Intro To Jerusalem

Today we had orientation to the program here and all of the rules and stuff. I woke up at 4am because of jet lag so i just read The Brothers Karamazov and hung out. We took a several hour tour through Jerusalem and saw most of the big sites, minus the Holy Sepulchre. I guess we're seeing that later on this week. Also we're going to going to visit the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock is, but tourists aren't allowed in. Today we saw the Western/Wailing Wall and that was very interesting. The Dome of the Rock is in the background. It's just crazy to see all the Abrahamic religions coexist in such a small space. A little bit ago a few of us ventured to the Jewish quarter to see the first night of Pentecost festivities in the courtyard beside the WW and the WW itself. We saw most everyone leave at 9pm exactly, and then at 9:05pm we heard the Islamic call to prayer over the speakers. It's just mind blowing to think that each Abrahamic religion considers a very small amount of space in a fairly small city a holy place for them. Even i think about 7 Christian denominations worship in the Holy Sepulchre together.
Seeing ancient ruins is also amazing. If a building in Canton was built in 1850 I would consider it an old building. However, today I saw Roman ruins from 2,000 years ago. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that the Roman ruins are at some points at least 20ft down below where current roads are. The people that lived in this land so long ago saw a very different city than what we now see, and it is incredible to see how it has changed.