Thursday, February 19, 2009

Palestine

Two days ago Jecia and I had one of the coolest experiences. We went to the Dome on the Rock with a group of six people. Ever since 2000 no one but Muslims are allowed in the actual building, but we wanted to see if we could sweet talk our way in, we couldn't. We ended up talking to this group of Muslim girls that were 16 and 17 years old. They were on a school field trip. They were some of the cutest girls ever! They tried sweet talking us into the buildings. At one of them (there are multiple mosques on top of the temple mound) an underground mosque they couldn't get us in, but they were allowed to take my camera underneath and record what the entire thing looked like. Brother Skinner was shocked that I was able to get that footage and told me that it had some tie to Solomon's cave, I can't remember exactly. Well these girls ended up spending the next two hours with us. They talked some guy into letting us take a picture with his anaconda. They also took us to their favorite place to get desert- Jafar's sweets. One of the girls insisted on paying, "no let me, let me, I am very rich". It was really cool to get to talk with them and see how much we had in common. We were talking about dating and modesty. They told us that they dressed the way they did because they loved their bodies and it was a choice they made to dress like they did. It reminded me of how LDS girls talk about modesty and it being their choice. They also talked about how boys just made life complicated, I had to laugh. One of the girls was telling us how another girl had a crush on one of the guys who worked at the restaurant we were at, the girl with the crush started blushing- it made it feel like we were all just a big group of frinds sitting around sharing stories. They told us how they watched LOST, Prison break and friends and in their free time listened to music like Enrique Inglesius and Shakira the rest of the artists I didn't know. When it was time for us to go they insisted that they get our names so they would remember them and we got their names as well and they wrote notes like, "think of me every day" and "love you". They also taught us how to do the head wraps that they do and endured all of our childish questions like, if they had to wear the head dress all the time: Answer- they don't, when they are at home they take it off, but they always wear it in public. That was probably one of my favorite days in the old city.
-Eliza-

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