Last One Off the Tel Has to Fight Off the Wadi Dogs

            End of week one.  The last couple of days have been pretty neat-o if I do say so myself.  As I have said before, we’re working in two squares, E-F7, the whole square, and E-F8, the half square (noted by some to be, in fact, a rectangle).  Between these squares lay an old balk with a short piece of wall, about three stones long, in it.  We have spent the last two days dismantling that wall.

            Yesterday we got the order to clear out the rest of the balk and make it level with the rest of the area we were in.  We started on the F8 side of the wall because it only had tumble (stones that had tumbled down, derp) and we didn’t need to measure the heights.  While we were waiting to get access to the fancy gizmo we use to measure heights relative to sea level, the other field’s broke and they took ours.  This meant that we could not dismantle the wall yesterday and instead had to keep clearing out rain-wash and the tumble.  We found a substantial amount of pottery, almost two buckets full, but most of it was small body sherds that don’t really do anything for dating.

            The most notable thing that happened yesterday was a jawbone from what was probably a donkey that Phil found embedded just beneath the surface, completely intact.  It was roughly ten or eleven inches long and Matt was able to get the entire thing out in one piece, save for the stuff that was already cracked near the end.  That was pretty sweet.  I am going to add some pictures to the album on Facebook.  I’ll repost the link at the end.

            Yesterday also marked the first day of pottery washing.  If there is a Hell, it’s probably pottery washing alone in a dimly lit room.  Fortunately, we wash pottery together outside under a shade-cloth, so it is actually a very enjoyable enterprise.  We soak the pottery first to start loosening the grime, then take brushes to them to get as much of the dirt off as possible.  You also don’t necessarily wash pottery from your square, though you can, so I got to check out pieces I’d never seen.  It turns out that there were some very nice painted pieces from our squares.  Unfortunately, they are unstratiphied, so there is no context with which to get a solid date.  Either way, it’s pretty neat.

            I went to bed almost directly after dinner last night.  I had stayed up “late” the night before playing spades with Akiva, Kirsten, and Becca, which I decided was a mistake when I woke up.

            Today we got a lot of work done.  The big shift in methodology was instead of making a goofa line we started emptying goofas into a wheelbarrow near the squares so only one person would have to take the dirt up to the dump, thus maximizing efficiency.

            We decided either today or yesterday, or maybe even the day before, that we were going to extend E-F8 all the way to the wall of the “barracks,” as Dever calls them.  That’s a pretty cool prospect because it will, in theory, allow us to reveal a large chunk of architecture and see how administrative building A, the one we’re in, fits into the rest of the city plan.  One of the pieces of tel we had to remove had a huge stone from the wall on it and we had no way of lifting it or rolling it away.  The only answer was to hit it really hard with a hammer (pics on FB).  We ended up using a spike too in order to help split the rock into manageable chunks.

            We were also able to dismantle the wall today after taking top levels.  The levels are important because you take them on top and after removing the stones, do some math, and come out with an accurate height for the wall.  Another important thing that this allowed us to do is collect the pottery from below the wall.  Pottery in a sealed location like this is important, because we know it hasn’t been disturbed.  It also allows us to date the wall above it.  The wall can’t have been built BEFORE any of the pottery below it, so the earliest the wall could have been built is after the latest pottery find.  If we found the rim of an Iron I cooking vessel, than the wall was constructed, at the earliest, during Iron I.

            Even more exciting was getting the go ahead to start leveling large chunks of F7.  In F7 there is a semicircle of stones that Dr. Knauth found a couple years ago, but we don’t know what they are, if anything at all.  I started pick axing down to the layer of a wall that was already exposed, but we had to leave.  Tomorrow we head to Herodion and Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  Sounds like it’ll be a good time.  I think I’ll buy a camera in Jerusalem…

Until next time.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150650683650722.700221.736660721&saved

Am I Tan Or Is This Just Dirt?

