Shabbat

The Sabbath here is beautiful. Well, the Sabbath is beautiful everywhere, but here it's very special. You can't imagine what it's like to sing "In Humility Our Savior" while overlooking the entire city of Jerusalem. Phew.
I'm singing in the branch choir and we had our first practice and performance today. The man who directs the choir and plays the organ here is named Brother Galbraith and he is awesome! He plays the violin for the San Francisco Symphony and organ is his hobby, although he's incredible at that, too. Anyway, he arranged a version of "Beautiful Zion" for us that was, well, beautiful. The acoustics in our auditorium are incredible, I felt like I was singing in the Tabernacle Choir. He got a great sound out of us.
After church most of the students went to the Garden Tomb, but I had training for giving tours of the Center which was neat. I'm really excited to give the tours. The adorable woman training us said that it's mostly Israeli Jews that come through and she said they are hilarious, so I'm sure I'll have some good stories to tell.
I'm sitting in a lobby of the Center right now listening to the prayer call echoing from the Muslim mosques. There are mosques everywhere with huge speakers on the top that send the call into every nook and cranny. There are calls five times a day and supposedly there's one at 5 in the morning, but I haven't been woken up by it...yet. Anyway, after my training I went with 2 other kids from the training to explore the city for an hour. We walked down this road that runs parallel to the Mount of Olives and passes so many cool things! First, we made friends with some of the local boys that hang around the center all the time. They were so funny and nice! It was refreshing because alot of the boys here are pretty rude to us Americans. They'll occasionally throw stones and their favorite pasttime is to try to scare us. Today on my way home from exploring, this young boy came right up to me and suddenly bent over very quickly and just pointed to the ground. But it was enough to scare me. I jumped and let out a little squeak. He was laughing so hard at me! I told him, "Don't scare me like that!" He just laughed.
On our walk we passed some goats just roaming on a hillside, so I got a picture with them...I'm trying to figure out how to upload pictures onto this site...I'm so bad with computers! Anyway, while we were taking pictures with the goats these three tiny little kids came running over to us, probably 3 or 4, they were really young. They were calling out "Hey boy! Hey boy!" (to Chris). And then they said "What's your name?" They were so stinkin' cute and so happy to talk and wave to us. I liked them.
Dinner was yummy, as always. I basically stuffed my face.
Conclusion: I love how the Sabbath truly is a day of rest here. Having classes six days a week makes me very ready for that rest. I just feel like my eyes are constantly being opened to a whole new world and a whole new me. I feel like I am truly, truly myself here. Here, I remember to try to be my best self each day so easily, and I really like who I am when I do that. Life is beautiful.