June 2008 Archives

Well, day two on the dig site was...well...dirty. Very dirty. It was a repeat of yesterday, only with more dirt. But, I'm not afraid of a little grime and so I continue on. God has blessed us with "cooler" days so far. They are still pretty hot, but not as bad as the veteran diggers tell us it can be. We are required to stop every half hour for a water break, whether or not you want it! Despite the cooler temps, the sun is really strong. I slathered on some gummy SPF 45 waterproof sunscreen over my layers of dirt and went for a swim in the lake. I stayed mostly under water but after only about 30mins, I managed to get a light burn on both of my shoulders and my face, too. And I have a sandal tan from a pair of shoes that I haven't worn this summer before yesterday and I wore them to the beach twice and to the store and back. Crazy! Tomorrow, I will be stepping up the sunscreen routine.

Today our square "E6" has really found nothing but rocks, pottery, a little glass, a little bone and a lot of dirt. Nothing too exciting so far, but we have managed to find the top of one of the walls that we were searching for and we may have located the top of another one that we thought might be there. If I can figure out how to post a picture here, then I will show you where we are digging. The biggest find on the site was a little glass "amulet" with a lion on it. The first official "major find" of the season.

Today has been a busy day and as much as I love my blog I opted for a longer swim in the Sea of Galilee (an important pre-shower wash,) a real shower and an ice cream before reporting for pottery washing at 5:15. Maybe tomorrow I'll have more time to write. There is so much I want to tell about. Maybe tomorrow I'll tell you about the Israelite (err...Israeli...) food. Good night (or maybe I should say, "Good afternoon!)

Well, today was the first real day of digging. Then again, it wasn't a real digging day at all, since we spent most of our time before breakfast cleaning up from the last year's worth of weather and weeds. We picked up big rocks, pulled out weeds and made things look nice again. I had the job of climbing on top of a wall and pulling the weeds out from between the rocks. Let me tell you, you have never seen a thistle until you've seen these! The spines went right through my leather work gloves with no effort. Ouch! I also got to help mark out squares for a little bit. Everything is excavated on a grid in order to keep everything accounted for and to keep things organized.

We didn't get to the excavating until after breakfast at about 8:30 or so. Just to give you a little perspective on that, we began our day's work at 5am...As I look at my clock, I notice that it is only 8:30am in Ontario. That means many of you back home might not even be awake yet, and here I've lived most of the day! (No wonder I am so tired!)

My team of 5 spent the rest of the time using a pick-axe to loosen dirt and a turrea (giant hoe) to scoop dirt out of our square. We are trying to find out if there is indeed a blocked doorway leading to other rooms beside the street, or if there is some other purpose for the irregularities in the wall along the street. So far, we have rocks and dirt, rocks and dirt. There is the occasional shard of pottery, but we are told that this close to the surface they are not useful to us and so we do not keep them. We have uncovered the surface of a few dressed stones (stones that have been cut and shaped, not just random boulders) but so far, nothing significant. But today is only the first day and we are starting a new square. That means that the place where we are digging has not yet been excavated and we have to start from scratch.

When we finished at noon, surprisingly the sun was not that hot. We have been blessed with a "cooler" day, relatively speaking. I think yesterday was by far much hotter. Today there was a beautiful breeze which did a lot to keep you cool, but also blew a whole lot of dust around. That means we were really dirty when we got back! Think: layer of sunscreen, layer of dirt, layer of sunscreen, layer of dirt, layer of sunscreen, layer of dirt. That meant a sticky, oozy kind of sunscreen mud that also has a lot of sweat mixed in. Yuck! What a mess to get that off!

We scrubbed off the surface dirt when we got back from digging, and then went for a quick swim in the sea of Galilee...definitely not like a Canadian lake. It was so warm, and refreshing. Nothing like those cold northern lakes that we have back home. The lake also doubles as a great place to wash off a bunch of the dig dirt from your clothes. A good rinse and they're almost as good as new...well, not really. But good enough to wear again the next day at least. After all, they are just going to get more dirty, right? As a side note, let me just put in this plug for Timex watches: I had taken my watch off at some point during the day to layer on some more sun screen over the mud. I never put it back on and thus, when I washed my pants in the lake, my watch got a good dousing, too. I completely forgot it was there until after I had hung it on the clothesline. I went back to check my pocket, just in case it was there and low and behold, there is my Timex watch, still ticking and everything. It's not even supposed to be waterproof! I was so sure that I had lost it at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. I'm glad it's not.

The rest of our day should be pretty low-key. Since we didn't get much pottery today, we don't have to do any pottery washing, but we do have church tonight at 6:00. I hope I can manage to stay awake until then!  I think I could crawl in to bed right now and not wake up til morning. I'm debating whether or not a nap is warranted.

A note completely unrelated to the dig: I am unable to connect to my email or facebook because we are having strange internet problems and only certain websites work for certain people. If you have sent me a message, I may not get to it for a few days. We are hoping that the problem will be fixed soon. For now, the blog will have to do.