            Day three of digging is over.  We’re still clearing the rain-wash off of our squares, so the actual digging hasn’t turned up much, but it’s been a hard day nonetheless.  The two squares next to us were dismantling large sections of balk, which meant many pounds of dirt were being loaded into goofas.  We dump the dirt a ways up the Tel, so the most efficient way to dump all of the goofas is to form a line, kind of like a bucket brigade.  These travel uphill and are out in the sun, and we did many of them, moving hundreds of pounds of material, maybe more.

            There was a bit of confusion in the beginning of the day in regard to the stringing of our squares.  When I say stringing, I mean using string to measure and mark the areas of the balks and the space that we will excavate.  Apparently something was off so our grid wasn’t matching with that of previous excavations, which is problematic because when we take final measurements and try to do drawings and stuff, it won’t all match up.  There was also talk of combining the square and the half square into one area to be dug together.  I was busy doing stuff, so I am not entirely sure of how the problem was solved, but we ended up moving some strings 16 cm. over or something; not my department.

            Out primary task today was to finish clearing out the rain-wash, the accumulated run off from the last 3-5 years that our square lay fallow.  We had to clear about 5 inches off of a 12 m² section of our square.  We performed this task by swinging a pickaxe to loosen the material then brushing and scooping it into goofas.  While we did this we had to extract pottery sherds of notable size or shape and put them into buckets with tags.  This task took most of the day, combined with the goofa lines that happened every twenty minutes or so.  The only good thing about goofa lines is the water break that comes afterwards.

            After we finished up digging we went to a supermarket on the way home.  I didn’t end up getting anything because nothing really struck my fancy.  We all know I can always eat, but I was uninspired and the project is doing a really good job of providing us with frequent meals (5 a day!).  I was thinking about getting some beer to have in our fridge for some post dig relaxation, but it was something like 45-60 shekels a six-pack, roughly 15-20 dollars, and it is not worth that much for beer, much less the questionable product they sell here.

            Tonight the hotel is having a kind of welcome dinner for us.  They are barbequing out on the lawn, but I don’t have any idea what kind of food Israeli barbeque constitutes.  I managed to import a few pictures that Sam and I took with her camera, and I going to see if I can post them here.  I am switching out of Word to Blogger, so we’ll see how this turns out.

Here's a link to the album on facebook, it's only three pictures.  I ended up only using ones Sam took, so all credit to her.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150650683650722.700221.736660721

The one of the Gezer "high place" does warrant some more explanation than I felt like doing on facebook.  It's basically the Stone Hedge of the Near East.  It consists of ten standing stones, of various sizes, some no longer standing, and a stone basin.  The purpose of this site is unknown, though archaeologists speculate that it may symbolize some sort of agreement between several tribes, represented by the stones.  I believe it dates to the Middle Bronze Age, or 1950-1550 BCE to you layfolk.

PS. I'm tan...ish

If You Can't Chew It, It Ain't Coffee

            This fly is really pissing me off, just saying.

            Time for the first post-digging updates!  Today we completed our second day at Tel Gezer and things are going swimmingly.  As some of you may note, many cities have the word Tel in them.  A tel is an artificial hill created by successive layers of habitation at a site, each building on top of the previous one.  In the case of Gezer, there was already a hill when it was first established, bit it grew with each subsequent period as well as some previous archaeological expeditions; more on those later.

            Here’s a quick rundown of the daily schedule:

            4:30 Rise and shine!  This would be rough, but exhaustion + jetlag has made it totally manageable.  During this time we also eat a small breakfast of bread with some sort of spread on it.  I like the chocolate spread because it is tasty and has caffeine in it.  Also, the coffee is always instant, hence the title of this post.

            5:00 Load the bus and head for Tel Gezer.  We arrive at the bottom where we have a locked container with much of our equipment.  We load up on pickaxes, survey equipment, and other goodies to haul up the hill a ways to get to the dig site itself.  We erect the shade-clothes and get to work right away.

