yesterday

I sat down to write my paper about the ways in which bacteria cause disease. It was a tricky business at best. I mean I can whip out an intelligible paper about Kierkegaard, but how on earth do I make bacteria measure up to Kierkegaard? I turned on a little music, something to feel the void of silence that has been creeping around me since I’ve been solo this week. This song came on, not a masterpiece, but it is chalk full of memories from a time that seems far too long ago. I called her and made her listen to it. I hung up the phone and prepared to get back to work.

And then I cried.

And then I laughed. How the heck does a song like that make you cry? But I already knew the answer to that one. I cried for yesterday. I cried for late nights on gchat, noodle fights, dancing in the kitchen, quote walls, diapers, pranks, grey’s, brownies, always having someone there, skinny mirror, tarzn, gossip girl, cakes, creamery on 9nth, runs. I cried for them. It wasn’t a desperate cry, a cry of defeat or despair; it was a cry of change. That we’ve all moved on. I cried because I knew that is the way it is supposed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m so happy for her my veins are about to burst. And I’m so happy for her. And I’m so happy we are all finding ourselves, and settling in to places in our lives that seem so utterly us. But that doesn’t mean that every once and awhile I look back and cry, mourn the loss of something great, even if what has replaced it is even greater.

Somehow during this short year since we said goodbye to apt 2111, with an all out day of cleaning and one last hoorah, we’ve all managed to transform. And it is a good thing. But, all the busyness and plans and homework and dates and exercising and babysitting and extra curriculars and… life, takes its toll. And sometimes I cry.

I’m at a wonderful place right now in my life. I have immeasurable potential, a whole life before me, and lots of great people to share it all with. I’m grateful for all I have. And although sometimes I long for yesterday (thing this song) and as cheesy as it sounds, I am truly grateful for today.

Back to bacteria,
M

Someday

So I've been thinking a lot about somedays (hence my last post). Why I put certain things off, why I do other things immediately, why I want something so badly, and then when it comes right down to it, I can't seem to take action to do what needs to be done. I have a wonderful life. I have been blessed with so many things. Sometimes I think too many. But there is responsibility that comes with those privileges (think this scripture). And I feel like I've been taking all my blessings for granted. Now is my time to act. So... I'm searching. Trying to find my niche, my way to give something beautiful to the world. The day that I posted this, a little gift popped up on my igoogle: "How to Cure Someday Syndrome." So I read. I was pleasantly surprised. They actually had some good tips, and if anything it got me thinking about what I do/try to do/want to do to make my somedays go away. I'm reminded of this talk, something I need to memorize as a permanent mantra. On tuesday this man spoke, and it was excellent. Just one more reminder to do something today.

Someday is no good. It just makes us disappointed in ourselves, and stops us from becoming who we are really meant to become.

No more somdays for me (ok, let's be realistic here, a few less somedays for me),
M

wasted

If I took all the time I wasted:
deciding what I wanted to wear that day
checking facebook
eating when I'm not even hungry
checking my email
thinking about nothing
whining about how much I have to do
worrying about all there is to worry about
blogging when I'm supposed to be studying for a test

I think I would have a whole lot of time to do the things I really want to do. WHY? Why I ask you? Why can't I just get it together enough to actually be the person I really want to be instead of always watching others take action while I worry about how my hair isn't curling right.

grrr.... today I am angry at myself.

no more wasting time. NO MORE
M

Courage

The more I learn, the more frustrated I become. Is that the purpose of the education, to make us into informed, but utterly confused individuals who are incapable of forming opinions because we actually see both sides?

Education makes my brain hurt.

This week the confusion escalated as I listened to this man. I had heard him speak once before, in the White City, what seemed like eons ago. When we found out his was coming to pay us a visit in Provo, we all frantically jumped on the computers and signed up for his three day lecture class on the conflict in Jerusalem.

He struck me as a very interesting man the first time he spoke to us. He was wearing worn out jeans and an untidy blue, wrinkled shirt, but he was very well spoken, using such striking analogies and metaphors I was forced to write them down. I felt naturally inclined to trust his words. I didn't have to sift through his words to find the truth within them. I saw it more plainly before me.

This time he was in a suit. I felt much more removed from the subject, and I felt sadness rise within me that I wasn't as current on the conflict as I once had been. I was eager to hear his words, to let them dance around in my mind. Some of what I heard came back like I had once heard it in a dream. But a lot of it was new. I laughed to myself as I thought that I had spent an entire semester learning about the subject and I had barely cracked the surface on what there is to know. I think sometimes we learn so we can see how ignorant we really are. It keeps us humble.

