What would YOU do in this situation?

I have a small dilemma.

You see, I'm settling. Which means I'm baking.

I've noticed that when I move somewhere new or enter some new phase of life I tend to want to cook. Suddenly I'm overcome with new recipes I want to try, old recipes I want to recreate. I start watching the Food Network again and browsing through food magazines at the checkout line.

The problem is, I don't really have a kitchen set up yet. So I cook at Sarah's.

This is the basic circumstance surrounding today when I could not think of anything else nearly as important as baking some Carrot Cupcakes. (I'm sure my tax professors will understand why coming late to class was inevitable..)

But it's been several months since I baked this delicious treat, thus I forgot to half the delicious Cream Cheese Frosting used to top the Carrot Cup-o-Delicious.

Which brings me to the current predicament about which I ask your feedback. What should I do with the extra 2-3 cups of decadent cream cheese frosting? Don't hold back, I'm in the mood to try something complex. Or simple. Or both.

Just don't let me spend more time on allrecipes.com...

End of summer activities

Coming back from Jerusalem brought many things.

First and most importantly, it brought mexican food back into my life.

Second, it brought homelessness.

I moved out of my apartment and into a box truck with the help of an old friend (read: saint) Han. My box truck moved to a lovely spot in front of the Wiley's (read: angels). There the box truck held all my precious belongings for about 10 days, safely guarded behind bike lock and key. I kept it on the street just long enough for Wileys to get awkward questions from the neighbors. (Maybe Oliver can add Moving Truck Driver to Scott's resume of Wal-Mart greeter?)

The Wiley's were so nice to let me take over the guest room (and parts of the basement and garage) for a few weeks. It was so fun to hang out with them. June is a riot! I invite any of you to give crashing at their place a try. (Ha!)



In my first weekend back, three great things happened.

1. Jason & Annie got married.
   
   I like to say I had a part in creating this marriage. Because I did. (Story too awkward for blog-posting...)
   
   
2. I went boating with Courtney.
   
   One morning instead of attending my planned Education Week classes, Courtney and Dan decided to show me what I SHOULD be doing with my free time. I haven't been wakeboarding since some random family trip to Lake Powell years ago. It was fun to try it again. I didn't get any pictures of me behind the boat, mostly because each attempt lasted only seconds which is not very picture worthy. It was a lovely afternoon - much thanks to Dan, Courtney's brother who was so patient and drove slowly for me, the boat-chicken.
   
   
3. I went shooting with Jowy.
   
   This was so awesome! Jowy is my favorite friend from Jerusalem. He was nice enough to include me on his shooting trip with his friend Zach. They are quite expert at blowing things to pieces. Jowy brought a box full of old mission and Jerusalem memorabilia that he used as targets. My favorite target was a cup of Mountain Dew. Check out this video of me successfully hitting the cup, on the first attempt!
   
   

Needless to say it was so much fun and a great way to experience shooting a gun for the first time. I hope they'll let me come with them again. (I hear great things about shooting Shasta cans in the snow...)


Oh and also!! Sarah and I spend 5 hours organizing the storage unit! Sarah's face was priceless when I lifted the door for the first time as she caught a glimpse of the chaos and disorganization. Unfortunately I didn't snap a photo for a good before/after shot, but it's a huge improvement. We went through every item, threw/gave away tons, repacked into new boxes, labeled and dated each one, then repacked the unit. It was a hot and dusty process and by the end June was so over it but the feeling of accomplishment can not be beat! Plus it's great to get that off my mega to-do list.

It's hard to fully capture it, but this is a big improvement...

So there you have it! I'm back! I'll post about CA, CZ's Bday, and NieNie before I begin on the most exciting part of my current life - decorating my new house! And Downeast! And the Springville Antique Mall! I can't wait to get feedback from y'all on the many decisions I must make.


(Wait... am I in school? Oh yeah, minor detail.)

Once upon a time... I had a blog.