            8:30 Second breakfast comes after a brief three hours of digging.  It’s called breakfast, but actually consists of cold cut sandwiches, yogurt, and the like.  We sit on a very steep hill in very flimsy plastic chairs for this meal, so it’s a battle with gravity to stay upright.  I have just been sitting on the ground to save myself the trouble of falling.  After 30 minutes, it’s back to work.

            11:15 Fruit break.  Gary, the high priest of the sacrificial orb, slices many sacred watermelons for us to consume.  It’s kind of nice to already be filthy so it doesn’t matter how sticky your face and hands get and whether or not you get juice all over yourself.

            12:30 Time to clean up.  We drop the shade-clothes at night, so a lot of the equipment can stay hidden under those.  The rest of the stuff gets put away at the bottom of the hill and pottery buckets are taken back to the hotel to be processed.  There are some apricot trees with fresh fruit in this area, so I munch on those while waiting for the bus.

            1:00 Lunchtime!  We eat right when we get off the bus, so everyone is smelly and dirty and no one cares.  I always forget it’s only lunchtime because I’ve already been up for eight hours and eaten two meals.

           

            1:30-4:00 Free time to swim or nap or blog.

            4:00 Pottery washing.  We take all the pieces we’ve found and soak them and scrub them so we can see what we’re looking at better.  We haven’t done this yet, but we sure have picked up a bunch of pottery.

            5:30 Lecture time.  There’s a whole bunch of lectures scheduled from a whole bunch of people.  Yesterday was about the geography of Israel.  I forget what it is tonight.

            6:30 Dinner.  After our final meal, we get to do whatever we want.  It’s still light out at this point, so I’ve been trying to make it ‘til dark before sleeping.  I don’t know if I’ll make it tonight.

            So that’s the general idea of how the day goes.  Things have been a little different just because we only started yesterday.  We got a quick tour of the site led my Sam Wolff, one of our esteemed project directors.  We explored the water system that’s being excavated, a big dark tunnel carved into the bedrock going downhill to meat a spring.  We also looked at the Middle Bronze Age gate and tower along with their accompanying walls.  The way excavation works, not a lot is left exposed, as if it remains exposed it gets deteriorated, so it gets covered to preserve it.

            Our section of the site is down lower next to “Solomon’s Gate.”  That’s in “” because the dating has not been confirmed; finding an appropriate date is one of the goals of this season.  It’s a large three-chambered gate typical to the Iron Age.  We’ve been divided into two dig fields, Field East and Field West.  Guess which end of the site each one is on.  Anyway, the two fields are doing different very different things.  Field West is digging around a large pillared building, Field East is exploring administrative buildings next to the gate along the wall.

            I don’t think many of my devoted readers are familiar with the way Near Eastern archaeology works, so here is a quick run down.  The entire dig site is divided into a grid of 5 m. x 5 m. squares.  In each square, a half-meter border is left on each side and the team digs in the remaining 4 m. x 4 m. square.  The meter wide space between squares is called a balk.  These balks are left standing so that the team can see the layers through which they are digging.  Field West’s first task is to dismantle some old balks so that they don’t collapse on anyone’s head.  I have been working in Field East in the two squares adjacent to the gate.  We’re hopeful that our squares will be instrumental in finding a more secure date for “Solomon’s Gate.”

            My square leader, who some of you may know, is Matt Martin, a Lyco grad from the class of 2010.  Dr. Knauth is running the squares next door, so that’s a pretty good time.  Yesterday our job was weeding all the plants that had grown in the two years the site sat dormant.  This was a hard task because unlike normal gardening, we couldn’t just rip the roots out.  We had to carefully tug and clip the plants so that the layers beneath wouldn’t be disturbed and the fragile balks didn’t crumble.  I ended up in a trench that extended beyond our squares that was dug down to a much lower layer.  I was charged with cleaning up a forest of waist high shrubs, some of them with points like daggers and roots like mountains.  It took a long time.  The good news was that it was nice and breezy; the bad news was that it kept knocking over our shade-clothes.  Because we had the tour in the morning and a brief training session, we didn’t work for very long.

