9/6 to 9/8 | Jerusalem Adventures

As of today, I have completed five days of ulpan at five hours per day.  By comparison, Hebrew class at AU is held two times a week at one hour and 15 minutes per day.  In five days of ulpan, we have covered what would take 10 weeks at home!  I have already taken two quizzes, one on vocabulary and one on verb tenses, and I have a cumulative test tomorrow for everything up to chapter 14.  The brochure certainly does not lie when it says that ulpan courses are intensive!  In fact, intensive is an understatement.  Ulpan is usually held from Sunday to Thursday (the Israeli workweek), but due to scheduling issues later in the semester, ulpan is also being held this Friday.  This means I only have a one day weekend, which is a shame because I am exhausted beyond belief.  It's been an amazing first week but I have so much sleep to catch up on.

While ulpan has consumed a lot of time, that has not stopped me from getting out and seeing the city.  On Tuesday night, the madrichim led students on a practical Jerusalem tour.  Rather than being shown all the tourists sites, this was designed especially for students living in Jerusalem.  It covered any and all questions we may have had, from the location of several shopping centers to where to go for nightlife.  They even showed us some romantic spots to take a date!  The tour was a great way to get better acquainted with the city.

A beautiful side street in Jerusalem.

We started the tour on a bus, but ended up walking later on.  We began walking in a neighborhood called Nachalot, which means homestead in English.  Nachalot is an interesting place with many twisting side streets and hidden courtyards.  Many orthodox Jews live in this neighborhood because it is well separated from the secular parts of the city.  We spoke with one rabbi who told us all about life in Nachalot.  He lives in a small community with other families that have joined together as one to raise their families through true Torah living.  It is a very secluded lifestyle--there are no televisions, computers, etc.--and he openly admitted that it sets up their children for failure if they ever leave the community.  He was adamant, however, that it is a great way to raise a family because it filters out all the bad, leaving only that which is in the Torah.

There are strict rules posted for touring the orthodox neighborhoods.

After speaking with the rabbi, we ventured out of Nachalot towards Ben Yehuda Street, where Jerusalem's nightlife is centered.  We spent about a half hour on Ben Yehuda Street exploring all the shops and restaurants.  It was here that I finally had my first shawarma of this trip to Israel!  Ben Yehuda is a lot of fun, especially at night, and I know I'll be back several times between now and January.  We continued on towards the bottom of Ben Yehuda, where there is a large open space affectionally nicknamed Crack Square by Americans.  Jerusalem is known for its spirituality, but it offers a whole other side that is much less holy.  The city has great nightlife, except, of course, on Fridays and Saturdays during shabbat.  I have not had the chance to experience too much of it yet, except for the Beer Festival during my second day here, but I fully expect to in the near future.  After all, going abroad is not all about schoolwork; it is about experiencing the local culture, too!

As we walked away from Ben Yehuda Street and the surrounding area, we stumbled upon an old Mamluk-era cemetery.  It is apparently a center of controversy (what else is new in Israel?) because of some nearby construction.  Apparently, an Ottoman-era sheikh ruled that the cemetery is not holy to allow construction back in the 1920s, but now that Israel is building nearby, the Muslim community is up-in-arms.  The cemetery is not very interesting except for one large tomb that perfectly represents Mamluk architecture, but like all of Jerusalem, nothing is without controversy.

An old Mamluk tomb in the cemetery between Ben Yehuda Street and Mamilla Mall in the city center.  It never ceases to amaze me how the ancient and the modern live side by side in this city.

After the cemetery, we walked to the Mamilla Mall in HaMercaz HaEar, the city center.  Mamilla Mall is a beautiful strip mall with high-end brands ranging from Rolex to Tommy Hilfiger.  There is even a Crocs outlet!  The strip mall leads right to the Old City, making it a very impressive location.  After we walked through Mamilla, we went to a viewing area near the Montefiore Windmill to look out at the Old City walls at dusk.  Jerusalem is called "the city of gold," and as the sun sets, it really is lit up in shades of gold.

A view of Mamilla Mall next to the Old City.

The next day, after ulpan, two friends of mine, Rachel and Esther, went with me back to the shuk.  Everything in Israel is expensive so it is nice to go to a place that is not only fun, but (relatively) cheap.  Here I bought some sunflower seeds, lettuce, cucumbers (malafafonim in Hebrew), and rice.  I bought a cheap pot, too, but I used it today and it started disintegrating.  That is what you get for 50 shekalim I guess!  Fortunately, my roommates are great and let me use their pot.  Cooking is absolutely not my thing, so living here on my own is a challenge when it comes to food.  This mean lots of pasta for me, though, besides the pot, today's experiment with pasta did not really go so well.  Lots to learn!

Anyway, back at the shuk, we found a restaurant to eat at that allowed us to take in all of the people walking by.  Jerusalem is city with every type of Jew, so people watching here is unmatched!  In five minutes, we saw chasidim in their black hats, orthodox women with their head coverings, and teenagers wearing their yarmulkes.  All the while, someone was blowing a shofar in the distance.  Pretty amazing!

View of a street in the shuk.

Today's only highlight was a trip to the grocery store, which was not at all interesting so I won't go into details.  I have a big test tomorrow, so I have spent a lot of time "studying" for that with my roommates.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, two of them, Sev and Corinna, are from Germany.  Phillipp, who is also from Germany, hangs out in our apartment a lot, too.  All three are a lot of fun, and it is a pleasure to live with them.  It is interesting to compare the German perspective on things to that of the United States, so there has been a lot of good conversation.  Of course, we are all taking Hebrew, too, so that gives us something to commiserate about.  My other two roommates, Jeremy and Becca, are from California.  The two friends I do the most with, Rachel and Esther, are from New Jersey and Ohio respectively.  A nice aspect about studying abroad is that most people don't know each other so you are constantly meeting new people.  In my ulpan class, there are people from Canada, Israel, Korea, Singapore, and Switzerland.  It just goes to show you how respected the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is internationally.  Jerusalem is an amazing place to study and I could not be happier to be here!

Mount Scopus offers incredible views of Jerusalem and the surrounding area.