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I titled this post home cause I'm in my new home for the next four months! The flights went well and pretty smoothly. I read the Hunger Games (and finished it!) the whole first plane ride, which was 5 hours. My eyes were pretty blurry for a while after that. After waiting in the JFK airport for a while we got onto our 12 hour flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. The flight went pretty well and they provided food so that was nice. I guess I slept a lot of the plane ride cause I woke up drooling a couple of times. Also, the girls I were sitting by told me I slept most of it. Hopefully I wasn't snoring or anything.

We got here yesterday and have been so busy since. A lot of orientations and touring of the Jerusalem Center and today we toured the actual city! It was so cool. We went to a lot of different places I can't even remember all the names right now. The city is so different here. It actually reminds me a lot of Ecuador. The buildings are flat and the driving is crazy! Also, the markets are really crowded and lively. I almost got ran over by carts full of fruit a couple of times. They don't mess around. We went to the place that most believe where Christ was crucified and resurrected. It was pretty cool and its not a positive that that is where it happened but it still is very interesting. We didn't get to hang around there very long cause we were just doing a short tour and we have the whole 4 months to go to all those places on our free time. They didn't even let us bring cameras cause it would slow down the tour. I'm excited to roam around a little more and get to know the city even better.

Today we have another orientation and then I already have a lot of homework to do! We are very busy here. I like my teachers a lot though. I have Eric Huntsmen as my Old Testament teacher and he seems like he'll be a great teacher with a lot of enthusiasm!

So this whole thing hasn't really seemed completely real to me even after getting here. I just felt like I was in a big building with a lot of other students. After this morning it is finally real to me. I went to bed at like 9:30 or 10 last night (I was exhausted!) and woke up at 4:15 this morning and was very awake. So as I was lying in bed this man on a loud speaker over the whole city starts talking in a different language( Hebrew or Arabic, I don't know). The Muslims have prayer 5 times throughout the whole day and it goes over the whole city. The prayer lasted between 5-10 minutes, so you're sitting there listening to this man prayer at like 4:30 in the morning. It was very interesting to me though. I admire the Muslims, I think praying 5 times a day is a great way to always remember the things that you believe and strive to always keep it in your daily life. Just the daily things we go through can distract us from the things that we believe and strive for. If we prayed more throughout the day we'd always have the spirit of Christ with us because we'd always be inviting that spirit to be with us and always reminded of it as we pray. I think that is so awesome. They are an example to me of dedication and love for what they believe. Anyways I thought that was pretty cool. Oh, and I never fell back asleep. Jet lag sucks.

I should probably start some of my homework now but It's been tons of fun and I've met a lot of cool people so far! I can tell this is going to be a really fun experience but also a great learning experience as well. Love you all!