Esther Brady Crawford - faintstarlite

It’s 7:21am and I’m sitting in a little ice box of a room in the hostel again .. figured I could write something before I left town. Carolyn and I are the only ones left, Liz & her mom had to go back to get her mom on the plane in Amman.

Yesterday we wandered around some more .. stopping at the Church of All Nations which houses the Garden of Gethsemane. You can’t actually walk through the garden because its all manicured and theres an iron fence around it.. but it felt like the most real section thus far. There were 8 olive trees that are 2,000 years old that “testify to Jesus’ prayers the night he was betrayed” … we all really loved the trees…. these big ugly things that have seen empires rise and fall .. its pretty amazing stuff to think about.

We also finally made it into the New City (& the Jewish Quarter) … I didn’t expect it to be SO nice.. but the Old City (Arab & Christian quarters) is like night/day to the New City – everything about it … it could be found anywhere in Europe or the states… even the way shops are set up, and shopkeepers approach you… its just so western and strange in comparison to what I’m used to now.

We kinda got lost for awhile and were needing to meet back at the Damascus Gate in the Old City and stopped a few guys walking past to ask if they knew how to get there. One of them said, “No, uh… I don’t know that I’ve heard of it actually.” ..and the other said [quite disgusted by the question], “Thats over in the Arab quarter.”… and the first boy looked up surprised by that and then turned to us and said, “Well of course I don’t know then.” Carolyn & I just sorta looked at each other bewildered.. and realized how real the division was in the city.

We eventually wandered across into the downtown area of Jerusalem to find the central bus station which was sooo far away! We had to book our tickets to get to Eilat (beach town on the border with Jordan).. so that we could cross over into Aqaba, Jordan this afternoon to visit my host family – that’s where Nisreen’s family is from.

On our way back from the bus station we got lost again and this time ended up walking through the ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. I’ve honestly never seen so many in my life!

All day Carolyn kept comparing our experiences to being at Disneyland.. she was saying.. everything feels manufactured.. and somehow fake… its like going from fronteer land to adventure land, etc. as you pass from different sections of town into other ones. Like at any point you should be able to just stop and pose for a picture with “the hasidic Jew” or “the Arab” or “the Armenian priest”, etc. .. its all very weird.

As the Old City shut down at sunset we started making our way out when an Arab shopkeeper came up to us asking us to visit his shop. We weren’t interested and like we said to hundreds earlier, we said, “no thank you.” He turned around and said, “Look… I’m a person too.. I’m NOT going to eat you.. and I’m NOT a terrorist!”

We were really taken aback by that.. and I quickly told him we didn’t think that, but you could tell he felt we didn’t want to go to his shop because we didn’t trust him. We both talked about it later and felt so bad for the man that he feels as if thats how foreigners see him.. its truly unfortunate. Apparently some of that may stem from the fact that many tour guides are warning travelers not to go into the Arab quarters because they’re dirty, unsafe and you get ripped off.. so business isn’t doing very well and people are getting more desparate.

Anyways we’re heading out now to go get some breakfast and then heading south. =)