hello Family and dear friends! All right, well first things first. As many of you know, (due to my many phone calls that I made last night), I made it safely to the Jerusalem Center :D! It was a hectic and crazy few days, but we're finally all here and all settled. The flights were long, and I didn't sleep for more than an hour (total, usually sleep was in 10 minute increments). Customs was a HUGE horrible line, where I finally realized I was not in the states anymore... (this was made easy by the fact that all the signs were first in Hebrew, then Arabic, and THEN English). Another shocking wake up call for me was the much much much smaller idea of 'personal space' that Europeans have... haha. Usually people space themselves fairly distantly from each other in lines, but in customs, the man and his family behind me were honestly about 2 centimeters away the whole time. Don't worry everyone, i was careful and very aware of the possibility of pickpockets and kept my backpack on the floor in front of me. That still didn't stop the overpowering feeling of personal space bubble being squished quite harshly... haha Let's just say some fruity-smelling chapstick would've come in handy... :).
Anyways, I can't tell you how absolutely amazing and relieving it was to get out of the airport and see Brother and Sister Huntington there waiting for us (He is the 'doctor' and does basically everything). They are both absolutely incredible, wonderful people and I love them with my whole heart already. We were all completely exhausted and felt relatively disgusting after wearing the same clothes after who-knows-how-long, and several girls along with myself got relatively sick on the airplanes. I don't think it was motion sickness... i just kind of felt like all the air in my stomach behaved as did the air in my water bottle... you know how it gets all contorted after going up in the air and landing again? Anyway, I felt seriously bloated and gross (thank GOODNESS mom told me to pack my toothbrush/toothpaste, deodorant and a change of underwear in my carry-on! Thank you mom! you're the best!) I would've been so horribly disgusting (even moreso than I was). Anyways, we had fun even though we were all gross and tired and stuff.
I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH JERUSALEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! basically, i would live here forever if I could. I've only been here for less than a day and already I love it here so much, with my WHOLE heart, the thought of leaving makes me cringe and cry inside. (Not that I don't miss you all so much). You should all just come over here and live with me! Everything is amazing here! This is by far THE most amazing and wonderful and exciting and terribly perfect thing for me that i've ever experienced in my life. I don't think i've ever been so happy to be in a place, or felt more like i belonged somewhere. Ever. I feel like I am home. No joke. I was a little bit worried that I might experience some homesickness, but as I went to sleep last night, i was so unbelievably happy and everything felt so natural and comfortable and I kept thinking 'I never want to leave!'. I heard the 'Call to prayer' last night about an hour before I went to bed, it was SO amazing, tears were coming to my eyes and i didn't know what to do I was so happy! Luckily, I was able to quench my tears for the time, so that the other students didn't think I was overly emotional... even if that may actually be the case. I was awakened by it again in the middle of the night, about 3 or 4, i don't remember, but it was very cool. I'm excited to go to my class taught by my Palestinian Muslim teacher so I can ask him if they wake up at that time to pray. The call to prayer is so beautiful, everyone! It's WAY prettier than the one I have on my blog... that one is crap compared to the one they play here.
The Center!!!!!!!!! When we made it to the center, ... let me see... myemotions were... completely overwhelmed? Incredibly peaceful,ridiculously giddy, and exhausted to the max. The center is the mostbeautiful building i've ever seen in my life, although the temple wouldprobably beat it, but right now since I live here I'm completelybiased. When I first got here, i was again overwhelmed. Gorgeous. Everything is... well... perfect. The architecture is absolutely astounding, I can't wait to show you all pictures of it when i come home. It really is absolutely gorgeous though. All the buildings inJerusalem seem to be made of white stone, making the city look VERYclean, much cleaner than any major cities in the U.S. Plus it's extracute cause they all match the hills with the white limestone. There are a lot of pine trees here. It looks a lot like Utah, except take every scrub oak and put a 3 foot diameter around it and make it a pine tree, and make the ground rocky white and brown dirt. There are lots of orchards too, especially olive orchards. It's so neat. I haven't been down to the old city yet, but we are going to take a field trip down there tomorrow (even though it's Shabbat)... (Shabbat=sabbath and it's on Saturday here). We're going to get a fallafel! (i have no idea how to spell that and Brother Draper kindly went into great detail and spent about 10 minutes trying to explain it to me, haha).
