Israel Life

My Israel life will actually be on pause tomorrow, because I'm headed HOME for Christmas!!!! Of course, I should be packing or trying to finish homework, but instead this is happening.

Last week I ventured out to see some more of Haifa, and then on the weekend I was lucky enough to go on a quick trip to Jerusalem.

My first stop was one of Haifa's most famous tourist attractions, the Bahai'i Gardens. I don't know if that apostrophe is in the right place, but I'm pretty sure there's one somewhere in that word.

It's a pretty amazing place!

After that I wandered through the German Colony, a neighborhood built by- you guessed it- Germans. This area was settled in the late 1800s by German Christians who wanted to live in the Holy Land. I was excited to see that they had CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS.

For obvious reasons, there's not a lot of Christmas to be found in Israel. For a girl who's excited to go home for her favorite holiday, this was fun to see!

I didn't get them in my picture, but they also have a menorah for Hannukah and a crescent to represent Islam. Haifa is the most religiously integrated city in Israel. In most areas Arabs and Jews live much more separately. There's also a large Russian population here with partial Christian/Jewish ancestry who celebrate Christmas. With my paleness I am often mistaken for being a Russian speaker here.

Also in the German Colony, I stopped at the 1800s cemetery where a few Mormon missionaries are buried. We came here with BYU. If you have excellent eyesight you'll be able to see that the tombstone says 'Provo' and the name of the church in German.

My last little sightseeing stop was the beach!! After 6 weeks of living here and looking at the Mediterranean from campus every day, I finally made it to the water. It was about 75 and sunny, so it was perfect weather to take off my shoes and wade in the water. This was on December 11, by the way. Let that sink in.

I could really get used to that.

A few days later, I went on a mini road trip to Jerusalem for stake conference. It's about a 2 hour drive. It was so so exciting to walk through these doors more than a year after leaving!

Christmas at the JC!

The best part about this day was seeing one of my favorite views again.

The other fun part was being there without having to be dressed Amish. BYU has a very strict dress code for Jerusalem Center students and I was feeling very happy to not be subjected to it anymore lol.

After a great Christmasy meeting, we ate lunch at the Oasis (doesn't that word just make you nostalgic, JC students?), and then headed back to Haifa. I didn't get to actually venture into the city on this trip, but it made me so happy just to be close to the city! It really felt like coming home. In 2 weeks, I'm going back to Jerusalem to sightsee, so I don't have long to wait! Can't wait to be back in those Old City streets.