June 2008 Archives

Welllllll. Today something exciting happened! Our dig team...In the d square. D for destruction :) well...that's not what D stands for. but that's what we call it...Anyway...We found a Byzantine era Glass Amulet with a lion on it!!!! Derryl found it when he was picking. It's a very important find, but not any help to the dig in a sense because it was still within the first couple feet of digging. so that means it was either moved and then dropped again or something like that...Here are some pictures...

Wow. What a day! We started digging today...We got on the bus at 4:40am and got at the site at 5:00...we immediately got started...Girls picked weeds, and the guys went down into the old military bunkers and got most of the equipment to set up the canopy things for shade and whatnot. After about an hour of picking weeds and throwing little rocks off the cliff, I got called over to help some of the guys in Darrel's square. So the rest of the day, I was using a turia (not sure how to spell it..it's like a large hoe) to scrape dirt into buckets. There were rocks like crazy. of all sizes. so it was a little annoying. We dug about three feet all around our square. We are digging out the other half of a room, and hopefully opening up the doorway that is blocked with stones. but we have all month to do it...We worked for 7 hours...and we were done by 12pm. so we had the rest of the day to dink around the kibbutz....

We all came back covered in dirt. I mean...just covered! I washed my hands, and then went to lunch. Then Liz, Jess and I put our swimsuits on and went down to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and swam around. We swam over to the pontoon thing and laid on top of it for a good hour. Lets just say the back of my legs are fried :) I'm going to stay out of the sun for a couple days until I heal....then I'll go back out. but I have all month to get tan,  so what's the rush?? haha Well it's  time for me to go to bed. We have to get up at 4:00 again! 

Enjoy

We departed at 8am this morning and went up to Hippos, our dig site. We got a tour of the whole place. Wow. Can I say I'm really excited to get started?!?! There is so much we are going to do, and possibly some amazing things we will find. :)



Second we went to Kursi...the site commemorating the story of Luke 8:26-39..Where Jesus cast out demons from a man into pigs. Schuler believes Hippos, our site, is a better idea of where the story actually happened..

Third we went to Capernaum...Where Jesus and Peter lived.

Well, we survived a 10 hour plane ride across the Atlantic, and now we are here...chillin in the Kibbutz. It's nice. Already went down to the Sea of Galilee and stood in the water. The water is perfect temperature.

One thing I cannot get over is how it's only 8:00 AM in Minnesota, when it's 4:00pm here in Israel. You guys aren't even up yet! I'll have to work out some communication times to talk to people...

I'll post pictures starting tomorrow. I have to figure out to do it. the internet is a little tricky.

I'm going swimming in the Sea of Galilee now! byee!

So we leave tomorrow morning. Words can't describe how excited I am. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

9 more days and I can hardly wait!

We got an email from Schuler with all of the travel, packing and Kibbutz information. I was reading over it and felt overwhelmed! It finally hit me that I'm going.

I'm going to start packing tonight, I have almost everything that I need. I hope!

Tah-tah!

So there are 16 days left until we leave and I just cannot wait!