            Becca and I played Magic after lunch and showers then we played two-deck Bullshit for too long after dinner before calling it a night.

            This morning was the beginning of our first “real” day at the site.  We started work around 5:30.  Our goals for the day were to finish weeding and establish our balk lines, which means measuring our exactly the square we’d be digging in.  The weeding was tedious, but we got it pretty much done during the time before second breakfast.  We put all the dirt/rocks/weeds/refuse into these rubbery buckets called goofas.  No one is quite sure what the plural of goofa is, or how to actually spell it, but that is inconsequential.

            After breakfast we kept weeding but were also establishing our balk lines for the two squares we are assigned.  It’s really one and a half squares, because the second meets the casemate wall midway through, but it doesn’t really matter (A casemate wall is constructed of two walls running parallel, creating a series of rooms.  During times of battle, the space in between was filled with rock, dirt, and gravel, forming a thick, solid wall.).  Some of the lines were hard to make because it requires staking string across the squares and the wall and left over trenches made finding good places for the nails difficult.

            During this, we were charged with dismantling a section of balk that separated our two squares to be level with the floor of the half-square.  This meant only taking it down 5-7 inches, but there was a wall in the balk, so we didn’t want to accidentally destroy a potential continuation of it below.  It’s actually very difficult to do the digging part of archaeology.  There is a fine technique not just to carefully extracting artifacts, but even just removing and leveling piles of dirt.  Speaking of artifacts, there’s pottery everywhere her.  On the roads, in the woods, on the Tel, you can just pick it up.  While in our balk we ended up pulling out a handle with a very clear potter’s mark on it, the maker’s signature.  It’s relatively rare to find one of these, so that was pretty neat.  We also found a pair of scorpions hanging out in the dirt.  We tossed them aside to keep digging.

            We eventually leveled the balk off and discovered the wall was not continued through it.  We though maybe it would have connected with the wall in Dr. Knauth’s square, so we spent some time looking for a robber’s trench.  A robber’s trench is created when the rocks are removed at some point to be used else where, and then the space is filled in.  If this is the case, when leveled off there is a slight difference in color between the dirt where the rocks used to be and the surrounding material.  In this case, there was nothing that suggested that rocks had been removed from the wall.  Running perpendicular to the wall though, there appears to be something that could be another, skinnier piece of architecture.  We didn’t dig down enough to tell, but by the end I think I could see the formation continuing into the balk and out into our full square.  This is the pitfall of the novice digger, though, always seeing things where there are none.

            I am proud of myself for seeing a very slight change in the color of the dirt while we dug down in the balk.  It can be hard to see whether or not we’ve reached a new layer.  By the end of the day I had also figured out how to better use the trowel and brushes to dig cleanly.  It is hard, especially when taking down a relatively large section, to keep the area you are working in clear enough so that you can see the things that are going on, like subtle changes in dirt color.  We left off after leveling the balk.  I don’t know exactly what we’re doing tomorrow.

            I had an apricot on the way to the bus.  I am very happy a scorpion didn’t sting me.  Sam told us a story of the time he was stung, and it sounds extra shitty.  I was working without gloves until I saw the first scorpion in our square, and even though it was a lot smaller than I was expecting, I put the gloves on right away.

            Until next time, dear readers.  

Days in Israel: 3 Falafels Consumed: 2

            To continue where I left off last time, this village is an amazing place.  It is named Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, or “Oasis of Peace” in both Hebrew and Arabic.  The population numbers roughly 500, half of which are Israeli Jew half of which are Arab Christians and Muslims.  The village runs a School for Peace in which half the teachers speak Hebrew, half speak Arabic, and Arab and Israeli students are taught together.  Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam hosts conferences supporting peace and is dedicated to solving global issues of violence, many of which are exemplified by the conflicts in this country.

            Despite going to bed after midnight on Friday (Saturday morning), I got up at five in the morning on Saturday and went for a walk up the hill on which the village lives.  There are supposedly some Byzantine ruins right here, including a mosaic, but I couldn’t find them myself.  I’ll definitely be tracking them down before the month is out, though.  Breakfast was at eight, so I spent the three hours reading A Game of Thrones, which I have now finished and can only say, “… wow.”