So I managed to make it to the airport in plenty of time without any wrong turns or missed exits. And I was only stuck driving less than 50km/h for a bit, so I made good time. It was great, except that I was consequently at the airport much earlier than I planned and thus I had to wait a really long time for my flight to leave. Oh well...I had time to do some of that reading which I didn't do before I left! Just before our flight was to board, I met Michelle and really just before we boarded, the rest of our group got there. They had been delayed in Edmonton and almost didn't make it! In the end, there really was no worry anyway, because our plane had some kind of generator problem and we didn't get off the ground for another hour. Sadly, that meant it was already dark when we got to Israel, and we didn't get to watch the scenery on our way to the Kibbutz. We got to our room about 10:30pm and were ready to sleep.

At 8:30am we were on the bus to Hippos, the place where we are excavating. We weren't digging this morning; only touring. We got to check out our site and some of the others near it and do a little learning and exploring. What an amazing view. It's pretty exciting.

Today was a tour day and the next stop was Kursi, the traditional site of Jesus casting the demons into the pigs. Of course, this may not have been the actual site. We really have no way of knowing. Some, Dr. Schuler included, would say that Hippos is a more likely site. Nevertheless, the ancients chose Kursi as the site at which to remember this occasion so that's where we went to remember it as well. There are ruins of a monastery there which have been partially reconstructed. We also hiked up the hill to the site at which Jesus apparently performed the exorcism and read the gospel account of it.

Next stop: Capernaum! This place was a sort of "home base" for Jesus' earthly ministry. We started at the church which is built over the house which apparently belonged to St. Peter. The present day church is built over the ruins of ancient churches which are built over the house...you get the picture, I'm sure. The present structure is built in such a way that it sort of "hangs" over the ancient structures and thus the ruins are still preserved. You can look down at them from a glass floor in the building above. You can also go down and look at them from outside. Sadly, just as our group was about to go and look at them, a mob - and I mean a HUGE mob, more like several huge mobs- of tourists came in and took over that site and just about everything else in the place. We managed a look at the supposed synagogue of Jesus' day (supposed because it may only have been a public building which doubled as a synagogue...long story, not enough time to explain...) before heading back to our bus. It turns out that there is a huge meeting of Anglican churches in Jerusalem this week and they were out touring today. There was busload upon busload of them.  Great to see, but the selfish part of me wishes they had waited about ten more minutes before showing up so that we could have had a better look at the ruins! But I guess we all have to share.

Back on the bus we headed to Tabgha. This is the traditional site of the feeding of the 5000. There is a really beautiful Byzantine era church there (at least I think that's what we were told. There was just too much information coming at us all at once. I couldn't absorb it all. I wish I could hit rewind and hear it all again.) The church was beautiful and the mosaics were so nice. They have been beautifully restored.

The next and last stop of the day was the Mount of the Beatitudes, commemorating the Sermon on the Mount. All throughout the day, as we visited holy sites, we were required to keep silence inside the buildings and also be dressed modestly. This meant covering knees and shoulders. No tank tops, no shorts. I didn't think the rules were all that strictly enforced until a nun shamed a couple teens in front of me for having bare shoulders! "Do you think you are by the sea shore?" she asked. "This is a holy place!" Others were also shushed for talking in the chapel. Wow! I found it impressive that the rules would be taken so seriously.  This place had a beautiful view of the lake and was quite peaceful.

Then, back to the Kibbutz. It was time to cool down and to try to absorb all that we'd seen. After a couple hours it was time for a team meeting to get prepared for tomorrow, the first "official" day on the dig site. We learned what to pack, what to expect and most importantly what to kill. Scorpions, that is. With a tool, not your boot. Why? Cuz if you miss with your boot, it will crawl up your pant leg and well, I'm sure you can guess the rest. Oh, and the little ones are more dangerous than the big ones. And there are ticks up there too, so watch out. Scorpions and ticks. Nice. Is it too late to go home? Just kidding! The bus leaves at 4:40am and I'll be on it. I had better get some sleep...

Well, today is the day! Surprisingly I'm much calmer now than I was 8 days ago. Praise God! But there are still a few challenges ahead...

I have finished my "at work" to do list and now am furiously finishing the "at home" list. I still have to jam a few things into my suitcases, make a few last minute calls and then comes perhaps the biggest challenge of all: navigating my way to the Toronto Airport during rush hour! I keep telling myself that it could be worse...I could be trying to get to the airport in the dark. Well, maybe that wouldn't be worse.

Israel, here I come!

There are 8 days to go before I leave for the craziest trip I've ever signed up for: archaeology in Israel. Now, I regularly traipse all over Canada and will one day be able to say I've visited every province. I have, on occasion, visited the United States and it's been pretty easy. Once, I even made it to Mexico and handled it pretty well. But what I am about to do in 8 days tops them all.

Israel??!!

I'm starting to get excited.

I'm starting to get nervous.

(Really nervous!)

And that same little prayer that comes back to me every time I do something a little nutty has begun a little sooner than usual: "Dear Lord, what have I done?"

But, don't for a minute think that I regret signing up for this trip...I know myself well. That's why I signed up, paid my money AND bought all my stuff before now...if I had thought about it too much in advance, I would totally have chickened-out!

So, I'll keep praying, and I'll keep scratching things off the "to do before you leave" list (which keeps growing, rather than shrinking) and I will continue to get myself as ready as I can for the adventure of a lifetime. Israel, here I come!