A day at the JC

In response to popular demand, I will now attempt to give you an idea of an average day at the center. Starting at:

4am- the first set of minurets go off, calling all Muslims to prayer. And I pray too. If I wake up to them...

5:15am- I feel like a lazy bum because my roommates are prettymuch up and gone by this time. I usually head up to the 6th floor gym to jump rope. Then I shower with my sweet Israeli Spiderman shampoo and pick 1 of my 5 shirts to wear for the day :)

6-6:30am- I head to the Oasis (being sure to lock my door on the way out) and eat my routine breakfast. I used to eat the french toast, but considering that fried food makes me fat, I now stick with bran flakes, yogurt, cantelope and grapefruit/orange juice. I sometimes follow it up with a cup o' hot chocolate :) Actually, I always do.

8am- Class usually starts around this time. (I will commit an entire post to describing my classes and teachers later...) In Provo, 8am classes KILL me, but here it seems sort of late! It's different when your "walk to school" is just up 2 flights of stairs and you are friends with literally every student in your class.

*Classes are usually 2 hours long. We generally have about a 1 hour break between 2 classes each day. It's sort of taxing. And my computer likes to run out of battery during the second class which makes note taking difficult.

**Our schedule is different every single day.

12 noon- Over lunch at the Oasis, self-nominated group leaders go around inviting people to afternoon activities. Some people say they want to stay home to study, but they usually end up going into the city after all.

12-4 We go to the city. Groups must have at least 5 people, but we are tending to go in groups of about 20... lame. Anyway, some fun things I have done are going to the temple mount, shopping in the old city, and exploring old, little Jewish towns. We always key out of the JC with our security cards, and carry a cell phone so security can contact us at any moment. Even you could call me on my cell, if you want to pay an arm and a leg. It's about a 1/2 hour walk through the Kidron Valley to get to places we want to go... Logically, the less people the faster we go!

~We must be back before dark (for now, with the war and all...) so this next 2 hours would be prime homework time. But, I usually use it to load and edit my pictures, go check in with my friends and see what they did that afternoon, blog. Oh, yeah, I really do pictures and blogging during this time. Actually, lately we've been having another class during this time. I LOVE HEBREW! ~

6-7 Dinner at the Oasis. The meals are pretty good. Cafeteria food. They prepare authentic dishes, so some of the textures aren't my favorite, but what the heck, I just eat it. There is always pita bread, and LOTS OF BELL PEPPERS :)

7-midnight- I usually discipline myslef for 2-3 hours to get some reading done. But people really like to play signs, get volleyball going, or this incredible card game called Wacky 6. (Don't worry dad, not facecards!) The shekel shack is open during this time for us to buy things like Mentos and popcorn. All the profit goes to the memories committee for our program T-shirts. Elyse and I squeeze in a set of 3 ping pong matches every night before bed, that is always a good time. We are so evenly matched! But MOST of the nights, we have a forum (guest speaker) or a linen exchange (they wash our sheets every week!)or choir practice, or FHE, or a Humanitarian project... or something else going on that takes away from homework/play time. Life is SO busy here. We just keep hoppin!

Midnight- I am always the last one to sleep, so I use my trusty headlamp to sneak into my room, find my toothbrush, get some sleeping pants on, and revv up for 5:30am practice.

LIFE is GOOD :)