Hi, remember me?

Can I BE more annoying? Every time I post I talk about how I'm not going to be lame anymore, going to post more regularly, shoot for everyday.

And then I don't.

So sorry.

It's time you all realize I regularly fall vastly short of my personal expectations.

Yes my last name is Zackrison. And yes this trait is genetic.



Now, lets get on with things shall we?

Beautiful Welcome Back to America flowers. So glad to be back!

Jerusalem Close-out

Here I will post parting thoughts about Jerusalem. Mostly for my our record-keeping-sake.

Triclinium

Tonight's fireside rivals the one in the Shepherds field for one of the most peaceful experiences that I have had here. We went to the upper auditorium and reenacted the last supper. There we had the tables set us just as how they would have been. 13 guys reclined while our professors talked about the last supper and the meaning and symbols mentioned in the scriptures. A few people bore testimony about the last supper and its significance to them. People then bore their testimonies about Christ. A group sang "This is The Christ". I love that song and I love listening to groups of good singers, mostly because I really am not a singer myself. For the closing hymn we sang "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" while Brother Squires played the great organ in the Auditorium. It was a wonderful evening.

I stayed afterwards in the auditorium until it was quiet and I was alone. I reviewed the things they taught us from Jone 14, 15 and 16. Sometimes as I read a chapter and swear that I've never read it before, even though that's not possibly true. Jordan snapped a picture of me from outside the auditorium, if you expand the picture you can probably see me sitting there. I will miss that room more than any other at the Jerusalem Center. Luckily, that room is open for visitors if I ever am able to come back.

I am so grateful for the wonderful experiences that I have had here. They have put together a complete program and I am lucky to be a part of it.

Ugh

Sorry, no updates. Tomorrow we will take our last final. We leave here on Thursday. I can't believe it's already over! From there, I may or may not go to Greece for a few days with Christine. I can't determine the correct choice of action. There are good reasons to be back home and good reasons to stay...

Anyway, I'll be back to posting after tomorrow! There's my update.

Peace, Be Still.

Yesterday we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee. We read the account in Matthew where Christ calmed the troubled sea for his disciples. One of my favorite conference talks of all time was given by Elder Oaks on this subject, He Heals the Heavy Laden in Oct 2006. It was a unique and priceless opportunity to reflect on this hymn and talk while on the boat.

Master, the tempest is raging!
The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o’ershadowed with blackness.
No shelter or help is nigh.
Carest thou not that we perish?
How canst thou lie asleep
When each moment so madly is threat’ning
A grave in the angry deep?

The winds and the waves shall obey thy will:
Peace, be still, peace, be still.

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea
Or demons or men or whatever it be,
No waters can swallow the ship where lies
The Master of ocean and earth and skies.
They all shall sweetly obey thy will:
Peace, be still; peace, be still.
They all shall sweetly obey thy will:
Peace, peace, be still.

The scriptures contain many accounts of the Savior’s healing the heavy laden. He caused the blind to see; the deaf to hear; the palsied, withered, or maimed to be restored; lepers to be cleansed; and unclean spirits to be cast out. Often we read that the person healed of these physical ailments was “made whole”.

Jesus healed many from physical diseases, but He did not withhold healing from those who sought to be “made whole” from other ailments. Matthew writes that He healed every sickness and every disease among the people. Great multitudes followed Him, and He “healed them all”. Surely these healings included those whose sicknesses were emotional, mental, or spiritual. He expressly affirmed that He would heal those with physical ailments and heal the brokenhearted. He healed them all.

He knows of our anguish, and He is there for us. Like the good Samaritan in His parable, when He finds us wounded at the wayside, He binds up our wounds and cares for us. Brothers and sisters, the healing power of His Atonement is for you, for us, for all. His all-encompassing healing power is sought in the prayerful words of our hymn “Master, the Tempest Is Raging”

At times we may despair that our burdens are too great. When it seems that a tempest is raging in our lives, we may feel abandoned and cry out like the disciples in the storm, “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” At such times we should remember His reply: “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?”

