The Lights Festival and Bar Mitzvahs

The night we came into Jerusalem, we saw all kinds of lights around the wall of the Old City, and lots of music and people and a generally festive atmosphere. When I asked what was going on, Dr. Wrights replied that it was one of the last days of the Lights Festival (not to be confused with the Festival of Lights). He said that it's something that they tried last year that was so popular that they decided to do it again this year. Basically, they just lit up the Old City inside and out and people came to walk through. I really wanted to go to it before it ended, but was too tired until last night.
After supper last night, several of us went down to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to explore and see the main highlights after most people had left. Then we went back up to Jaffa gate, and Mark and Taylor headed back to JUC. Christy and I decided to stay and wander around the Lights Festival. There were a few street performers with light up costumes outside the city walls, but it was inside where the magic was happening. We The city was divided up into several routes, and we picked the orange one because it cut through the Armenian Quarter and then meandered into the Jewish Quarter where it looped around. The Jewish Quarter is the one we were the most comfortable with, plus we knew that there were searchlights set up on the Mount of Olives that we really wanted to see.
It was awesome! The atmosphere was quite festive. It was wall to wall people and many of the food vendors and little restaurants were open. If it weren't for the fact that I was still full from supper, I would have gone nuts with the food. It all smelled so amazing.
One of my favorite things was a building with lots of arches that had animations projected onto it. The animations made it look like the bricks were moving, the walls were crumbling, and that little green smiley face ghost looking things were zipping about the inside. It was a very entertaining 4 minutes.
Then we got to a terrace that overlooks the Mount of Olives, the Western (Wailing) Wall, and the Temple Mount. The searchlights on the Mount of Olives were all synchronized and made all kinds of cool patterns in the sky. Sometimes the even changed to different colors. It was awesome! Finally it was time for us to make our way back to the Zion Gate so we could head back to school. It was like swimming up stream trying to get past all of the people. It was quite an experience.
The whole time we were walking through, I kept trying to figure out just why they had started doing the Lights Festival. My theory is that they're making up for the fact that they don't have Christmas and Christmas Lights. When I mentioned this to Dr. Richter, she just laughed, but I think it has merit.

Today, we visited the Western Wall and it was a very busy place. When we were there a couple of days ago, it was much more subdued, so we were all curious about what was going on. There were drums, shofars, flutes, clarinets, and I'm pretty sure I also heard bagpipes. It turns out that Tuesday-Thursday are the big days for Bar Mitzvahs, and it's pretty common for them to take place at the Western Wall. We got to spend some time watching, photographing, and videotaping the events. When I went down to the wall, there were multiple groups of men and boys with big scrolls that were participating in the Bar Mitzvahs. You could see moms, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, and other women hanging of the women's side watching the events and cheering on the boys. It was an fantastic! If I ever get a faster internet connection here, I'll upload some video clips of it.
That's all of the major excite for the past few days. I'll probably post another impression report in a few minutes.