This is it ! During the past night I have receive an email from the Ministry of Health telling me that I could finish my quarantine on this day because my covid test results I had done 2 days before came in negative.
This morning, I sent this email to the university and a couple of hours later, they allowed me to leave quarantine.
This whole process took a bit more time than expected but it’s finally done.
In the early morning I finished some case studies I had do do for a business class I have in the afternoon. After completed them alongside R🇪🇸, a spanish business student who shares some of my classes, we went out.
There was 3 of us, R🇪🇸, M🇺🇸, a Massachusetts physic student and myself. We had planned to visit the University campus, get our student ID cards and go ask the housing department when we would change flat and if we would be together.
We went to the housing office, the guy wasn’t really helpful but from what we understood, we are out of our current flat on Monday and it is highly likely that the three of us will be in the same flat after that. That’s nice.
Then … first time out of the student village, big yellow sun, blue sky, mad Israelis at the wheel, … a pretty stereotype first outside walk in Jerusalem. We managed to enter the campus even though it is allowed only to people with a green passport (people who got fully vaccinated). But because we had done a negative covid test within the last 72 hours, they let us through.
We walk around some parts of the campus. It is huge. There is one really great botanic garden, a place for fresh air. We then went to the office of the Rothberg International School, the office for us, international students. We met about 5 ladies at different points there. All of them with some responsibilities over us. It is quite hard for us to understand who should we refer to if we have a question … but anyway. Most of them sounded helpful. The office to get our student cards was closed but opened in about 30 minutes, so we went to find a balcony of the university with a view on the city.
The university is on Mount Scopus, it is higher in altitude than the city of Jerusalem. The view was magnificent. We could obviously see the old city walls, the dome of the Rock, the olives mount. We guessed the Church of the holy Sepulchre but we aren’t sure. Anyway, one thing for sure, it was magnificent and quite emotional. After months of delays, waiting, and quarantine, I was finally in the land of Israel.
After that, we went to another place with a view on the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. It is as I’d imagine it : a big concrete wall.
We then returned to the office of international students and got our student ID. These are important to get in and out of the university, the student village (where we live) and to get reductions.
We then went to see the Faculty of Business administration. Nothing particularly interesting there except one though I had. I don’t know if this is the same in all universities but a university campus is like a very modern small city. There are everything there. Groceries stores, cafe stores, restaurants, hospitals, … and so many other things.
After we completed what we set out to do, we went back to the student village. There, waiting fir us on the dinner table was the hot meals that the university brings us because of the quarantine. One of the meals was a burger with fries. I think that is because we all ended our quarantine this day so it is like a nice gesture. The burger’s meat wasn’t very good but the intention was heart warming.
And here I am writing this waiting for my Business Analysis and Valuation class to start. The catch is that the teacher keeps sending emails to delay the beginning of the course.
After my class ended at 6PM, R🇪🇸, J🇪🇸 (2 of my flatmates, both spanish) and I decided to go down to the city to visit a little bit and to buy some necessary items. We left the Student Village, walked a bit to reach the light rail station and took the train. It was about a 15 minutes ride to the Central bus Station on Jaffa street. This place is at the same time a mall and the central station for buses which operates in as well as outside of the city. We went in the CBS to buy SIM cards. After trying to get the guy at the desk of the Phone operator to tell us what was the best option for us, we decided to buy 3 months pre paid SIM cards. Not cheap but with unlimited everything. We then went up to try to buy Rav Kav card, I think they are called that way. They are bus cards. Sadly the office was closed. We’ll come back.
We then walked back East into Jaffa Street. We entered the Mahane Menuda market. It is like a « bazar ». It was packed with people. Free covid for anyone who wants ;) We walked a bit into it, stopped at some shops to see what they were offering. I bought a variation of olives. It was a beautiful mess with its own balance. We then went to a restaurant into the market. The food was excellent but don’t ask me to be precise about what was in the schawarma they sold us. At that point we bumped on an American 🇺🇸/ Israeli 🇮🇱 that is in one of J🇪🇸’s class. I can’t even tell you his name. What I can tell you is that he speaks Hebrew, he also speaks spanish well and he’s doing quite well in French. I can also tell you that he is close to 2 meters tall and that I have a stiff neck ;)
Afterwards, we went near the Old City. There were a bunch of cops and police cars. At that point, we had no idea what the heck was happening. We entered the city by Jaffa gate. I (kind of) recognized where we were thanks to spending the last 4 months walking around Jerusalem on Street View (Google Maps). Passed that point, that was it, I was feeling it. I was in Jerusalem. We met some difficulties going to the Western wall, there was some barrages, some streets closed. We went by the Armenian quarters and then we reached the Jewish quarters. At one point, we passed a corner and here it was, illuminated in yellow lights : « the western wall of David’s temple ». In the same perspective was the Dome of Rock making for a beautiful view. We had to pass a security check up to enter this whole arena. We went near the western wall. There was a box of disposable kippahs that were mandatory to wear. This moment was emotional. After a while wandering around, we managed to find a free place where we could go touch the wall. There, I did a prayer to keep my family safe. I must say that the emotion of being here made it complicated for me to concentrate on the prayer, but if my demands to God were not accepted then I will definitely come back. We then turned back. We lost our route, found it, lost it again and finally got out of the old city the same way we entered : Jaffa gate.
We reached New Gate, the gate that is the closest to the light rail and there were crowds of people. Police trucks were blocking the light rail. At that point, we received a message from former our flat mate that left earlier in the week. He told us to stay safe. We din’t know why he would say such a thing. We learned soon after that there was some kind of violent conflict between Jewish and Arabs at Damascus gate. The Israeli police was there to keep the peace. Some Jewish people part of an extremist group (tens of them) reportedly went down to Damascus gate screaming « death to arabs ». As of ourselves, we wanted to catch a light rail train to go back to the Student village. So we decided to go beyond the police truck barrage and try to catch a train a bit further. I don’t think we understood that we were heading towards Damascus gate and therefore, towards the conflict. From a long distance, I saw that there was another barrage but kept going. At one point the majority of the crowd in front of me (that I could see from eyesight) turned around and started running rapidly. The guys and I did the same thing. It was like one of those crowd movement. You have no idea what is happening but you don’t want to be in the place people are running from. That was the biggest sprint I had done in a long time. The amount of adrenaline and fear, I must admit, was huge. I stopped running after 200 meters I think. I saw police trucks and felt safe. To this moment, when I am writing this, I still have no idea what triggered this crowd move. I turned to R🇪🇸 and told him that this was quite a day for our first day out of quarantine.
The only thing we could do then was to walk the other way around into Jaffa street and try to catch a bus. After more of an hour of waiting for the right bus and also willing to take passengers bus, we managed to catch one. It was around midnight. In the waiting, we met 3 spanish 🇪🇸 girls, two of them are in the Hebrew U. They seemed nice but this really showed me that I can’t speak spanish. It’s funny, I could understand some to most of what they were saying but I had great difficulty lining up 5 words sentences. It will come, … The bus driver was driving like a mad man. Normally, you slow down before turning points but he does not. It felt like the cars around had to adapt to his style rather than a cohesive driving style for everybody. We finally reached the student village and I immediately called my parents because it was like Whaou ! Then I went to bed. It was weird, I was physically tired but mentally really awake. I slept really badly.