Where did August Go??? And half of September?

Well...I doubt anyone is even going to read this post because you all probably think I'm dead by now, but lo and behold - I'm FINALLY updating again! I know that I probably won't be justified by coming up with excuses because, in the words of dear Coach Buhrley, "Excuses are like behinds, everyone has one and they all stink." Although that is generally true, I have been unbelievably busy this past month or so. This is going to be a marathon-of-a-post, so bear with me. I'll try to give you a little glimpse of what I've been up to recently...so here goes.

First and foremost, my last few weeks in Jerusalem were nothing short of incredible. I celebrated my 20th birthday, so a few friends and I went out in the city to celebrate my newest decade!! I'm no longer a teenager, which is crazy, but wonderful. We got ice cream at McDonald's and enjoyed the night-life there. The last few days we focused on the last week of Christ's life. We walked the path from Gethsemane to Golgotha, and the spirit was incredible. It was unbelievably hard to leave the Holy Land, and I'll never forget the experiences I had there.

The big 2-0!!! Woot woot...

Me and the girls at McDonald's for the last time

My birthday present to myself...my first tattoo! Ok, so maybe it was just a stamp-roller someone had, but it served it's purpose of making me feel like an adult. Don't mess.

This is believed to be the actual street the Savior walked up to be questioned and charged. Definitely a crazy thing to realize, but I loved it.

This was our last day in the city, and a bunch of us met up at the Dome of the Rock. It was one of my favorite days there, all of us moving from site to site as quickly as possible to fit everything in. I miss looking out my window and seeing this beautiful building...

After Jerusalem I met up with my parents and Chelsie in Barcelona for a few days. We bummed around there and then got on a cruise ship around the Mediterranean. Although it wasn't the most relaxing trip, it was better than I could've imagined. We got to see Malta, Sorrento, Rome, Florence, Pisa, and Villefrance. Woot woot. We didn't have a lot of time at each place, but we saw incredible architecture and took some hilarious pictures. Although I was a bit homesick by then (or shall we say "America-sick") I enjoyed every bit of it. We had some trouble with our flight connections on the way home, and lost a few bags in the process, but we got everything back and finally made it home!

Chels and I all "dressed-up" for dinner one night. We may have had a photo shoot in the lobby of the boat...but we enjoyed it. The food on the boat was incredible, and I even tried 3 new dishes, including 2 different kinds of fish!

All four of us in beautiful Malta...are we a good-looking group or what?

Notice anything "Eurpoean" about our tour guide...? Ha ha. I couldn't resist

One of the many gelato stops we made...this was in Florence, which was possibly my favorite stop of the cruise!

Me at the Vadican - I LOVED this place too. The artwork was incredible inside, and the Sistine Chapel was everyting I'd imagined.

Another Italian tour guide we had - does anyone else feel like he resembles a certain character from "The Wedding Planner"? ...Mosimo? Ha ha. He had the exact accent, and was kind of a creeper - Chels and I were dying, we had to get a picture with him.

After the cruise I came home and tried to get everything back in order. Our house flooded a few days before my parents left for Europe, so there was a bit of fixing up to do. My parents are still in the process of re-doing the upstairs, and it's been a great excuse to paint and get new carpet up there. :) I spent some time with Aaron (who I'm actually no longer dating) and he taught me to wakeboard. I'll admit, I was a bit skeptical of myself, but I got up and was doing great on my second try...I even got in and out of the wake. :) Definitely one of my new favorite things, so I can't wait til next summer for that. Anyone who has a boat...can we be friends?

I've been offered to be sponsored by multiple companies, but I'm keeping my options open for now. ;)

Another updateable (totally not a word...) event was the now-annual Colors Concert up at the Sandy Ampitheater. I met up with my family there, and Hydee was kind enough to be my date. :) It was a beautiful night, and the music was as great as expected. Afterwards Hyd and I went back to her house off 90th South and had a slumber party. Her husband was at his brother's for the weekend, so it was fun to have a little girl-talk and look at her wedding pictures. We also put mud-masks on our faces, and it was my first experience with it...definitely comes highly recommended by me!!! It was a great weekend - thanks for letting me come stay, Hyd.

Us three hung out together...all without our men. (Well - the other two actually HAD husbands to be missing, and I was getting used to single life). It was a party... :) Colors is the BEST.

Post-concert facials...

Well - that's about all the excitement one post can handle these days. I don't have a lot to update anymore except for school, work, and track. I changed my major from PE Teaching and Coaching to Home and Family Living, with a minor in Coaching. Definitely a great move for me, and I'm loving my classes now. Track is going well, and we have a lot of promise this coming season. I can't wait to tear it up, so keep praying I don't get injured or sick again. ;) I'm working for BYU Intramurals again, supervising volleyball and football. I love the social scene, and watching the games while getting paid isn't a bad thing. I'm easing back into the social life here, and I'm surprisingly enjoying it. BYU football has been incredible, and I'm still in awe from last week's blow-out. Congrats, cougars...and let's plan to destroy Wyoming tomorrow!