Speaking of Brother Draper, i should get to that. He is my Religion teacher (for Old and New Testament) and therefore also my field trip guide. There are 40 of us in his class, 13 of which were on the plane with me. Brother Draper is Amazing! I love him so much! He is so animated and talks with his hands a lot, and is extremely passionate, not to mention incredible at working in personal stories that just make everything he talks about have a uniquely spiritual quality to it. He's so knowledgeable about everything and so happy to be here and excited to get to know the students and willing to help us with anything at all. We went on our first field trip this morning. Breakfast was from 6:30-7:30 (believe it or not, i had no problem waking up in enough time to shower and eat breakfast). The food here is good, but i'll get back to that tangent later. We then waited for the buses, which didn't show up for the very first time since the Center first opened, so we went to our classrooms for a while and talked a bit about the sites we were going to see. The buses finally came and so we piled on, 40 of us with Draper on one bus, and 40 of us with Ostler on the other bus. We went to many many beautiful sites, and learned a lot of stuff which i have to now go re-learn because my head is completely stuffed. I was mostly amazed at... well.. ok, you know how the bible talks about all these stories? Apparently like 70% of them happened within like a 15 mile radius of where I am sitting at this very moment. It's CRAZY. I had no idea that Mt. Moriah was where Isaac was supposed to be sacrificed AND so close to the garden tomb! Everything happened RIGHT HERE. Literally. It's insane, but very cool.
I'm uploading one picture (i think we're allowed to do one or two in an email) of me being kissed by a camel near a huge Jewish grave site, I think on ... I can't remember which mountain. but very near the Mt. of Olives and Mt. Scopus. We also got to sing at a beautiful (Lutheran?) cathedral/hospital... it at least had 1 lutheran missionary... and it was 223 steps to the top of the bell tower. About 20 of us were singing, A cappella, and we sang a bunch of songs... like the Spirit of God, A poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, Be Still My Soul, I Believe in Christ, and lastly, Praise to the Man, in honor of Joseph Smith's martyrdom (of which today is the anniversary. It sounded Amazing. i think maybe someone might've gotten a video of it.
Anyways, it's almost dinner time and then we're having a 'getting to know you' activity, so i have to be quick about this...and then next Friday night we are all going down to the western (Wailing) wall to welcome in the Shabbat. I'm very excited. All the kids i've met are SO nice and everyone is friends with everyone else, or at least hoping/willing to be. And don't worry mom, I'm being cheerful and friendly and fun or whatever it was that you told me to do, haha. Overall this has been an absolutely incredible experience, and even if i had to come home tonight it would've been WELL worth everything I it took to get me here. I hope this wasn't too long... I miss and love you all (despite the fact that I never want to go home), but i just didn't want to leave out anything important. :) I love you! I hope you enjoy this email and the picture.
With all my love from Jerusalem, The happiest girl in the world,
Chelsey
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Updates from Chicago Airport!
Ok, so my friend Nathanael is letting me use his computer so i'm going to give you all a quick update on what is going on. We are now at the chicago airport, waiting for a flight to Vienna. Turns out our tickets to Germany were not confirmed, but Chase and Katherine were all on top of it and had yet another long discussion with the people at United and Austrian air. We (all 20 of us) are now on the same flight together to Austria today, with a connecting flight to Tel Aviv tomorrow morning. We actually HAVE the boarding passes and are waiting at the gate. Our flight is in about an hour and a half. Although, at this point i'm not saying "for sure" about anything, haha. Dad, i think I understand a little better why you stress out so much whenever we fly, especially internationally. :) I hope all of you are having a slightly less stressful few days than me, and I miss and love you all! And it's actually not that stressful, cause i'm with a truly awesome bunch of kids and we all get along WAY well and like each other a lot. It's been good times. And I'll have to write in my blog about our adventure on getting to the hotel just outside of Chicago last night. I'm excited because we all have a special bond now that i'm sure the flight with 60 kids on didn't get to have as much. Anyways, i'll email when i get there, whenever that may be!!! Love you all!
Chicago
Hey everybody, I'm stuck here in Chicago for a bit. There was a "mechanical problem" on our flight from SLC to Chicago, so we left about 2 hours later than we were supposed to, and therefore missed our flight from Chicago to Vienna. We stayed at a Regency Inn and Suites near Chicago, the Airline paid for us to come here and gave us little overnight kits and food vouchers. It was a really hectic day yesterday, when i have more time i'll update my blog all about it. So today 14 of us have been re-routed through Frankfurt Germany where we have a SIXTEEN HOUR layover, and the other 6 will meet up with us there later. Sounds like we're going to spend a fun day touring Frankfurt! Then we all fly to Tel Aviv, arriving in Israel at about 3:30 a.m. there. We'll probably get to the center at about 5 a.m. Anyways, I love you all! I miss you and hope everything is going well.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
...so close I can almost taste it...
