I love my classes.

First announcement: JUDAISM AND ISLAM CLASSES ARE FINISHED!!!!!
I can't even express my excitement that the stress is gone from those classes. Last week was possibly the most stressful week i've experienced. I usually don't get stressed that often and it was a weird feeling to be stressed the whole week. After these classes I felt 100,000 bricks were lifted off my shoulders.

Classes that are finished:
Isalm- Hallelujah! I am thanking Heavenly Father every day for this. To be modest I didn't like this class... at all. I now can tell you the rightly guided Caliphs, The Muslim Months that Muslims learned in kindergarten, and don't use now, 15 names of Allah (my personal favorite "The Retarder"), gah I don't even want to think what other useless information I can list off. It's done forever and I hope that I learn the things I was supposed to take from this class somewhere else in my life. I love Islam, I love Muslims, and I love the Palestinian people, but I did not love this class.

Judaism- I am really sad this class is done. I studied harder and more than I have ever studied for any test and I got a sad grade. I'm okay with it. I tried so hard. I learned so much. This information I will keep forever more and I hope it will excel me in my major and in life multiple ways. I learned so much about the Jewish culture, people and history. I feel that their religion was/is close to ours. We believe in the 5 books of Moses as they do, we believe a lot of the same things and maybe that's why I feel closer to the Jews.  Our teacher Ophir was excellent. He lead the passover that we had here, he'll come eat lunch with us often, he takes waves of kids to the synagogue visits every Friday, and 4 of his cute kids came trick-or-treating last night. He's been very involved with us and portrayed the information in a very organized, interesting manner.

Hebrew: I can't say enough good about this class. Our teacher Judy Goldman was fantastic. This was a 1 credit pass/fail class that I wish we had every day. Because we shorten our classes so much in order to be done by now we sometimes had it twice a week, and I loved it! I learned so much about the language, and much more about the culture. I think that she was Orthodox Jew even though she never came out and told us. She kept the Law of the Sabbath and a Kosher kitchen. She portrayed her devotion and love to the Jewish religion every class. I'm so sad it's over, but i'm exctied that I now know the basics of the Hebrew language (aka ABC's) and a few phrases.

Old Testament:
I have said it before, and i'll say it again... I ADORE this class. I miss it so much. Brother Muhlestein is the best. Our class was lead every day entirely by the spirit. He earned our respect in a way that we wanted to get our homework done and I felt so motivated to do well and succeed... In his class and life in general. Our class had to say their goodbyes, what a hard day. Our class all pitched in an purchased him an olive wood carving of Elijah being fed by the ravens when there was a famine in the land. He had really wanted it, but wanted to buy his wife a nativity set, so we did it for him. He was so touched, and it was an experience i'll never forget. Many of tears were shed on both ends. He and sister Muhlestein separately told us how much they loved us with an overwhelming sense of love, because we love them just as much as they do us.


Celebrations went like this:

our dang flagnackanshlackan Islam stuff we had to memorize.

Classes we're now/still taking:

New Testament! We've had two classes taught to us so far by Brother Judd. I am so excited for the rest of the semester. Each day my fingers are typing like lighting from all the new and important information he teaches us. He has his doctorate in the New Testament (lucky us!) and knows SOOOO much information. He's such a wonderful fatherly man that I can't wait to learn more from the rest of the semester. He has the cutest 5 girls in the world too!

Ancient Near East: This class is taught by Brother Jeffery Chadwick that I have learned infinite amounts from! He has been involved with Jerusalem for 30 years now. He's an archeologist that knows too much for my head to comprehend. We've been really blessed to have him on our field trips to explain the history behind everywhere we visit.He gives super hard mid-term quizzes each day, but challenges us a lot. I'm really grateful for his knowledge and teaching here! He'll be in Jerusalem for the next two semesters, but I would suggest his World Religions class at BYU provo to everyone. My brother said his class was one of two favorite classes at BYU. That says a lot coming from my brother.

We'll be traveling a whole lot more now:
Galilee Nov 14-24
Jordan 28- Dec 1
With a whole bunch of field trips each week. I'm excited to become more familiar with this wonderful place!