East Jerusalem on a Friday: Mount of Olives, Tomb of the Virgin, and more...

Today was our first free day since we've been here, so we went sightseeing around Jerusalem.  We've all seen the Jewish quarter of the Old City many times, but we saw all the Christian stuff in East Jerusalem and ended up at a mosque right when it lit up for Shabbat.  It was really cool.

Hiking up the Mount of Olives when the sun set was surreal.  You just look out and see something like the picture above, and you see all these tour groups walking around - French, Korean, Russian, to name a few - and you realize it's all for the land.  The Tomb of the Virgin, where Mary Magdalene is supposedly buried, was so cool to walk into.  It's in a cave so you walk down a bunch of stairs, turn a corner and duck under this hole in the wall and there she is.  Still hard to believe I'm living here.  It was high 60's today, sunny and warm, so I was just relaxing in the student village in shorts and a t shirt and then Isaac and Mike came by and were like "We have to go explore!"  It's so easy to forget that everything is around you, and to just fall back into the school pattern of napping, going online, and having a routine.  I have to remember to keep seeing things.

There's a huge Shabbat dinner tonight at the Hyatt Regency, so I'm gonna head over there.  Probably not going to do a shomer Shabbat tonight.  Things are still going by in a blur; Ul-pan really packs the day in and makes things hectic.  But I feel like people are starting to get past the constant introductions and actually know who people are; it's a slow process.