            Because lunch and dinner are meat meals, breakfast is the only time we are served dairy.  This meant that breakfast included not only cornflakes and 3% milk (yeah, 3%), but also a variety of cheeses and yogurts.  I had a large pile of pita stuffed with cheese as well as one with yogurt and cucumber slices.  There is an interesting herb by name of Zatar that accompanies many of our meals and it smells and tastes a little bit like oregano; it tastes good on pretty much anything.

            After breakfast a troupe of us gathered together our wide-brimmed hats and water bottles to head down to the old crusaders’ castle.  The walk took us downhill along a winding, pitted gravel road, a favorite for mountain bikers.  This road also snaked along the border of a national forest, part of which I had explored during my morning walk before breakfast.  Once we reached the bottom of the hill, it was time to go back up.  We continued along the gravel road as it snaked up between farmland and an olive orchard.  Dr. Knauth surmised that these lands probably belonged to the Latrune Monastery on the other side of the hill, a French monastery that holds services only in French and Latin.

            At the top of the hill we walked through a torn chain link fence to approach the castle.  We had to watch our steps, for Jordanian trenches hid beneath shrubs and barbed wire lurked in shrubs.  The castle itself was almost underwhelming at first.  There was one set of rooms, reinforced by steel and concrete from the war, that was wide open to be explored.  As we kept exploring, we realized there were many more rooms with high-ceilings that were mostly submerged in the hillside but could be reached by climbing down into them.  There was still a lot of barbed wire and, more dangerously, prickly plants barring our way some of the time.  I managed to burst a seedpod full of burrs that decided that the inside of my shoe was where they wanted the party to be while I climbed down into a particularly treacherous entrance to a hall, only to realize a wide door stood to the outside at either end of it.

            It was approaching noon, which meant it was going to get even hotter than it already was.  While we rested at the castle to take pictures and whatnot, I decided to clime to the roof of the highest structure.  It was only when I was halfway up that I realized many of the stones were loose and it was a hard fall to the rocks below, but I managed to scramble my way atop the building.  From that vantage point I could see all of the surrounding hill country.  They say on a clear day that you can see all the way to the Mediterranean, but it was not one of those days.  We headed back the way we came before the sun rose too high, and good we did too, for my water bottle had just run out at that point.

            We went for a pre-lunch swim in the village pool, and then played hearts in the dig house after we ate.  I napped before dinner and went to bed around nine o’clock.

            If yesterday was an adventure, today was even more so.  I woke up around five again, though this time I went to sleep until six before getting up and reading in bed with a cup of tea.  After breakfast, we loaded onto a bus and headed out on our first trip to Jerusalem.

            It’s hard to describe the feeling I got when I looked across the valley from the Mountain of Olives onto the Old City.  The view was incredible.  We could see the span of the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, Mount Zion, the City of David, and the sprawling cemeteries, both Jewish and Muslim (not together) that lay along the sides of the valley.

            We traveled down to the city after that and continued on foot through the Dung Gate (guess what they used that for).  We got a view of the western wall of the Temple Mount (the Wailing Wall), but we didn’t approach because that requires a security check and a bunch of other tomfoolery, so we’ll do that later, possible next weekend.  We walked through the Jewish Quarter, in which there were the remnants of Hezekiah’s wall and some Roman road.

            We exited through another gate but I don’t remember which one.  May have been the Yofa (sp?) Gate.  All the gates are named for either their function (the Dung Gate) or the direction they face (the Damascus Gate).  Gates were constructed with sharp turns inside of them so that an attacking army would not easily break through them.  It was fun watching cars try and squeeze out, for they were hardly skinny enough to pass through the walls at all.

