Oh the heat! We have been spoiled thus far on our trip with beautiful weather. Well, beautiful if you like 35 degrees! (That would be Celsius, for any Americans who might be reading this!) I would guess that we have been ranging from 29-35 degrees. Yesterday and today, however were not quite so nice. Yesterday, coming down from the mountain at noon, my thermometer read close to 40! And today it was 41. Yikes! There was absolutely no cloud cover today, which made the difference. Water breaks were scheduled for every 25 minutes instead of every 30 and we have had to count our water rations the last couple of days as some teams have begun to run out. Luckily, we have had enough from other groups to share.
Work continues on B5 with nothing much new. The basic story of our day today was rocks, dirt, rocks, dirt, rocks, and - you guessed it - dirt. There was the occasional shard of pottery, a bone and some pieces of glass. But, that was about as exciting as things got. I'm doing pretty well with the work, but I'm suffering from "Turreah" back. (A Turreah - tu-REE-ah - is a large hoe-like tool which we use to scoop dirt into buckets.) The handle it short and so you have to bend over to use it. I think I'm permanently bent over, and I probably use it the least of anyone in our team. I can only imagine how the rest of them must feel. I lean over to pick up something from off the floor (in roughly the same position as I would be if I were using the Turreah) and I feel like my muscles won't hold me up! I have to been at the knees to keep from toppling face first into the concrete. Ouch! I'll have to do a few more stretches and stand up straight a little more often tomorrow.
Today I was pretty tired when I started to trek back down the mountain at 11:45 or so. I was looking forward to a nice air-conditioned bus ride back to the Kibbutz, lunch and a swim in the Sea of Galilee. But today the bus didn't show up until 12:30 - about half an hour late! It was not fun standing in the hot, 41-degree sun, with no shade and no real place to sit down as we waited. But, thankfully the bus did arrive and we didn't have to walk our way back down.
While we were eating lunch, the power went out on the Kibbutz. No big deal, right? It's daytime and we can see with no problem. WRONG! No power means no air conditioning! At 41 degrees, not counting the humidity factor, the air conditioning is a must, even for people like me who usually would rather be warm than cool. We headed for the Sea of Galilee in hopes that the problem would be fixed before we returned. We spent an hour or more bobbing up and down in the lake. I still cannot believe how warm the water is. Dare I say almost too warm! Definitely not like any lake in Canada that I've ever swam in, where you have to convince yourself that it isn't really all that cold, when in reality it's pretty frigid. It's amazing how relaxing just standing around in the water can be.
The lake is really low this year because of a drought, which is causing water shortages. Much of the country gets its water supply from the lake, and you can tell just by looking at the shore line that it is much lower than usual. The cement walk leading out to the beach stops waaaay before the water and what sand there is on the beach ends long before you would want to set up a towel. So, the beach is mostly just a pile of large rocks. This mean you need good shoes to swim in or your feet will get pretty beat up. I didn't really bring good water shoes and so all I have are my red thong shower sandals with strawberries on them. They don't stay on that well and more than once I've slipped on a rock and gone down with a splash. It's pretty funny to watch, I'm sure. So, I spend most of my time in the deeper water, bobbing along with the waves, gripping hard with my toes to keep my shoes on. It may not sound like much fun, but after digging all morning, I don't have energy to do much else.
Once we were wrinkled up like prunes, we headed back to the "dorm." We are in the blue "women's house" which actually has four men in it too since there is not room for them in the men's house. We scrubbed up with quick showers (water is scarce and all "soaping" must be done with the water turned off to conserve as much as possible.) Then, we headed out for milkshakes. Let me tell you, Kibbutz Ein Gev serves of a great gourmet milkshake for 18 shekels (about $6). The guy making them took great pride in his product and took a great amount of time adding more ice cream, then more milk to get the right blend and consistency. It was quite tasty. Just the thing we needed after a really hot morning on the dig site. The thing is, since it was so hot, the milkshakes were melting almost faster than we could drink them. I've had this experience more than once with frozen treats since I've been here. You never really get to enjoy them since you're wolfing them down quickly before they melt all down your arm.
It is now 8:25 pm and I'm starting to think about sleep. (Many of you are just waking from afternoon naps!) I still have to wash some water bottles and check my pack to make certain that I have everything for tomorrow. I'm not awake enough in the morning to think straight enough to know if I have everything. For example, on Sunday morning, I forgot my sunscreen! Fortunately, I had a bottle in the bottom of my bag which I had not removed for the weekend. Otherwise, I would have had to do some begging off others. There is no way I could go a whole morning without some! By now it is 8:40 and I really must go. Goodnight!
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