Jerusalem

This is a picture I took of Jerusalem from the BYU Jerusalem Center. It had a pretty smokin' view of the ville. 

The top picture is (from right to left) Assad, me, and Assad's pal who runs the BYU-J Center. So cool. Then the bottom picture is Nitzan, the karate champion driver. He was trying to look cool.

 
As I before mentioned, John woke me up and told me that I could accompany him to Jerusalem today. I was pretty excited. I really didn't want to just sit on the beach all day. I wanted to get started!

Okay, so Jerusalem was amazing. I love knowing that I am living here for a while. I can enjoy things and realize that this was just the first of several trips to that great city. I also LOVE wearing business clothes. I didn't stay with him once we got there. He had to go to to Ramallah for some meetings (accompanied by two armoured cars full of guys with guns). Nitzan, the driver, took me to the Jerusalem office where Assad, a really cool Palestinian guy with an MBA, taught me some things and I edited his reports. Then, I wrote my first report to send to Washington. It was a validating experience. Assad is quite articulate and really knows his Strunk and White, so I was pretty impressed. We got into some intense English grammar and punctuation discussions. I adore Strunk and White. Genius. Anyways, Assad speaks French pretty well so we conversed a fair bit in French. Really great guy. I hope to spend more time in the Jerusalem office.

Once I finished the tasks that John had given me, we took off to explore Jerusalem. Quite frankly, I felt rather important being escorted around in an armored car by an Israeli karate expert (Nitzan, who is incidentally [and randomly] a member of the French foreign legion and can seriously drive like Jason Bourne) and a genius Palestinian businessman (Assad).

We took the suped-up Land Cruiser through the Old City then we went and got the greatest falafels, ever (I love not buying my own lunch) and then headed for the BYU Jerusalem Center. Assad's school chum manages the joint so we got in and had a special tour. 

All-in-all, today rocked hardcore. Tomorrow, I will begin at the embassy here in Tel Aviv. Because Friday is not a normal Israeli work day, apparently, not much goes on  in the office, so my weekend will begin after a pretty short workday. 

Life is fantastic, my friends.