So today was a lot of fun! I can’t believe they gave us a free day so soon after the Egypt trip but I guess they think we have a lot of sight seeing to do because we had the whole day off. A group of students here went to a zoo in West Jerusalem a few weeks ago, and said that it was a lot of fun – so me and a few others decided that might be something fun to check out, and planned to do that first. The animals were absolutely incredible! It was so much fun. It was really dead when we first got there, we were practically the only group in the whole place, which made it even more fun! It was actually a really beautiful facility, and the animals were exotic and beautiful as well. The cages often allowed you to get really close to the animals (much closer than Hoggle Zoo), so that was lots of fun too - we got a lot of really neat pictures. It was actually called a "biblical zoo", so we thought that'd be something neat too - but then we realized all animals are considered biblical because of Noah's Ark! I think watching it must have reminded everyone of an African Safari because at one point everyone burst out singing the Lion King, and it happens to be the movie playing in the student lounge as I speak...or blog...or whatever.
After the biblical zoo we convinced our History professor to meet us at the Israel museum (what a great guy - it's his day off too), and give a tour around. The museum consists mostly of an exhibit called "The Scroll of the Book" and then a model of the Old City during the time of Christ's life or shortly thereafter. We visited The Scroll of the Book first, which was an oddly shaped building representing the lid of a scroll jar which housed remnants from the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the caves at Qumran not too many years ago. These scrolls contain texts that match closely to many of the Masoretic texts from which our Bible comes from. Many of the passages found in these books are identical to those found in the KJV today - so that's pretty cool that even with the imperfections it does have, much of it is just like the original version. The exhibit was really neat because not only was the building shaped like a jar, the exhibit that displayed the scroll looked like a huge scroll itself! The particular one on display right now happens to be the temple scroll, which is one of the longest Dead Sea Scrolls found. It talks about the perfect temple and how it will be caused to be built by God at the end of days - kind of an interesting concept! Anyway, it was really neat to see that, and then afterwards Brother Skinner talked to us about the Old City in Christ's day, and gave us a walk through of where Christ would have gone during the last week of his life or so, up until his crucifixion. It was neat because a lot of things have really changed since then, and so it's kind of hard to envision where these events all occured - this really brought the past and future together.
The last event for the day was Egypt night at the Center. Everyone dressed up for the costume contest, and we had LEGIT chocolate cookies - it was pretty exciting. Miriam dressed up like Nefertiti with her hubby Akhenaton (Bryan) - it was pretty awesome. Moon and I decided that instead of trying to dress up like an Ancient Egyptian, we'd take a more modern take on things. I've got to explain something in order for you to understand our costumes fully. In Egypt when you use public restrooms, you have to PAY!!! There's attendants standing outside of every restroom holding toilet paper, and you can't enter until you pay some money, and then they hand you the toilet paper (an entire two squares or so, which is unfortunate if you happen to get sick from the Egyptian food). Moon and I decided that we'd go as Egyptian toilet paper attendants. SWEET huh? Well I thought it was, and we won the contest for most creative! I'll let you decide for yourself