Tara-the-slacker

Hello again! Sorry I’ve been such a bum about updating lately, but for some reason it’s been difficult to find the time to do this. I’ve missed a lot of stuff on this blog, and it’d take me forever to completely update it, so I’m just going to hit the high points by listing 10 things I’ve done in the past few weeks. Mind you, I’ve traveled to Jordan and Bethlehem, and am currently in Galilee…so there’s a lot that I’ve seen and done. I’ll try not to leave anything out!

1 - First and foremost – I saw another “wonder of the world”…Petra. Rack your brains back to the last time you watched Indiana Jones and you just might recognize this place. It’s the fortress where he has to pick the right cup at the very end of the movie. Ha ha. I was amazed to see how big it is. You hike for about a mile down, not seeing anything but mountains, and then all the sudden it opens up and there it is. I loved it. There were a bunch of other ruins, but this temple was my favorite.

2 – I have now ridden a donkey! We got to take a little ride up this huge canyon in Petra, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. There were definitely times when I thought I was for sure going off a cliff (since my donkey would trot about 6 inches away from it) but I made it safe and sound. Mine must’ve been some sort of Olympian, however, because He literally ran up the entire thing, leaving me at the top by myself for a good 5 minutes before my friends showed up. And the best thing about it – it was $5! :)

(See these stairs? There was 900-somethin of them, and my donkey ran up the entire thing! You would've been scared too...)

3 – Funny story. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing, but I was told I looked like a sister missionary by a few people. I’m not sure if it was my mid-calf length skirt, my need for makeup, my carefree hair, my baggy shirt, my lack of romance, or my “constant smile” – but I’ll take it as a compliment. Ha ha. This picture was right after the first comment, so you can all be the judges. :) Do I look ready to serve a mission?

4 – I decided it was time to dye my hair, once again. Mom talked me into bringing some dye from the States, and it definitely came to good use. Paige dyed my hair, and then I decided to use my straight iron for the first time. Clearly I forgot what I was doing, because I plugged it right into the wall instead of using a converter. Minutes later my apartment was smoking, and I barley turned off the thing before it started on fire. FYI - American straight irons definitely don't work the same in Israel. Sorry Mom. ;)

5 – After Jordan we came back to Jerusalem to what’s known as “lock down”. I guess there were a few other “terrorist-related” attacks, and the city wasn’t the safest. Needless to say we came up with some crazy things to do in the JC for those 3 days we weren’t allowed to leave, but it was fun.

(One of the crazy things that went on while on lock down. Strange talents were discovered...)

6 – Bethlehem was an amazing place, and I really loved the feeling there. We went to a church built over what is believed to be the stable where Christ was born and sang a bunch of Christmas songs together. It was really powerful, and I realized how terrible the conditions were at the time of his birth. We went to a shepherd’s field after and had a big program about Christ, which was possibly my favorite thing here. Wow.

7 – I got attacked by a bug in my bed a few weeks back…bad experience. I woke up to bites all over my knees and ankles, and later that day I found the source of it all. This little critter pictured below fell on the floor when I shook out my sheets. I now look under my covers every night…I hate bugs. :(

8 – Galilee is amazing. We’re staying in a little kibbutz right on the shore of the Sea. We’ve taken a bunch of pictures playing in the water, and the sunsets are unreal. The pictures definitely don’t do it justice, but they still look pretty cool. I absolutely love it here, though. The spirit is so strong. With the humidity included, it's around 110 degrees everyday. Quite miserable, to say the least, but it's nice to cool off in the Sea of Galilee after that. :)

9 – Not so much a highlight, but I happened to break my camera (just like Ali) the day we went to the Dead Sea (once again like Ali). We went to see Batman, which I loved, that night and I turned it on to see florescent lines all over my screen. Now I’m camera-less, but I’m getting by. I have a few named-cameramen who take my pictures, so I’m dealing with it okay. Sad story, though. Ugh.

10 – We’ve officially discovered a way to make music videos in the bus. We bought a splitter, and we put headphones over the speakers on the camera, while the person in the video has another set in their ears. The time goes by so much quicker, and we’ve had a lot of good laughs since the discovery. I wish I could post videos, but you’ll all just have to see them when I get back…they’re incredible. Youtube, here I come!

Overall, time is flying by quicker than expected. We're all savoring every minute we have here in the Holy Land, hoping we won't forget too much about this experience. I'm sure I'll be ready to go home when it's all said and done, but this is definitely the coolest thing I've done. As for now, we'll just keep going on hot field trips, learning lots and lots while getting ice cream anywhere we can. ;) Bad habit, I know, but it keeps us going here.

Finals, Shminals...

I've been post-poning another blog entry long enough, so I figure it's time to sit down and bust out this baby. I don't have much to update, but I guess there's always a lot going on here in the Holy Land.


Starting off, this was our first "finals week" here in the JC, meaning stress levels were sky-rocketing. We had our finals for Judaism, Islam, and Old Testament in a 30-hour period, so we were cramming to get prepare. I survived them, but let's just say my grades here aren't going to "boost my GPA" like I'd planned. I may be spending a little too much time in the city instead of studying, but I don't think that's something I'll regret down the road.