He is a no nonsense man, one that tells you how it is. Usually I dislike people like that because they come off cynical, the Scrooges of the world. But what I was most impressed with as I listened to him was not his knowledge, his resume, his client base, or even his metaphors. It was his strong moral standing and his sense of hope. He is an Israeli citizen, but he has taken cases up against Israeli settlers, lobbied for schools to be built in East Jerusalem, and knows everything and anything there is to know about the possibilities for peace in Jerusalem. He has done what he thinks is right, in a resounding, impacting, could ruin your entire career, kind of way. I could see within him a strong moral compass, one that he would not stray from, no matter how politically or non-politically correct he was being. He presented us with seemingly insurmountable difficulties, and yet... he urged us to make the difference. That as Americans, and even as Christians we had a part to play in this rally for peace. And we must have hope.

I have been thinking a lot lately about hope. How easily we can lose hope, how easily we can gain it. How universal it is. We may be of different lands, of different cultures, but we all hope. Hope for peace, for a better way of life, for love, for happiness.

Sometimes making a difference in the world seems too daunting. I've always been one to entertain the idea that one day I will make a difference in the world. But as I become more and more educated, I become more and more overwhelmed with the task. Human beings, however fundamentally the same, are very complicated. And that makes making a difference a very difficult thing. But...

If you don't hope, no one will. If you don't try, no one does. The world is vast, heart breaking, and often times cold. But for all the tragedy that seems to emanate from this habitat of ours, there is an incredible amount of good. And my belief is that it stems from hope. Hope in more than life, in a Creator of all, and hope that as an individual, you can make a difference.

As I listened to him, I prayed that I could have such courage. That I could stand knowing that not once had I betrayed my conscience. That I could do what is right because it was right. Always.

The conflict seems impossible and the more I do learn the more confused I become about its intricacies. It's not so black and white; humans are involved after all. And yet... if you take one more look maybe it's not as impossible. One thing I do know, we will never find peace if we don't have hope that we will.

Courage. Courage to stand. Courage to learn. Courage to hope.

M

step

One step two step three step four

Step step step step
Is it really over?

All of us were there. Just us
Stepping the same
Endless paths before us
Somehow it would always be this way

Then I stepped there and you here
You and I
Different.
One step more and they are strangers to me

It hurts sometimes
A child ripped from her playthings


Hundreds of steps
Thousands of steps
Millions of steps
He stepped there


So many steps.
But not too many
I should have counted

I can’t
Lift my eyes to the stars
Hold my hand, touch my heart
Tell me the secret to make my eyes twinkle again
And then let go

I told you I wouldn’t forget this time
Step step

But I did
Tell me again will you?


My eyes averted I continue on
Step step
It hurts and I know it

Turn. Do it. I dare you
Don’t think. Remember
Step step step


M

microBIOLOGY

you know when you are a mircobiology major when:

you hear the words staphylcoccus aureus and your skin jumps with excitement and butterflies flit around in your stomach like kissing the boy of your dreams for the first time.

you climb the 10 flights of stairs to the eighth floor of the WIDB. every. day. .

the only pictures on your camera of late are ones of the bacteria you grew on your petri dish

you spend two hours harvesting and planting seeds so tiny you can barely see them

you spend all day with your hands in inoculated petri dishes full of bacteria ranging from salmonella to some strain that resembles cholera if it infects you and you like it

you start throwing words around like PCR, DNA extraction, inoculate, Agar, infectious, pili, interferon, lipopolysaccharide, and cytotoxic T cell like those were the first words you spoke as a toddler.

you've become a biohazard to the entire BYU campus.

This semester will be interesting,
M

wearing

do you ever put on an outfit and walking out the door thinking, why the heck am I wearing this?

Today is that day.

making poor fashion choices,
m

pilgrimage

The Tel Aviv Airport

The Old City

Augusta Victoria Church

Model City: The Israel Museum

Tel Aviv

Tel Beer She'va

Wilderness of Zin overlook

The Pyramids

The Sphinx

Saqqara

The Camel Safari

Citadel of Salah Al-Din

Ibn Tulun Mosque

Mt. Sinai

The Dome of the Rock

Valley of Elah (where David met Goliath)

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Hezekiah's Tunnel

Dormission Abbey

Madaba

Petra

The Church of the Nativity

The Red Sea

Caesarea Maritima

In Galilee, near the Golan Heights

Gamla (site of one of the first clashes in the Great Revolt)

Bet She'an

The bus where my tired feet spent many hours

Masada

The Dead Sea

walking on the usual route back to the Center from the City

home. 18 days. 12 hours. 37 minutes. 07 seconds and counting...

Each second it gets further away, memories become that much more distant, and the feeling that it was all a dream-an alternate universe-becomes more real. It once again feels like a distant land. When I think such a thought I immediately accompany it with several others. I force my mind to recall the palace that is the Center. I remind myself of the pain my legs felt as I walked up the hill to the Old City. I try to hearken the smells, the business, the faces back to my mind. I can hear the prayer call filling my ears with beauty. Most of all I try to summon that glow, that constant uplifting and power I didn’t know I had until it was gone. It was real. I know it. I know it.