The healing power of the Lord Jesus Christ—whether it removes our burdens or strengthens us to endure and live with them like the Apostle Paul—is available for every affliction in mortality. I testify of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who invites us all to come unto Him and be perfected in Him. He will bind up our wounds and He will heal the heavy laden. At the end of the journey, an end none of us can see now, we will say, “Master, the terror is over. … Linger, Oh, blessed Redeemer! Leave me alone no more.”

Oh Galilee, Sweet Galilee!

Apparently there is a long lost primary song all about the Sea of Galilee. It really is a pleasant place. People say it's not what they expected but I can't say I've ever thought much about it until I got here. It's always a little odd to me when a sea has waves but when it gets windy in the afternoon waves pick up and crash on the shore. It's delightful.

Bougainvilleas grow all over the place! Galilee is warmer than Jerusalem since it's 700 feet below Sea level, but it's much greener and there is generally a nice breeze. These flowers press well in scriptures, I've tried to collect them at every site we've visited.

We've been here for a week now and have a few more days to go. We've been studying the New Testament and the teachings of the Savior that he taught while in this area. We've visited Capernaum, Caesarea, Nain, the Mt of Transfiguration Mt Tabor, etc. We have a field trip one day and the next day we stay at the Kibbutz have class in the morning and relax on the "beach" for the rest of the day. It's still hot, but I love the down time we have.

Rusty, Dave Kader, me in the synagogue of Capernaum right by Peter's house. Amazing!
We ate at a fish restaurant that served St. Peter's fish. Some people ate the eyeballs. Others opted out for pizza...

Nightlife in Tiberias. Feels very much like Balboa fun zone, except less fun and without Balboa bars..

After church on Saturday we stopped by another potential site for the Jesus' baptism. Trevor has made an effort to take a photo at every location pictured in the back of the Bible. He crafted this shot to look just like the one for the Jordan River. Check it out!


One of my favorite sites so far - Mt. Tabor the location of the Mt of Transfiguration.

P.S. Mom thanks for the package! You found some great items!! I'm wearing one of the shirts in this photo.

"Love is like five loaves of bread and two fish, always too little until you start giving it away"

This is the mosaic floor in the Loaves and the Fishes church. Supposedly that's the exact rock where the 12 baskets of leftover food were set. They've left the rock exposed and built a church all around. I hate to be skeptical, but can they really know the exact location?

We're staying at a resort Kibbutz (Jewish communal living center) called Ein Gev. There are bungalows all along the beach. The water is not saltly, the beach is sandy (I expected rocks) and there are TONS of little shells.

I love playing paddle ball! Current record: Rusty and me with 173 consecutive hits.

There's also been some good beach volleyball.
(Rusty, Trevor, Tanner, me)

If you look past Kader you can see my sweet pass.

Some people count their ski days, I count beach days. This summer has been such a success :-)


And of course, no trip to the beach would be complete without spectacular sunsets.

Temple, Dead Sea, Galilee

Here are just a few pictures from the past few days. I am in Galilee now and will be here for 10 days. I must sleep so I don't have time to do a full post but wanted to get some photos up.

In front of the Dead Sea a little nervous about the experience in the water...

It's such an odd feeling! It's hard to stay upwards, your body just floats up. It's very weird not to tread water.
These are stones from the Second Temple built in Jerusalem. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD and these stones were pushed off the edge of the high temple platform to the street below. They are still there for us to see today!

On our way to Galilee we stopped at Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea. This old Roman city is where Pontuis Pilot ruled and was centered at the time of Christ. Paul spent time in this city in prison. It's beautiful!

Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth where Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel to learn about her impending pregnancy. We completed the visit with ice cream and super soaker purchases...

Brother Seely says Touch Everything!

