First day of "real" medical school

Well, our "transition" courses officially ended on Friday with a test in emergency medicine, and "real" medical school started up on Sunday. Thing is, our first day of classes was spent touring Jerusalem instead of in the classroom! Yeah, what an amazing start to an intense year.

A few of us went up early, right after the test on Friday and stayed at the citadel youth hostel on the roof again--once again amazing! There was a little kid (I think that he was 8) staying there this time who I ended up playing with quite a bit, especially the first afternoon. This kid was crazy smart! Seriously, I felt like I was learning from him. Of course, by the end of the afternoon we had both morphed into superheroes; he had the power to touch someone and take all of their strength/kill them, but also to bring them back to life, and I had the power of tickling, which was both my defense and weapon. I lost all other identity for that kid for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday was spent mainly lounging around. We spent quite a bit of the morning at the hostel, eating the fresh mangos, bread, and cucumbers that we had bought at the shook (outdoor market) the day before. We eventually left and wandered around the Christian quarter looking for a cheap lunch, which we eventually found after quite a bit of walking (at least we know the area much better now). Then we walked outside of the Old City walls, laid down under the some trees in the shade, where Keiko and I feel asleep for a good 1.5-2 hours. I must have gone into hibernate mode or something with my heartrate slowing WAY down, because I woke up a couple of times absolutely freezing. It was a nice but very unexpected feeling after being in the stinking hot desert for so long.

Finally Paul, James and David (who had shown up some point during my nap) woke us up and we headed off to check out the Garden Tomb, one of the suggested, but highly disputed sites for Jesus' crucifixion and burial. There was so much to it that I'll talk about it in another post so that this one doesn't get too horribly long. Right before we left we met a really nice elderly couple who had been to Israel at least 13 times and who had had a son who had been a doctor before he had died from Hepatitis. He had received his medical education in South America and had worked in primarily rural settings in America. It was amazing to listen to their stories, advice, and excitement about what we're doing. After being here for about a month, it's easy to forget that this program is unique and that being in Israel isn't really commonplace for medical school. It was nice to be reminded of the blessing that we have been given with this opportunity, despite all of the problems that we have been having with scheduling and communication issues between faculty, administration, and students.

After leaving the Garden Tomb we practically ran through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City (which by the way was bustling like no other) in order to get back to meet up with a few other people in our group and head off to a worship service at Jill's church. For those of you who don't know, Jill is a friend of mine from back in Santa Barbara at Reailty Carp who is working at an international school as a 1st grade teacher in Jerusalem. The service was quite a bit different from their normal service because they were recording a worship CD, so instead of hearing a sermon, we sang in Hebrew the whole time. My favorite part was watching the truly joyous worship of some of the older people at the church. I've never seen people worship with such freedom and truly evident joy due to the goodness and mercy of God. I don't know how to describe it...it was really beautiful. Out of everything for the weekend, I wish that you all could have seen that.

After church and catching up a little bit with Jill, we wandered around outside of the old city again, --you guessed it--looking for food. Finally we found a place that was open and wasn't too expensive (and thankfully wasn't falafel), ate and headed back to the hostel. A few more of our friends met us up there after driving up to the city earlier that night, we all went to bed, and got up early the next morning to meet up with the rest of our class for a tour of Jerusalem.

The tour was pretty interesting and informative. We hit most of the tourist sites, starting off overlooking the city from Mount Scopus, traveling back down to the Old City where we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Kotel (Western Wall), and back out of the Old City and right up next to the wall separating the West Bank and Israeli territory, ending at a bus stop that had been transformed into a memorial for a number of people who had been killed there in a suicide bombing a few years ago. It was a great time of bonding with my class, and it was awesome how many deeper philosophical and religious conversations came up out of a genuine desire to understand eachother as a result of these visits.

So, yeah, our first day of class was a field trip...looks like I'm at the right school!! I'll write about more of it later, with some more of the "deeper" things that it brought up for me. But for now I need to study a little more histology, microbiology, and immunology before bed. Love you and miss you all!

God bless!