            We kept walking into the Christian quarter to a shop owned by a man named Shabon.  He was a good friend of the tour guide as well as several others from the project.  They joked that he was like the godfather.  Everyone knows Shabon, and Shabon knows everyone and how to get anything in the city at the best price.  At Shabon’s we relaxed and were treated to a falafel lunch.  Lucky for me Sam is a light eater, so I was able to have my own and the better part of hers.  It was fantastic.  While we were waiting for the food to get to us, the bells from the nearby Church of the Sepulcher started ringing and we witnessed the procession of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch.  The Greek Orthodox Church has no pope equivalent, but many regional leaders, so this was the top dog in Jerusalem.  Pretty neat.

            After lunch we roamed about.  Shabon led an expedition to acquire voltage adaptors from a vendor.  He was an older guy, mustachioed, with thinning grey hair, but holy poop, he was practically running down the streets.  It was hard to keep up.  Once everyone had reconvened, we made for the Church of the Sepulcher.

            This place was intense.  First of all, five different Christian groups each hold office in the church.  I don’t remember all of them, but I do know the Ethiopian brothers live on the roof.  This living arrangement results from the 19^th century, during which the brothers of the different sects constantly were fighting over control of the church, trying to claim more of it for themselves.  Eventually they called it and said, “Whatever you got, you keep it and that’s that.”  The Ethiopians were on the roof at the time, so there you have it.  There was also a ladder that had remained leaning on a upper level of the outer wall since 1880 because at the time the holdings were solidified, no one knew who it belonged to.

            Now, when I said this place was intense, I mean it’s considered the most likely site of Jesus’ tomb.  Constantine built it around a cave in which his mother supposedly found the True Cross.  It was a massive structure, with altars and chambers that extended deep down into the bedrock.  It encompasses the top of the mountain on which Jesus was said to be crucified and even claims to have the very stone in which the cross was set.  In the entrance lay the flat stone upon which Jesus was laid after he was taken down from the cross.  It was hard to get a good picture because of the crowds that knelt to rub, touch, and kiss the stone.  Pretty cool stuff.  I have my doubts about whether all of these artifacts are genuine, but I don’t think that really matters.

            We exited the city through the Damascus Gate.  In order to get there, we had to move through some very crowded market streets.  If you’ve ever seen a movie depicting a crowded Middle Eastern bazaar, it’s not very far off: very narrow streets, packed with vendors shouting about their wares.  It was difficult not to lose the group in the chaos.  The Damascus Gate was covered in scaffolding, but I could tell it was more impressive than the other two gates we’d been through.  Those were just holes in the wall, whereas the Damascus gate was constructed atop the remains of a Roman triumphal arch built during the Pax Romana, or as our guide called it, “The peace enforced by Rome.”

            We came back to the hotel, I finished A Game of Thrones, started writing this, and promptly fell asleep.  I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow; we leave for the Tel at 5:00.  More to follow.

Biblical Hebrew: Not As Useful As I'd Like

            I made it safe and sound.  Some interesting tales from my travels:

            At Logan I was able to experience the wonder of the full body scan and, frankly, I don’t see what everyone was getting his/her panties all in a bundle about.  To be honest, I was bored by the process and felt invigorated by the burst of radiation that my internal organs received.  I will keep everyone posted on the development of my super powers.

            I made two major purchases at the airport.  One was a bottle of motion-sickness pills; I hate flying and they were supposed to put me to sleep, more that later.  Realizing I would miss the rest of Game of Thrones, I decided just to by the book and read it.  So far I think HBO has done a great job, but the book does add a measure of background that is filling out the parts of the story I already knew.

            I scored an aisle seat with no one behind me and no one next to me, which meant lots of room and a reclined chair.  Unfortunately, the pills failed in their mission to overcome my fear of flying and knock me out, but I supplemented it with a hearty, room-temperature glass of the finest red wine Alitalia has to offer.  That managed to do the trick at putting me to sleep for a few hours.

            The airport in Rome has a much wider array of shopping opportunities than Logan does, however the overpriced nature of airport commerce is exaggerated when looking a prices in a currency whose value is one and a half times greater than normal.  Thus, I contented myself to A Game of Thrones and waiting out the three-hour interim between my flights.

