January 2-11, 2020

January 2, 2020

I was getting a ride home from Sundance with my bud Gary. He was telling me about the craziest icicles he had ever seen, these icicles that were like 9 or 10 inches long. I told him I had some real icicles to show him. So we hiked up the snowy icy slope to the actual frozen part of Bridal Veil Falls and he was losing his mind, the sweet little Texas boy. He was so excited and he’s such a good kid. 

January 3, 2020

My last day working at Sundance. We were at the Hole eating lunch and Jon our boss was telling us about how he was in bed about to fall asleep when 2 kids that work parking with us showed up at his house and said “Hey we’re here to paint your nails!!!” So you can see his black glittery nails in his power stance. 

January 4, 2020

This is Mitch’s gigantic foot with the tiniest climbing shoe I’ve ever seen. We did some after-hours climbing at Momentum as a sort of going away party with the gang. 

January 5, 2020

Every Sunday evening. Dinner, dishes, then games for the rest of the night.

January 6th, 2020

After sitting in the “Don’t get groped in Jerusalem” Meeting for 6 hours, I dropped off a canteen that Shelley had given me soup in back in the fall and said bye to them. I tutored their kids since last January and they’ve become some of my best friends and have been with me through all the craziness of this last year

January 7, 2020

The end of an era. The last 6 months have been this kind of idealized life, with everything so stable and consistent and easy, living at home, all my siblings living in Utah and hanging out with them all the time, great friends that are all so close. But now half my siblings are gonna be moving and friends moving and when I’m back I’ll be starting my actual major and maybe need to consider actually dating and I’ll be moving out and it seems like life’s moving on and getting more real.

January 8, 2020

I spent this entire day on an airplane. I thought this city we flew over had a funny name.

January 9, 2020- I slept 23 out of the 24 hours this day in bed. I got strep throat right before leaving to Jerusalem so I was feverish and delirious and miserable this entire day.

January 10, 2020

I was so excited to see this ladder at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I had learned about it in Shelley’s art history class and got to see it in person. Inside the church I got wrecked by an Armenian deacon who wanted to argue while I was just trying to have an uplifting spiritual experience. He told me his church was more right because it’s 1800 years older and we’re not allowed to talk about religion here so I just left.

January 11, 2020

we visited the Garden Tomb here and I was honestly pretty underwhelmed. It has no real historical significance. Protestants basically just chose a different site to be their holy place in Jerusalem since they didn’t feel welcome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is dominated by Catholic and Orthodox Christians. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I felt a profound sense of reverence while touching the stone slab they laid the Savior’s body on after he was crucified. I didn’t feel anything like that at the Garden Tomb though. So instead of posting a picture from there, here's the sunset from that night.