Home is good. Home is hard. Home is here, but home is somewhere distant as well.

We sat around the oasis table eating our typical lunch of fruit, some questionable meat, egg and pasta concoction, pitas and more pitas. It was one of the first days and we were taking a break from our many orientations and were discussing our new lives and the journey we were about to embark on. One of the boys remarked, "I think more than anything this is a pilgrimage, that's what Brother Huntington said last night and that is how I'm going to treat it from now on."

His words struck me. At the time I did not fully understand how this journey was a pilgrimage, but now it is the best word, for lack of a better one, to describe the journey that I went on. Thousands of people make their own pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They sacrifice time, money, and the way of the world to come to this ancient place and pay their respects to the sacredness this land possesses. But the sacredness of this place does not just come from the places themselves, but from the value that the people put on them. From their goodness and devotion to God. From their yearning to become better, more like Him. From their pilgrimage.

I thought of the best way to document my journey in Jerusalem in a meaningful way. To me, this sums up my journey. A piece of me and a piece of the land. Just a small smattering of all the places were my feet walked. Evidence I passed through there, but really that the land passed through me, whispered it's secrets into my ear, and guided me as I learned to open my mind and heart.

A pilgrim's footsteps in Jerusalem.

You’ll find some glaring omissions in my collection. Where are the quintessential Jerusalem sights? Where is the Garden Tomb, the Garden of Gethsemane, Galilee?

My foot prints to do not appear in such places because I consider them sacred ground. I am one among thousands who have walked that hallowed ground and have been touched, my heart marked rather than my footprint left. Such an event is deemed sacred and deserves reverence, written upon the walls of my heart and kept close.

My last piece is at the Center. The white limestone characterizing the Center and the Eternal City. My empty, worn, walking shoes. These shoes contain so many memories, not only in Jerusalem, but they represent a whole life before my journey to that distant land. An old life I shed in Jerusalem to become a better person. And a piece of me I left in the land I love. Empty shoes to be filled by other students. Others who will love the land just as much as I do, who will feel the center is their home, and the people their people. And I, I will continue on.

my heart belongs in Jerusalem, and I pray for peace.

beginning a new kind of journey, but taking all I have learned from this monumental one,
m

grumpy

I felt the wind up, I felt the tense atmosphere, the stress dripping off people’s foreheads. Finals. Living with eighty other people who are taking the exact same classes as you is not highly recommended. Inevitably you will explode with all the studying you see going on. I had to constantly remind myself that everyone has different study habits and that I could do this even though I didn’t stay up all night making flash cards of the all the Arabic words our techer ever said in class.

I was grumpy. Stressed yes, but also just plain grumpy and I wasn’t sure why. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be anywhere. After a yet another day of useless pretending to study, I threw my backpack on and thumbed down the stairs, trying to push tears back out of my eyes as I opened the door to my room. I shed my backpack, wishing I was really shedding my skin and starting afresh. I walked past my roommates out on to the balcony, the view greeting me like an old friend. I carefully stepped into the dirt, zigzagging my way through thorned rose bushes and hopped over the fence. I sat down in my favorite spot, my feet dangling over the edge of the wall and looking down onto the patio below.

The sunsets are always good here. As I sat there trying to forget my day, I thought about the view that was greeting me. Immediately in front and below me is the little patch of land just below the center. The neighborhood boys like to go there to make mischief, play games and walk dogs. My eyes moved upward and I met the little neighborhood we walk through everyday to get to the city. The little red-headed girl that waves at us each time we pass (why there is a red-headed little girl in East Jerusalem is beyond me), the little pesky boys who poke us with sticks or throw small rocks at us, the horse that eats garbage in the field just down the street, the tour buses lined up along the sidewalk, the school kids all lined up waiting to catch the bus, and row upon row of houses built up the hill. My mind carried me around the bend, just over my neighborhood to the Mt. of Olives where I imagined olive trees without end, endless churches, and the Garden. I turned next to the view directly in front of me. I traced the road I find myself walking almost everyday up past Lana’s snack shack, past the store we dubbed “the Arab Costco” and up to crash corner. There I met by a view now so familiar to me I could draw it with my eyes closed. I saw the Dome, with it’s gold hues reflecting back at me, the Holy Sepulcher, Dormition Abbey peeking out from Mt. Zion, and the wall, standing there as it has for hundreds of years, watching thousands of stories unfold before it. I though about the people that I pass as I walk in the city. Women in sparkly heels, silver tops and head scarves. Men with earlocks and large furry black hats. Little children, so cute I want to stow them away and take them home with me.