            The shuttle we were herded into decided it didn’t want to close its doors, which meant the entire staff of the Roman airport was summoned to fix the problem.  Meanwhile, these two old ladies next to me on the shuttle were bitchin’ about missing their flight.  When I assured them that the plane would not leave without them because everyone who was flying on it was trapped on the shuttle too, they didn’t seem convinced.

            The flight to Tel Aviv was uneventful.  The lines at passport check were kind of crazy, though.  I managed to pick the wrong line, the one that was moving at half the speed of the rest.  When I approached the desk, I discovered why.  The lady behind the glass was pretty and friendly looking, but alas, it turned out to be the devil’s trickery.

            Hands over passport.

            She: What is the purpose of your visit?

            Me: Digging etc etc.

            She: Where?

            Me: Tel Gezer

            She: Did you come alone?

            Me: Yup! (I was real proud of myself)

            She: Where are you staying?

            Me: Neve Salom (Oasis of Peace)

            She: Do you have an invitation?

            Me: … no?

            She: Like a letter or something?

            Me: … no?

            She: Are you staying at a hotel?

            Me: Yes, in Neve Salom with the rest of the people digging.

            She: Do you have family here?

            Me: No.

            She: Do you know anyone?

            Me: I have good friends who are Israeli citizens, but they aren’t here now. (At this point I was kinda worried that there was a problem.)

            She: Are you meeting anyone?

            Me: Yes, they’re picking us up outside of customs.

            She: “Us?” I thought you said you came alone.

            Me: Well, there are other people digging who are also being picked up here, but I came alone.

            She: *sigh* Are you a student?

            Me: Yes. Want my ID?

            She: *sigh* Yes.

            Hand over Lyco ID. She scribble scribbles, wordlessly hands back my passport, and never looks at me again.  I depart.

            So yeah, got the third degree.  And I made it out, and met up with Jerry, a man with a thick Texan accent and cowboy hat.  We made small talk over the difficulties of studying Greek, then collected four more diggers and went on our way.

            Outside, it was hot, hotter than it’s been in my neck of the woods all year.  It reminded me of Sicily, except it was hotter, and this time there was ample shade outside the airport.  We drove out to Neve Salom, saw the Tel in the distance, discussed the old castle from the crusades and the monastery behind it, as well as the left over entrenchments from the war in the sixties.

            We got assigning our rooms.  I am living with Daniel, one of the people I rode from the airport with, a history and biblical studies major.  There are two more with us, but not yet arrived.  The hotel is not lavish, but the rooms are spacious enough, there is hot water, and there is plenty of common space to spread out, not to mention a whopping three internet hotspots and a pool!

            I ran into Dr. Knauth (who didn’t recognize me due to the haircut) and she, Daniel, and I walked about the village trying to discover the best path to the castle and monastery.  Daniel and I were going to be industrious and hike out there before dinner, but Neve Salom rests atop a hill, and so the hike would have been 45 minutes downhill to the ruins and more coming back, so we decided to table that and keep romping around the edge of the village, taking in the wide variety of wild flowers that grow here.  There is also a building called the Dome of Silence, which I found an odd title, for the most notable characteristic of this large, white, hemispherical structure is the incredible acoustics it possesses.  I was able to whistle chords all on my own by playing each tone in succession quickly.

            We headed back for dinner, which for me consisted of hummus, pita, couscous, curried potatoes, and some black meatloafy thing we decided must have been lamb.  There is much more to say about this village and its role, but I’d rather leave that for another time so ensure my readership keeps returning.  Nothing like a cliffhanger!

Also, Jerry knows a place in Jerusalem that serves a mean bacon cheeseburger, so perhaps not all is lost!

New Blog

Hey all,

So it looks like I am going to try this blogging thing to chronicle the digging experience.  Hopefully I am diligent about updating it.  I leave for the airport in 2 hours.  On to Rome and then Tel Aviv

I hate flying.