My first adventure in the Old City

The following is a journal entry (modified to make a little more sense for those who aren't here with me) that I wrote a week ago today. Enjoy!

Today my group of 12 and I went on a guided tour of the city with Brother Schade (one of the religion professors here, also the EQ President). We left around 8:30 AM and the tour ended right around noon. We were then cut loose to either go back to the center or explore the city as we desired. I went with Taylor (one of my roommates) and some other friends to explore the city and we had sooo much fun! We cruised around looking at the alleyways and streets of the old city and walked all around inside. We ended up going to the church of flagellation (supposedly where Christ was whipped shortly before being crucified) and the church of condemnation(where Pilate decided finally to crucify Christ). It is incredible to me as we visit places where tradition holds (because they don't know for sure on most of these things) that certain events may have occurred how neat it is to reflect on the Savior’s life, and while the exact location of the events may not be completely accurate, it is a great reminder of what really happened and really brings home the reality of what we are doing here and how incredible it is to be here. It just drives home that I am literally in the area where the Savior spent a good portion of His ministry and it is such an incredible blessing. We also went to the pools of Bethesda, which are legitimate (as far as I know) ruins that literally were around from the time of Christ’s life, are mentioned in the Bible and where significant events took place. They are depicted in the really famous Carl Bloch painting where Christ is lifting a tent flap (of sorts) to find someone who needed healed. In our effort to find the pools, we ended up in a residential area of the old city with 3 story(ish) tall buildings on either side as we walked down the stone paved roads of Jerusalem. It was such a cool area! We ended up asking two local kids (Ashtov and Schaeb, whom I took pictures with and will upload later, I forgot my SD card) to help us find the pools. They took us way back to the center of the Old City (the pools are on the edge near Lion’s gate) before we found someone who could help us. One of the girls with us, who is minoring in Arabic, spoke with them a little bit  and between their help and the help of a Palestinian adult they chatted with, we found the oools. It was really neat. On our way out of the city we found a small soccer court/field (concrete) where some local 7 or so year olds invited us to play soccer with them. There were 5 of them when we started, so we played 5 on 5 and it was a blast! We had soooo much fun. We had a small gathering watching us from the side of the court and more people from the surrounding rooftops. We played until one of the local boys whom we were playing with had his mom show up and ask us to stop so that he would go home. It was an amazing day and definitely wore me out. I am really enjoying my time here and love being out in the city having adventures and seeing the amazing sites. I am also really enjoying the time I spend with my fellow classmates, it is great! Life is great here!