nostalgia, part 3

Year 3 (or, the Year in which she eats a lot of hummus and encounters the extremes on both sides of the emotional scale)

There was a song in my ears as I woke up. Disconcerted, I sat up, pushed off the rough blue blanket, and remembered that I was in Jerusalem. The call to prayer from the nearby mosque echoing throughout the limestone building, I pulled open the sliding glass door and silently slipped onto the porch without waking my roommates. The words of the call became more distinct, but I still couldn't understand any of it. Roses climbed up the posts of the porch, and a pomegranate tree was in reach. My mind was overwhelmed with the following train of thought:

"UNREAL. unreal. unREAL! I am in Jerusalem! I live here!"

and so went almost every morning for the next three months. Living in Jerusalem isn't something you just get used to. Or at least, you shouldn't. Of course, you get used to the reality of living in Jerusalem, but living in Jerusalem is a completely different thing. Because you live in Jerusalem (can I hit that point one more time?), where the three major religions were born, where Jesus Christ lived and taught, where millions of people fight over the land because of their innate connection to it. I doubt there is any land more deeply loved. And you can't help but feel it; there's a Hawaiian concept called mana, which is a spiritual force that can exist in people and places. A place gains mana through the events that happen on it. The land remembers. If any place in the world has an almost tangible mana, it is the Holy Land. I don't think you can go anywhere without feeling the import of past events.

Every day at the center brought something new to learn and explore, but it almost always started out the same way. Matt, Tessa and I would be the first to breakfast every single morning, and eventually came to calling ourselves the Breakfast Club (though without all the angsty connotations). From there, some of the hardest, most educational classes I've ever taken (and one of the least educational but most fun... hummus not hamas!), and field trips all over the Near East. Roman ruins, ancient synagogues and Biblical landmarks became almost old hat. Almost. Because there is just something so undeniably moving about buildings and cities that are several millennia old. The romantic that I am, I couldn't help imagining the all sorts of people who'd walked right where I was standing and feeling like I was connected to them for the briefest of moments.

Eventually, it was time to go home. I said goodbye to the people and the places, but the moments and the memories were with me for good (sappy, I know).

In January, I dove in to my first semester in Provo. Well, to be more specific, it really involved more diving under my covers as I sobbed every. single. day. Hawaii-sickness, it's called, and I had it bad. Still do, but I've learned to manage it better. Every day for the first three weeks of school, I was one tiny click away from buying a plane ticket right back to my island, but for some reason, I stayed. I took "worthless" classes like Art History, French 101 and Cello. I cried a lot. I did a lot of dishes. My daily ballet class got me through it, even though with my short hair slicked back for class I looked like I had no hair. Which was very heartening when I ran into my latest heartthrob on the way to class almost every day. I never did learn to just do my hair when I got to class. But I did decide that I was finally going to just let myself dance, because it's all I ever really wanted to do.

After a lot of self-searching, crying, selfishness, crying, studying French and crying, I came home once again, victorious over a semester in Provo and certain that I'd be going back to Hawaii in September. Housing contract ready, classes chosen, and ready to see my beloved Pacific ocean, I suddenly realized that there was some reason I was supposed to go back to Provo. (Cue more crying).