I'm sitting here, staring intently at my bright red suitcase that recently weighed in on my mom's bathroom scale at 48.8 lbs, trying to think of ways to lighten it, and I can't seem to prevent my mind from wandering to thoughts of tomorrow and the hours and hours of traveling that I will be doing--to reach the destination of a lifetime. It still doesn't feel real to me most of the time. I keep waiting to... I'm not sure. Wake up from a dream, or have someone call and say "haha! Just kidding! Wasn't that a funny Joke?! And the best part is... Jerusalem isn't even a real place!!!" ...or something like that. I can't believe how many years going to Jerusalem has been such a huge dream for me... not to mention one that always felt too big for my sphere of accomplishment. And now it is actually happening. Whoa.
Part of me is sitting here thinking "You are absolutely insane. Why would you want to do something like this?" I've certainly never done anything like this before. When I was little, I couldn't have even dreamed of leaving home for this long--especially not to someplace 8,000 miles away.
I'm not going to lie--part of me is scared. Not of anything in particular, really, other than simply "the unknown." I suppose that is a natural human fear, but it seems amplified in this situation for me, since mistakes in this arena could possibly be extremely detrimental. (And I tend to make a lot of mistakes in my learning process, especially when I'm in unfamiliar circumstances, haha).
I'm definitely feeling the "travel Steve" beginning to come out in Chelsey--and am anticipating it to be in full-force tomorrow, haha. (Thanks a lot Dad, gotta love those genes ;) .) Hopefully the fact that I am aware of it will help me remain calm. But I know that I will not feel comfortable until we are IN THE AIR for our very last flight--the one from Vienna to Tel Aviv. Maybe even until we get our luggage... Looks like I will have to go easier on Dad about the "travel Steve" phenomenon from now on, lest I risk being a hypocrite, haha.
[Also: Family-- just so you know, it says on my itinerary that we will be flying "Economy." I'm assuming that equates to "second class" in Chelsey-lingo, and guess what! I'm 100% perfectly Ok with that ;) haha. ....(...And yet I know I might have to suppress the urge to go up to the desk when we're at our gate and try to negotiate for first class seats ;))...]
So I did a bit of math and figured that the 3 hour and 9 minute flight from SLC to Chicago plus the 9 hour and 40 minute flight from Chicago to Vienna, plus the 3 hour and 25 minute flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv equals a total of 16 hours and 14 minutes in the air. O_O (<--that is the face I just made, if you imagine the line as my mouth and the O's as my eyes). All I have to say is that I am going to be ridiculously exhausted by the time we get there.
Today was also my orientation in Provo. We picked up my new friend Chase Barlet from his great aunt's house in SLC and had a grand time at the Harmon building (I got my Jerusalem Center Backpack!!! *squeal!!!*). At first I felt a little overwhelmed by everything that Dr. Kearl (Assistant...to the *snicker*... BYU President for the Jerusalem Center) said. A lot of it was even quite frightening. Let's just say that I am taking absolutely no cute, form fitting, too-short sleeved shirts or tight pants. Yikes. I was quickly persuaded that it would not be a good idea. I will look like a grungy little boy with long hair, and awkwardly fitting clothes, but I figured it was much better than drawing the undue attention to myself that the dress code is specifically designed to keep at a minimum. It totally sucks to be a girl in the Middle East. I was really happy that Dad, Melyn and Mom could all come to the Orientation, but I missed Roger, even though if he had come I would've had more parents than all the other kids there combined :). I don't mind though, I'm grateful that so many people love me and show such a keen interest in anything I'm doing in my life. Roger would've really liked Dr. Kearl though, hehe. "Tell them 'it's none of your *$%& business!!!!'" "Don't be a dumb-*&$!", "I have survived just fine in Egypt every time I go there because I live on Diet Coke and Snickers," and my personal favorite, "You can't afford to be in la-la-land!"
It was weird but also, quite frankly, awesome to meet so many people today. Everyone was friendly and everyone seemed passionate (just like me! hooray!) about the Holy Land. My roommates all seem incredibly nice and I get the feeling we will all get along just swimmingly. :)
As for my family, I hope you each know that I will miss you very much, and think of you every day. I'm truly grateful for all the sacrifices that you have each made to help me be able to go to Jerusalem. I'm thankful for the support you have shown me, despite possible concerns about me being kidnapped or 'sploded by a bomb or forced to live without milk... But in all seriousness, I thank you all for being so supportive of me and for your prayers and your love and enthusiasm of sharing with me one of the most incredible experiences I will ever have in my life!
