Stars and Bucks

Orthodox church buildings do not cease to amaze me. My "History of the Church in the East" class ventured into the Old City Jerusalem to observe Orthodox Churches. First off, the mosaics absolutely captivated me, putting me in complete awe. Particularly the Church of Holy Sepulcher (go figure). The supposed site of Golgotha was overcome with the beautiful mosaics scaling the walls and arched ceiling. Below, near the stone that they claim Jesus was buried on, there is another mosaic of the death and resurrection of Jesus. I looked carefully at this one, recognizing that there had to be detail even to the point of shading in order to effectively depict the colors of a robe and everything else. Simply awe-inspiring.
We went on to less extravagent looking sites, but equally spiritual. We visited a Coptic church father who was a multi-lingual, human encyclopedia (there are quite a few of those here). He gave great insight on the many misconceptions of the Coptic church, though I will have to research it myself to be able to explain any of it. You know how you sometimes here something, and you remember your reaction being one of affirmation and agreement, but you don't necessarily remember the content to which you agreed? I get that a lot haha. We also went to a Syrian Orthodox church building, but that was a little harder to follow. The father was less fluent in English, still impressive, however.

Today, Ben, Jodie, Molly and I went to Ramallah in the West Bank for a little visit. It was one of those random spontaneous events that I'm so fond of. When we had arrived, I instantly felt that I had just entered the wrong section of West Philly, only the guns were actually visible, and they happened to be AK-47's. I quickly became accustomed to it, as if I had a choice, and walked on with my friends. There has recently been some deadly activity in Gaza, which affects all of Palestine - including Ramallah. Stores were closing early in case of demonstrations, but we found this out later.

In the meantime, we went to a place that Ben was ecstatic about: Stars & Bucks. I kid you not, it was named Stars & Bucks. The name, as well as the signs (colors and all) plastered all over the place, were a complete knockoff of Starbucks. Ben let us know that it had been sued by Starbucks, but as he said, "What is Starbucks going to do? Come to the West Bank and say, 'Hey, you stole our name, we're sueing you." Good luck Starbucks. I bet your corporate executives and stock holders would love the West Bank. Anyway, I bought a massive ice cream sundae, unknowingly I might add. My friends bought some hooka, which, if you do not know, is flavored tobacco. It was pretty cool looking - basically, it's a bong (I don't care what they say, it looks like a freaking bong) with an apple on top covered in tin foil. After being nagged to smoke some, I finally ... ha! yeah, right. I don't smoke. We were sort of chased out after being there only 20 minutes. That's when we found out that everybody was closing up for the day at 3:40 in the afternoon haha.

We left and went on to the Shuuk (an outdoor supermarket with a thousand people shouting at you "Asherah!" meaning ten sheqels). I didn't buy anything there, but it was intense. By the way, there is a hair style here that I have dubbed, "The Metro Mullet." It is as hideous as it sounds.

Well that's it for another blog. I hope that you enjoyed. I miss you!