Walking Around the City

In preparation for the students to arrive, we took a day to re-orient ourselves by walking down the Mount of Olives from the BYU Jerusalem Center through the Kidron Valley, up to the Old City and through East and West Jerusalem, knowing that we would be taking the students on the same route two days later. Jerusalem is divided East and West as areas for the Palestinians in the east and the Israelis in the West side of the city. For Derek and Daniel our five mile walk fulfilled something that they have been waiting for since we arrived. That is, we ended up on Ben Yehuda Street, where they finally were able to sink their teeth into a shawarma. For those of you who have never tasted shawarma, it is a laffa wrap (flat bread) filled with lamb meat cut off a rotating spit, humus, cucumbers, tomatoes, and French fries. Sandy and I shared a falafel, which is pita bread filled with the above ingredients, except the lamb is substituted with falafel balls. Falafel consists of ground garbonzo beans or chick peas mixed with delicious spices, rolled into balls and deep fried.
We saw Shaaban, one of our favorite vendors in the Old City and our first purchase was a chess set and a scarf for Sandy. The next day, Derek and Daniel could not wait go out on their own to try out their bargaining skills again. Let’s just say that they got some good deals and some not so good deals. They went to the Old City market and shops with Katy and Ben Seely, whom they did not know beforehand and the only two other faculty children, and came back good friends. So we count that a successful jaunt, regardless of the financial outcome.