Egypt Preparations

For a couple days now Tessa and Jacquelyn has had the bright idea to cut Tessas hair. It finally ahppened! Tessa was terrified with jacquelyn's inexperience with cutting hair while she cut it with tiny little travel scissors. It probably loods good, but we'll never see it because Tessa always wears it in a bun.

We had classes all morning long and headed to town for last minute Egypt preparations. It started out as a group of 6 people, the way it always plans to go... and then about 35 other people joined when they saw us leaving. 6 or 7 of us girls had gone a little bit ahead of the group to reduce the congestion as "Aladdin's" the money exchanging, when we got to the bottom of the Kidron valley... Not a good place to be with so few girls. All the local kids just got out of school and were headed home. There was a group of about fifteen boys around the age of 16. We were about 30 feet away and a european boy threw a punch. It was chaos. We watched this massive fight break out between all these boys. It wasn't the most ideal place to be. The boys started throwing things every which way, while we tried to keep our distance and attempt to make it across the busy road. We couldn't cross and all stood there in shock watching the whole fight go on until they finally split up the 2 that started it... and we got on our merry way!

The scents walking through town change about every 3 seconds and this picture is of the spice stores. Getting creative with spices!

We headed out to our favorite store, Alli Babba's where we met Shabban (The man in the middle of us), a well known man in the area that gives "Mormon University" students and excellent price. He had juice waiting for us as we spent a good 45 minutes looking at this tiny store we've all been to 3 or 4 times before. We all got our genia pants, linen shirts, BYU JC attire and headed back out to the streets.

The dress i've been DYING to get. It's pretty much amazing, and I hve it today because of our dea Brandts bartering skills. It started at 200 shekels and he got the store owner down to 75. It may not look like much, but it's incredible.

The streets of Jerusalem. The guy on the right laughed so hard at us for being so sneaky and sticking the snake in the pictures. Right after this we headed to the grocery store where we met two very attractive guys from California here on an intensive bible study for the same amount we are. (We never see American men our age besides the 20 we live with) Mom, they aren't local guys, so I can date them right??? =) Just kidding, but i wouldn't mind running into them again.

 Quick stop to the candy store... YUM! Stalking up for Egypt

We've wanted a picture with these guards every time we come into town and been too scared to ask. I finally got up the courage to ask and I think they enjoyed it a little too much. You should have seen the tight grip the guard to my right had on me. Meg's guard kept saying how beautiful she was and asking all sorts of questions. Welcome to the local men.

We headed back for a delicious dinner, and an excellent presentation from brother Muhlestein (Still trying to et the right spelling). He's one of 3 men in the church that have recieved their doctorate in Egyptology, and stayed in the church. He's 1 of 2 men that are doing something related to his degree. More to come after our field trip today!