Just outside of Amman is an old Roman city called Jerash. This city has been inhabited since about 3000BC and has some amazing ruins! Jerash was inhabited by the Romans for most of its history and is sometimes referred to as the Pompeii of the Middle East. Jerash was part of the Decapolis and because Christ spent time in the Decapolis, it’s possible (but not probable?) that he visited Jerash!

*

The city has some remarkable amphitheatres and about 1000 columns. It’s a little hard to be impressed by ruins after visiting Pompeii earlier this year, but Jerash has a major perk in that it is completely unguarded. You can climb anywhere and you [probably] won’t get in trouble. Much of the city has not been reconstructed so there are column pieces and capitals lying all over the place. I loved it!

On Wednesday, we started our day at the mosque. As I’ve mentioned, mosques are a little anti-climatic since there isn’t much to it. Our tour guide explained how women and men are separated during prayer services, men on the main floor and women in the balconies above or in a separate mosque attached to the side. Lots of the girls were so put out by this information--so annoyed by the unequal treatment of men and women. Things like this really don’t bother me. As much as feminists would like to deny it, men and women are different and at times, treatment tailored to a specific gender is appropriate. Muslims pray in an awkward position, squatted down on their knees, forehead on the floor, arms outstretched above their head, fanning up and down. They separate men and women for reasons of modesty and appropriateness. What’s so wrong with that? Jews separate men and women so the men aren’t distracted by the women while they worship. I don’t see why this should be so upsetting to people.

In Amman, we visited the Citadel lookout. When we arrived EARLY on Wednesday I was unimpressed by the old Roman temple on a big flat platform. I thought it odd to visit this tiny Roman ruins site after spending several hours at Jerash the day before which was huge and cool. But I realized the Citadel is the exact location where Captain Abu Raed was filmed! I took a group of people to see that movie at the film festival last week. The overlook provided great views of modern day residential Amman. I still have no idea why we stopped there as a class, but to me it was so exciting to be on the location we had seen in the film!

The citadel also has the Amman Museum which is a spectacular collection of artifacts from every time period since the Stone Age. The artifacts rival those found in the biggest and fanciest museums in the world, but there are almost no restrictions or barriers between you and touching an ancient Roman statue, and so I did! I touched everything that wasn’t behind glass, just because I could.

There is an interesting issue with passport stamps in the Middle East. Several Arab countries do not recognize Israel as a state, and if you have any evidence of a visit to the "Zionist entity" in your passport, you will be denied entry, end of story. If you cross into Israel from the Jordan crossing points you can usually avoid the stamp(s).

Not just any Jordanian border crossing will do though. The King Hussein Bridge (Jordan) / Allenby Terminal (Israel) border crossing is the only place where the Jordanians will not stamp your passport upon exiting the country (it's not enough just to avoid the Israeli stamp, since a Jordanian exit stamp on a land border with Israel is just as incriminating). Even though Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel and recognizes its existence, in an interesting case of self-delusion, the Jordanians do not consider you to be leaving Jordan if you go through this crossing (conveniently though, they still charge a $15 departure tax).

Jordanian customs and immigration weren’t a big problem for us, but it did take an hour of sitting and waiting on the bus to make it through. The actual King Hussein Bridge is surprisingly short, and the Jordan River, which it spans, is pitifully small. Blink and you'll miss it.

Our last stop on the drive back home to the Jerusalem center was the traditional site where Christ was baptized. I know I’ve talked a lot about the heat, but here I was the hottest I have ever been in my life. I think the potential for a really spiritual and meaningful experience was lost in heat waves... It’s hard to imagine exactly what the place looked like when Jesus was baptized there because today there is no river. Water runs from the Sea of Galilee in the north down to the Dead Sea in the south and back in Jesus day it probably would’ve been a pretty strong current of water. Apparently irrigation and damming further upstream have reduced the once powerful Jordan River to a trickle. (I hope all that information is accurate, that’s what I understood from our guides but much gets lost in translation/accent interpretation).

