Written by Callie

Today is the first day we have actually walked around and got to see Jerusalem. We woke up and went to breakfast at the hotel, then we met our tour guide. We walked to the Old City of Jerusalem. We started out near the Armenian Quarter of the Old City, but just quickly walked though to get to the Jewish Quarter. We saw the houses and walked though the thin alley ways of the Old City. We saw little Jewish boys and girl running though out the streets. We saw religious men also walking though the streets as well as many tourists. Everything in the Jewish Quarter was closed because it is Shabbat. Our guide told us about the archaeological history as well as political and religious history in the Jewish Quarter.

Our incredible guide (Craig's photo)

The group got hungry so we decided to grab a bite to eat. We walked to the Christian Quarter because nothing was open in the Jewish Quarter. We had delicious pomegranate and passion fruit juice that was freshly squeeze right where we could see the press. We ate delicious falafel, hummus, pita, as well as some other food, until we were stuffed. We got up and started walking to the Western Wall.
Walking through the streets of the Old City the walls and floors were made of limestone and there were little shops everywhere, full of scarfs, little trinkets, kippa, and so much more. It was very overwhelming and exiting, there was so much to look at and we had to keep an eye on where the group was going as well. We finally get to the Western Wall, our guide tells us that there is a women's side and a men's side. We look at the wall and as we can see the women's side of the wall is way less than half as big as the men's side. The girls part from the boys as we go to separate sides of the wall. On the women's side it is hard to get close to the wall because there is so little space and there are lots of women close to the wall praying, but we make our way close to the wall. We put the notes from everyone in the wall and touch and look at the wall. We saw many religious places for all kinds of religions, from Muslims to Judaism to Christianity and heard all the different interpretations of all these holy sites from our guide. It was very interesting to hear all the perspectives of the different religions and how the stories matched up and overlapped to how they conflicted and contrasted each other.
After the wall we went to a nice dinner at this beautiful restaurant on the rooftop. Because it had gotten cold we just ordered teas, coffees and hot chocolates and got our dinners to go. We got to rest a bit before we met with this organization called Combatants for Peace. They are a group of Israelis and Palestinians who once played a violent role in the conflict who had decided that violence would not get the country anywhere. They formed together to try to create peace in Israel/Palestine. After we talked about the day and now we are all very tired and it is time for bed. So good-bye for now.

Here's Callie: