Day 27-30

Okay, here's the latest . . .

I stayed back from the tel on Thursday and Friday, nursing that busted up ankle. I still got up (relatively) early (just not at 4:00 am) and did some work around the dig house. I washed pottery for several hours (boy that was fun) and bagged and tagged MCs (material culture items) for an hour or so each day. I took the opportunity to go to the swimming pool and Neve Shalom and relax and do a little amateur water therapy on the ankle for about 30 minutes each day. I haven't been swimming the entire time I've been here. Seems like there's been very little "down" time, always working at the dig site, or pottery washing, or lecture, or meals, or blogging, or doing laundry in the shower, or cleaning up, or working on my archaeology course (power point, curriculum, etc), or trying to learn something from the staff. Each day I have been getting about 30 minutes of "free time" in the afternoon and about 30 minutes to one hour after dinner, depending on how long I feel like staying up. I've tried to go to bed around 9:00 - 9:30 so I can get a decent amount of sleep.

So, no swimming thus far until Thursday/Friday . . . and boy was it nice! They have a very nice swimming pool with about 1/2 of it covered with these canopies, so it's nice and shaded and cool. No one was there the first day, so I had it all to my self! Which is really nice b/c the tan line on my arms and neck is much more defined these days and I might have scared small children and animals! Friday was the preparation for Sabbath, so more families were out and enjoying the day together, but it wasn't too bad.

That brings up another random thought that I haven't mentioned, yet . . . When we have traveled on the weekends to the Negev and to the Galilee area we stayed at hotels. We arrived at the hotels on the Sabbath and something that I learned 12 years ago from my Hebrew professor, Dr. Harry Hunt, was confirmed . . . the elevators automatically stop on every floor on the Sabbath so that you do not have to violate the Sabbath laws on working by pushing the buttons! I have always repeated his story in my classes, but wasn't exactly sure about it. Now I know!

I am counting down the days til I leave! Tomorrow is probably the last official "dig" day. Tuesday will be clean up and get ready for final aerial photos on Wednesday. That means lots of sweeping dirt off of dirt. Straightening the balk lines. Removing grass and weeds from the areas in our fields that have not been dug this year. This means running into lots of scorpions. My square has been fortunate that we have only had two the entire time. Most squares have about 10-15 each day! I hate scorpions.

Wednesday will be photo day. They will only take some people up to the site to give size contrast to the site. Really tall and really short people won't go . . . I'm one of those . . . I do believe.

Wednesday night is a talent show of some kind. Some of the guys are putting together a video where they interview Macallister . . . the guy who dug here back in the early 1900's who did a poor job of excavating and recording stuff. It's his junk that we spent 2-3 weeks digging through in order to get to the real stuff! Also, I think some guys are going to do impersonations of the dig leaders. It should entertaining.

Well, guess I'd better go. Time for bed!

Shalom!

Trey