Amman Mosque visit

This is just a preview...

On our last day in Jordan we visited a Mosque. For modesty reasons, we all had to put on these amazing black gowns, and for sanitary reasons we had to wear socks (no shoes allowed inside, socks worn to avoid the foot nastiness of 1000s of praying Muslims...).

Mosques are surprisingly plain inside, especially for those used to looking at amazing European cathedrals. But the robes made the visit so much more exciting.

We just couldn't resist the jumping photo...
Hayley, Me, Whitney

More to follow...

Petra

Monday, July 22, 2008

Jordan – Petra

Petra has been made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The movie has a part with the Petra treasury where Indiana goes up on horseback to this place in the middle of the desert and finds this crazy structure carved into the rock. He has to crawl through an obstacle course to get to the Holy Grail. I think the last time I watched it was on Dad’s laser disc player. Crazy!

Petra was amazing! The structures were carved into the mountain by the Nabateans in the 5^th century BC. They haven’t left any inscriptions (or at least none that have lasted) so archaeologists don’t know much about the people or the purpose of the buildings.

This is our group pausing in the canyon leading to the ruins for the 100th to listen to our VERY long winded tour guide.

Indiana Jones in front of the treasury...

Me in front of the treasury!

Most people rode donkeys up to the monastery on top of one of the hills. Somehow I ended up walking, which was stupid… The hike to the top had over 800 stairs carved into the mountain which is less than the number steps I do when I go with Ken to run the RB stairs, but it was over 110 degrees outside so really a different experience.

These are the guides that lead the donkeys up the mountain. This kid speaks impressive English but he's a Bedouin so he lives in a tent in the mountains, herds goats all day and will never go to school. I have videos to post, he's darling.

After exploring the Monastery a group of us looked for the 2 geocaches in the area. Our search took us up the other cliff to The High Place. By the time we got to the top of the mountain we were too exhausted to find the exact cache location but it there were some amazing views from the top!

Up on the high place with Jowy and Trevor

Walking down from the Monastery with Whitney.

I really wish I had my visor! My face got a beating from the sun.

The day ended with a crazy mad dash back through the town of Petra and up the canyon to make it to the bus on time. I felt pretty destroyed by the time I got back on the bus and during our 3 hour drive to Amman.

The first building I saw after arriving in Amman was the Ernst & Young office. Wouldn’t that be crazy to do a rotation in Jordan?? Maybe someday, the opportunities are endless at this point.

Jordan!

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Travel to Petra!

Often our mornings start before the sun has completely risen. This morning was particularly beautiful with the full moon still visible. This is the view from our porch, a Palestinian village around the center in the front with the Old City in the distance. How lucky am I to wake up to this??

Today was a travel day! Basically this means we cover 4 hours worth of distance in 14 hours on the bus. We made two main stops. First, we stopped on Mt. Nebo where Moses was transfigured at the end of his life. The coolest thing at that site was the sign for the Dead Sea a few km up the road… Yeah, it was THAT awesome.

Next we stopped at _____ and say an old mosaic map of Jerusalem and the surrounding bible lands that dates back to the 6^th century AD. I’ve loved mosaics since I watched a special segment on the Rosie O’Donnell show back in elementary school where she showed how mosaic tables are made. They’re beautiful and I always think I want to have them in my house but mosaics just don’t fit in with the overall country French theme. Maybe in the bathrooms. Anyway…

We stopped at another overlook where the sun was setting creating great photo lighting.

This is my roommate Hayley (Janis' cousin, random huh)

A couple days ago several tourists were shot in Amman, Jordan. They aren’t yet sure the reason for the attack, either one crazy guy or part of some larger terrorist act. As a result, we’re basically on lock down here in Jordan. Our free time is restricted to things within a 2-block walking distance, no taxis allowed, no major tourist attractions allowed. So tonight in Petra we browsed through the shops surrounding our hotel and made friends with Ghiza at the convenience store.