Below are a few points from life here. But, the most important comes first: Beautiful, sunny, 70 degree weather. With flowers included. That means more picnics, more studying outside, more walks with friends, just all around more goodness.
Other than the weather, life carries on as normal, except for a few changes.
- Bryan’s parents, sister, and 4 good friends from our church in Kansas City are here!! (Ok, actually this is the most exciting point.) They are doing a 2 week study tour with Bryan’s university and will be staying a little extra time with us after that. So far we’ve been able to spend most evenings with them, and have been so encouraged by our fellowship with them. And of course, they brought us some goodies from back home, like Ziplocks and dental floss (over $4.00 here!) and, of course, American peanuts.
- We’re planning a month-long trip to Rome for the month of July. Why Rome? To study biblical Greek, of course! The school that we’ve been taking spoken Koine Greek classes with here happens to offer a three-week intensive course there. Since tickets are extremely cheap from Jerusalem to Rome, we decided it would be worthwhile for us to do it. God provided a great housing situation for us for the entire month, and we’ll also be able to take a 4 day trip to Athens on our way back.
- We took a 3 day trip to the Shephelah (low foothills of Judah), the Negev (the dry South of the country), and the Dead Sea with the class I’m auditing and learned a lot about the historical, geographical, and political setting of many biblical narratives set in these regions. It was tiring, but at the same time felt like a little vacation for us, since we stayed at a nice hostel and ate great food while we were there.
- We started weekly private modern Hebrew lessons with an Israeli lady from our church. Nerel, our teacher, is so helpful and we hope we can develop a good friendship with her as well.