My heart opened as I my mind filled with these thoughts. How much I’ve learned. How much I’ve come to love.

Grateful,
m

jordan

Jordan was good to me.
studying for my million tests,
m

peeking through the wall at petra
the treasury!
Jerash
the glorious mall in Amman

halfway

This last week marks halfway. It makes me so sad to think half of the bliss is already over, but so grateful that I have so much manna ahead of me. As I reflect on these last 8 weeks of my journey, I see already how much I have changed. My mind and eyes have been stretched and opened to so much knowledge and goodness. My heart as been softened and healed, pulled and pushed, and grown to include two peoples that exist in one place, but at first glance seem so different. The other day as we took the short cut from Aladdin's (the money changer) to the nativity shops, it hit me: I live here. It is one of my homes. A piece of my heart has fallen in love here. And although I will not let go of all the goodness I found in other places, a part of me belongs here. Jerusalem is my city. It is such a good feeling. That first day, that first sight of the Old City, was so overwhelming with sights and sounds, I didn't ever think I would grow to know it. Although I still have so much to learn from this Holy Land, I am beginning to know the city. It is such an enlightening feeling. We had a fireside tonight in which both of the speakers reminded us that we are different, set apart from the world here, we bear a light, a light of truth. They reminded us to not just walk this land, but to let it pass through us. To have scriptures and thoughts come to us as we see these wondrous sites. And that we will not find Christ at the Garden tomb or on Herod's Steps, but in our hearts, as we study his life and teachings and strive to live and become more like Him. So inspiring.

My faith has grown, my heart changed, and my countenance hopefully becoming more like His.

embracing the journey,
m

typical

our days are crazy. take today as our case study:
5:00 up for some review for our ANES midterm
6:15 get ready for the day
6:30 breakfast
7:00 quick apartment cleaning for room check
7:30 Old Testament
9:30 dash down to the room to indulge in our room check reward
9:45 Judaism class
11:00 Ancient Near Eastern Studies midterm
12:00 lunch
12:30 some reading and a quick nap
2:00 Palestinian class
4:15 walk to the western wall
4:45 observe the beginning of Jewish sabbath
6:00 walk back to the center
6:30 dinner
7:30 quick call to the mama
8:00 off to socialize and eat some treats
9:00 reminisce about my childhood as I watch Anastasia
10:30 bed (hopefully I'll make it)

and each minute of that busy schedule is spent growing in ways I didn't think was possible. Can my brain grow that big? I hope it can
exhausted,
m

Sinai

probably my favorite part of our whole trip. Wake up call was 1:00am. the stars were amazing, the view magnanimous, and the spiritual experience beautiful. I wish I had time to write in detail about it, but alas my to do list is longer than the nile.
finally caught up on egypt posts,
m

Cairo again

cairo=
overnight train from luxor
trip to the egyptian museum to see lots of famous things
lunch at Hard Rock cafe that included group dancing and loud music
the bazaar (yet another one)

sleep

muhammud ali citadel
another mosque
driving

sinai

sorry I'm not more descriptive.
m

our cute little train compartment
muhammud ali citadel

luxor day two

ah... same excuse as last time,
m

Luxor
Karnak
Karnak
(temples of course. don't know what I'm talking about? look it up on wikipedia!)

luxor day one

For lack of time, I'm leaving the story of my first day in luxor be told by my pictures and brief captions. I have way too much to do to be blogging.
busy busy,
m

me and whiskey, my trusty camel
me and king tut's tomb, valley of the kings
me and Ramses III temple

the py-ram-ids

our first official day in Egypt was filled with pyramids, tombs and temples. Can it get any more Egyptian? I feel like I've said it a million times, but it felt so unreal. I could not believe that men made those vast, huge structures. After taking pictures at the Khufu pyramid, we went to Khafre's pyramid. The tunnel looked small, but I thought I could take it. Until the smell and the heat and the humidity met me at the doorway. yuck. but... when would I ever get to go INSIDE a pyramid again. So in I went. downupdownleveluplevel. step after step. I made it. The tomb had been raided thousands of years ago, but it was still amazing nonetheless. leveldownlevelupdownup. I made it. air.

Next stop was the pyramid overlook. total typical tourist trap, but great picture taking opportunity. Then on to the sphinx. It was also awesome. Also unreal. Off to the step pyramid of Zoser and his temple complex. I got my first glimpse of authentic hieroglyphs. They were so beautiful. I feel like I just keep describing everything the same way, but I can't help myself. There is no other way to describe it but amazing and beautiful. And my brain is too busy to think of any other way to say it. You just had to be there I guess.

another day in the works,
m

me, Khufu, and my model pose
midge enjoying the pyramids too
hehe. the pyramid overlook. I was really excited
step pyramid of Zoser