You will all be just fine without me here :) I know you will.
Anyways, I'd better hit the hay, because tomorrow is a big day. :) ... hehe... yes that DOES rhyme. :) So until I have access to a computer again (who knows when that will be), farewell my beloved friends and family :). I love you all with my whole heart!
Part of me is sitting here thinking "You are absolutely insane. Why would you want to do something like this?" I've certainly never done anything like this before. When I was little, I couldn't have even dreamed of leaving home for this long--especially not to someplace 8,000 miles away.
I'm not going to lie--part of me is scared. Not of anything in particular, really, other than simply "the unknown." I suppose that is a natural human fear, but it seems amplified in this situation for me, since mistakes in this arena could possibly be extremely detrimental. (And I tend to make a lot of mistakes in my learning process, especially when I'm in unfamiliar circumstances, haha).
I'm definitely feeling the "travel Steve" beginning to come out in Chelsey--and am anticipating it to be in full-force tomorrow, haha. (Thanks a lot Dad, gotta love those genes ;) .) Hopefully the fact that I am aware of it will help me remain calm. But I know that I will not feel comfortable until we are IN THE AIR for our very last flight--the one from Vienna to Tel Aviv. Maybe even until we get our luggage... Looks like I will have to go easier on Dad about the "travel Steve" phenomenon from now on, lest I risk being a hypocrite, haha.
[Also: Family-- just so you know, it says on my itinerary that we will be flying "Economy." I'm assuming that equates to "second class" in Chelsey-lingo, and guess what! I'm 100% perfectly Ok with that ;) haha. ....(...And yet I know I might have to suppress the urge to go up to the desk when we're at our gate and try to negotiate for first class seats ;))...]
So I did a bit of math and figured that the 3 hour and 9 minute flight from SLC to Chicago plus the 9 hour and 40 minute flight from Chicago to Vienna, plus the 3 hour and 25 minute flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv equals a total of 16 hours and 14 minutes in the air. O_O (<--that is the face I just made, if you imagine the line as my mouth and the O's as my eyes). All I have to say is that I am going to be ridiculously exhausted by the time we get there.
Today was also my orientation in Provo. We picked up my new friend Chase Barlet from his great aunt's house in SLC and had a grand time at the Harmon building (I got my Jerusalem Center Backpack!!! *squeal!!!*). At first I felt a little overwhelmed by everything that Dr. Kearl (Assistant...to the *snicker*... BYU President for the Jerusalem Center) said. A lot of it was even quite frightening. Let's just say that I am taking absolutely no cute, form fitting, too-short sleeved shirts or tight pants. Yikes. I was quickly persuaded that it would not be a good idea. I will look like a grungy little boy with long hair, and awkwardly fitting clothes, but I figured it was much better than drawing the undue attention to myself that the dress code is specifically designed to keep at a minimum. It totally sucks to be a girl in the Middle East. I was really happy that Dad, Melyn and Mom could all come to the Orientation, but I missed Roger, even though if he had come I would've had more parents than all the other kids there combined :). I don't mind though, I'm grateful that so many people love me and show such a keen interest in anything I'm doing in my life. Roger would've really liked Dr. Kearl though, hehe. "Tell them 'it's none of your *$%& business!!!!'" "Don't be a dumb-*&$!", "I have survived just fine in Egypt every time I go there because I live on Diet Coke and Snickers," and my personal favorite, "You can't afford to be in la-la-land!"
It was weird but also, quite frankly, awesome to meet so many people today. Everyone was friendly and everyone seemed passionate (just like me! hooray!) about the Holy Land. My roommates all seem incredibly nice and I get the feeling we will all get along just swimmingly. :)
As for my family, I hope you each know that I will miss you very much, and think of you every day. I'm truly grateful for all the sacrifices that you have each made to help me be able to go to Jerusalem. I'm thankful for the support you have shown me, despite possible concerns about me being kidnapped or 'sploded by a bomb or forced to live without milk... But in all seriousness, I thank you all for being so supportive of me and for your prayers and your love and enthusiasm of sharing with me one of the most incredible experiences I will ever have in my life!
You will all be just fine without me here :) I know you will.
Anyways, I'd better hit the hay, because tomorrow is a big day. :) ... hehe... yes that DOES rhyme. :) So until I have access to a computer again (who knows when that will be), farewell my beloved friends and family :). I love you all with my whole heart!
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