Willing to Explore

The first thing you should know about me is that I am always willing to explore. Exploration is at the core of my being. It began with the woods of Minnesota where as a kid I would spend hours in the forest finding new paths and searching for secret hideouts. As I grew up that curious nature exploded as I began to explore new cultures, countries, and subjects. I explore the world through experience- traveling and baking- as well as through the mind- reading and writing. My appetite for knowledge and experiences is insatiable and consuming, driving me to new hobbies, talents, and skills. So, come join me on this quest to understand the world and see how far the rabbit hole goes.

Bio

I was born and raised in the lovely state of Minnesota where I gained a great love for the outdoors and camping. When I started Boy Scouts, my dad took me on monthly campouts where some of my best memories were made, and the outdoors became a second home to me. I grew up memorizing my friend's phone number and calling him during the summer to play video games and hang out. I loved exploring the woods just behind my childhood home and imagined thousands of worlds I could visit in my mind. Summer nights with fireflies while playing games with the neighborhood crew was one of my favorite ways I spent my summers. I had good friends and by the time I entered middle school I took up my first instrument- the cello. I wasn't gifted at playing, but I loved to play. I would go home from school excited to spend the next thirty minutes practicing and playing my favorite songs from Star Wars to the Lord of the Rings.

High school rolled around and after partcipating in my first musical production I was whisked off to the far away state of Oregon. Oregon was different and it took me a while to adjust, but the greatest thing to help me with that transition was the outdoors. Nature is perhaps the best constant in our lives, always there for us, changing shape and form, but never its essence. While in Oregon, I made some great friends and learned how to dance, sing, and act. I continued to explore the outdoors, hiking around Mt. Hood and rafting the Rogue River. Oregon created a lot of memories for me that I still look back with fondness.

After a brief stint at college, I set off for my next big adventure- Tahiti. I lived there for two years as a volunteer missionary for my church. When I first learned where I was going, I had no idea where Tahiti was, my friends and I looked it up and with Google Maps saw a gas station surrounded by palm trees. Needless to say, I still had no clue what Tahiti would be like. Perhaps ironically, my time in Tahiti had some of the toughest moments of my life. A vacation destination for everyone else, I struggled to fit in with the missionary crowd and always felt I wasn't doing things right. I had no clue what I was doing, but I tried my best. To misquote Charles, 'I had the best of times, I had the worst of times. It was an age of great fun. It was an age of great struggle.' I faced hard emotional and physical challenges while there, but there were also good friends around me who helped buoy me up during that tumultuous moment and in the end I came to love that little island in the sea.

Coming back to the states, I set off into my academic pursuits in earnest (amidst a worldwide pandemic). I learned how to read and write in Hebrew (my third- fourth (?) language) and I continued on my dancing adventure dipping my toes in all different styles of dance. I learned how to cook with the help of two roommates made friends and I found a love for baking and sharing desserts with my friends. Movie nights with homemade Tikka Masala, that was the life.

2022 brought about the greatest change in my life (although arguably, each event in life becomes the greatest change in our lives). Sometime between high school and college, I wanted to study in Jerusalem. No particular reason why (besides having loved the Bible and wanting to go where it was written). For years I hoped I could go study in person what I had studied in college and by 2022, I was accepted into the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. But before I arrived at Jerusalem, I went to Jordan for an Archaeological excavation as an avant-goût for the experience I was about to have. I quickly fell in love with excavation. Waking before the sun rises, racing off to a far off hillside watching the glimmering spires of Jerusalem in the distance, what wasn't there to love? Afternoons spent exploring shops and hanging with new friends, a small town of Madaba Jordan quickly became a new home. I absloutely adored that time. By the end of three weeks came the time to go home, yet our flight was canceled twice and so we crossed the border into Israel (a crazy experience!). We spent an evening and a morning in Jerusalem then flew home to the states. What a time and in just a matter of weeks I would be headed back!

Returning to Jerusalem, I spent three months exploring and loving that city and its peoples. I learned so much about Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, Zionism along with Palestinian National Identity, violence and peace, wars and tolerance. It's a complicated city with a complicated country, but its peoples are some of the most inspirational for their faith, their belief, and their tenacity. I loved visiting sites I had read in the Bible along with archaeology sites that I had learned about in my college studies. I made good friends, watching great movies, exploring far off corners of Israel, singing my heart out at karaoke nights, and hiking in the wilderness. I fell in love, faced heartbreak, connected with God, and saw the tragedy of politicized religion. Jerusalem had its highs and lows, but I wouldn't trade any of those moments for anything else. It changed who I was at my core, helping me see things in ways I had never known before.

Those times in Jerusalem and Ataruz changed me to the point where I couldn't go without an experience like that again, so I went back to Ataruz again and again. In between these experiences, I took up a new interest and passion: GIS (Geographic Information Systems). I learned how to create maps and how to use them to further understand the world around me. While excavating, I used GIS to interpret the patterns of the Earth and humanity to come to a better understanding of our deeply connected relationship. GIS became a tool to understand the complex relationships between us and our little blue orb. It's amazing what I learned in these past two years, and with the end of my adventures in college, I look to the future for a new adventure. So here's to the next passage of my life and may it be the best one yet!

Wishing you good adventures all around,

Jacob Bellows