My highlight of this week was probably going to the Garden of Gethsemane. I went with about 7 people this past Sunday afternoon, and it was the most amazingly peaceful place. We all brought our journals and scriptures and divided up separately for about an hour in the Garden. We got the guard to let us in the gate, so we were sitting among the olive trees that were believed to be there during Christ's time. Wow. I couldn't get enough of that place, and I took a million pictures. It was a beautiful day, and I brought my ipod and listening to piano music the entire time. I'm planning to go back there at least a few more times, and that visit alone made this trip entirely worth it. :)

I went and saw the Dome of the Rock for the first time this past Tuesday and I was amazed at how big it was. Absoultely gorgeous, too. They don't allow us to go inside, but being right up next to it was good enough for me. After that we got a delicious Jewish bagel and then did a bit of shopping. We got dropped off at the Center by one of the well-known olive wood shop owners, which set the stage for my first somewhat-awkard moment here. :) Nothing compared to Ali's stories, but it's a start. As I was stepping out of the car, I somehow managed to get the bottom of my skirt stuck on my sandal, pulling my my skirt down to my thighs. Whoops! I pulled it up as quickly as I could, and managed to get by with my friend Lisa being the only one who witnessed it. We were laughing uncontrollably, only to turn around and see two security guards standing about 20 feet away. They looked somewhat uncomfortable and it was obvious that they saw my "graceful moment". Wow...I felt a bit dumb. I try to avoid them now, along with another one of the security guys here who somehow knows my name and calls me "sweetheart". Kinda weird.

I also had my first encounter with bug bites when I woke up to about 40 red bumps on my foot and knee. I didn't know exactly what they were until I went back to my room, shook out my sheet, and found a nasty bug. It was dead, luckily, but the thoughts of that thing sleeping with me freaks me out. Ugh.

Another fun thing I've done lately is eat dinner at a restaurant in the middle of the Old City. A bunch of us got some taxis and made our way to some random place we found online. It turned out to be a gem, and I think we'll be going back there again. I ate my first shwarma, which was delicious. It's always nice to get away from the center "food" they feed us, so we've decided to eat out a lot more.


Not a whole lot more is going one here. Last night I gave my first official haircut, and it turned out pretty nice. I've received a few more requests since then, and the word is spreading that I'm "a haircutter" or something - ha ha. I've fooled them. :) It was quite the experience, though, so I wouldn't mind doing it a few more times. Let's just hope I don't chop off any sideburns... :) We also have a pedicure party last night with the girls, so that was a great way to unwind after finals. We leave for Jordan early tomorrow morning, and I can't wait. We'll be in Petra tomorrow, which...if any of you were wondering, is the place in the closing scenes of Indiana Jones. We'll also get to stop at the River Jordan and a few other historical sites. Time here is flying, and I can't believe I only have four weeks left here. :( We're just starting up the New Testament tomorrow, so I can't wait for that either. That's about it...not a whole lot. I'm super excited about my new neice, Grace Anderson. From the pictures I've seen she's absolutely adorable, and I can't wait to see her in September! Congratulations Dust and Linds!




This was me right before I entered Hezekiah's tunnel. It's under the Jerusalem City walls and was built as a water source. It was amazing to walk through knowing they dug it all by hand. And just so you know, this is more leg than I've showed the entire trip...the first and the last time those knees will be exposed.

The Garden of Gethsemane...is it beautiful or what?


Pretty flowers....

More of the Garden...

You can't see the detail very well in this picture, but it was amazing. Definitely a "must-see".


Self explanatory...the guards were trying to kick us out while taking this picture, though, so I was a bit scared. They come at you with their guns in hand, yelling at you in Hebrew. We got out of there quick. :)

Typical street in the Old City. Tourists everywhere along with scarves and clothes hanging from every direction. I love it.

The wonderful cafe on the roof-top. It was a high-class place, apparently, but it didn't feel like it. $4 for a can of soda is not my style...

Shwarma. It may look nasty, but it was absolutely delicious. Mmmm...I love the native food here.

Here's the bug that was found in my sheet. Can you believe that? Thankfully the bites are gone now, but this critter freaked me out.

This was today at the Dormition Abbey, where the Catholics believe to be the burial place of Mary. It was full of mosaic art, not to mention the air conditioning. Gotta love it.

Same place...awesome photo. Lisa, Paige and I. We're together all the time these days. Close enought that we're borrowing clothes. As you can tell, I'm wearing a new shirt, thanks to Paige. I'm getting really sick of the 5 t-shirts I brought. :(

Maybe beauty school is my next stop, eh? NOT. It was fun while it lasted, though. I know Tanner looks nervous, but he completely trusted me. I'm not sure why, but it looked ok.

Did I mention we came home from the Abbey today to find the hillside right next to the center on fire? We still don't know how this happened or how long it burned, but we only saw ONE firefighter there. It was hilarious.

The sign outside of the Center. Everyone calls it the Mormon University. I love it.