Sorry about the email drought; it's been a busy week (MIDTERMS!!!!!)
Hmmm. Where to begin?
Okay, so monday we took a field trip to the Shephelah (pronounced Shfey-lah), which is Israel's low hill country. Five valleys cut through these hills (and I could name them for you, if you want), and in ancient times each valley was guarded by philistine or israelite fortress cities. We visited the archeological sites of several of these cities, including Gath, hometown of our friend Goliath. We also re-enacted the story of David and Goliath in the valley near where it actually would have happened, saw an ancient oil press and dovecote, and visited the bell caves, which are enormous chalk mines used until the Byzantine period. They have really cool acoustics; we sang hymns in them and got about 4-5 seconds of reverberation after the last note. Sweet. They are way cooler in reality than they sound, really. The sites were all really interesting, but what REALLY made the field trip was the weather. It rained all last week, and so the countryside was the greenest green I've ever seen in my life. My friend said it reminded her of when she was in Ireland. Anyway, everything was growing bright green, the wildflowers were beginning to come up, and everything seemed fresh and clean. Not only that, we had a mix of rain and sun, so we saw THREE rainbows on monday. I took tons of pictures which will soon be on my blog. I promise. Anyway, it was one of the coolest field trips ever, just because everything was so pretty.
Hmmmm what else? We are in the middle of midterms, which is weird because I feel like I'm taking pretend classes this semester. i mean, we have a bunch of homework and quizzes and reading and everything, but since I'm HERE, they don't feel like real classes. Except now I have to take exams in them. Boo. Anyway, my Old Testament went fine, and my Judaism midterm went REALLY well. Unfortuanately, the work is not over; I still have a few more, and readings, and i need to catch up my journal, and all this other stuff, and I am really excited to have legitimate free time when I come home this summer. Whoo!
I still love, love, love this place. I went to the Armenian church on Sunday and it's been one of my favorite sites so far. The church itself is really beautiful on the inside; there's a billion pretty ornaments hanging from the ceiling and the decorations are really intricate. The really cool part was that we were there while services were going on (i'm still not sure why they let us in). The service was completley sung in either russian or latin; i'm not sure which (i know they're not even similar), and it was conducted by priests in purple and black robes and pointed hoods leading the singing of a large group of monks dressed in gold colored robes. There was a guy shaking incense into every nook and cranny of the church, which made the whole thing a little hazy. Sitting there, I felt like I could have walked into that church five hundred years ago and it would have looked, sounded, smelled, and felt the same way that it felt when I was there. It was one of my favorite sites that I've seen so far. You're not allowed to take pictures inside, but one of my friends took one and I'm trying to get it from him so you can see a little what it looks like. It was SO. COOL.
Also, I found a friend to sing with... we've wasted a couple evenings just singing hymns in classrooms. Anyway, we are doing something for the talent show and it sounds really nice, so that's fun
Ummmm... I'm sorry about the lameness of this email. I'll send a better one soon. I love you all SOOOOOoooo much and I miss you, but not too much!
Love, Abby
BTW-Abby has started her own blog. She hasn't gone public with it yet, but will eventually be posting pictures and stuff at http://www.abbychamberlain.blogspot.com/
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