shabbat shalom wa mozel tov

This is my very last post from Israel, I leave tonight for the airport and will soon be on my way home. This last week has been a lot of cleaning up an and packing, wednesday Michelle nd I spent all day in the office doing registration and boxing and cataloguing everything and going crazy, but it was fun working with Silvie the one in charge of all that. The rest of the time we just hung out and finished some paperwork then had a pizza party (pizza, an amazing invention, i haven't had it in 6 weeks, it was wonderful, even if it was kosher). And i did actually go in the pool for about 5 minutes, the first time this whole month, ehh, it happens. We came into Jersualem this morning, and were able to spend some time in the Israel museum, that was cool, especially since it's been closed for about five years for renovationa dn just opened monday, so we were just able. As far as pottery goes, it didn't have too good of a collection, but it did have a a general sweep of lots of diffrernt things, and it was pretty cool seeing things in person that i've read and heard about like the aleppo codex and sennacherib prism an stele from ekron. I had my last 6 shekel falafel, it was as always delicious, i added some more spicy stuff and was even better even if my mought was burning like crazy.
It is definitely a hard day today, i am ready to come home and see everyone and have a small break, but it is so hard to leave, i could stay here forever and never be bored. This land is absoplutely incredible, it has captured me. The sounds and smells, the history, even the crazy storekeepers trying to marry you, it's great. There are so many ties that pull me, It may not be the same place it was when Christ walked the streets, but you definitely feel a type of sacredness to this land and a connection that doesn't come in many other places. Eric and I were walking around the old city and he remarked how great it is when you realize that transition you've had going from tourist walking around and not knowing what's going on around you, to totally feeling at home and knowing where you're going and how to get there and the way to fit in (as much as you can when you're a blonde haired, tall american young girl). Shalom from Jerusalem, I will see you soon.

cool things

Some of the exciting finds and understanding that came out of this season-

http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=182962

http://gath.wordpress.com/

breakfast with the exorcist

so i think it's pretty funny that this page is titled christina in egypt, because basically i was in Egypt for barely four days, and the rest of the 5 or so weeks have been in Israel. but anyways, had another great weekend, last full one in Jerusalem :( i'll at least get one more day, finally getting to go to the israel musuem and the shrine of the book, it's been closed for renovation and just opened yesterday. It was mostly a relaxing one, went to church for the last time, i will definitely miss the spectacular view during sacrament meetings, and then to the Rockafeller museum with Eric, stacey, and michelle. Eric is working on making me a master pottery reader and so we went through and he tried teaching me all he knew and keeps trying to test me, once in a while i get it right :) so i'm learning and slowly becoming a pottery geek, which is a bad tihng according to jeff (he is) but it's fun:) The rest of the time we hung out and did some walking through the old city and ate some more amazing food :) Oh and one morning we were seated at a breakfast table with what turned out to be one of 5 exorcists from argentina who just got done with a congress in Rome and was making his annually visit to Jerusalem, it was pretty interesting, he was a nice guy, you meet some pretty cool people here. We also managed to find marshmallows (it is incredibly hard to do so) and made tropical marshmallow, exploding cow, tea biscuit s'mores (in a fire i made) sunday night. It was pretty great, talk about working with what you have, but they were delicious, and if you have never had exploding cow before, you are definitely missing out.

Everyone lately has just been finishing up and cleaning as we get ready to close up the season. Last week was one of the most exciting with the juglet and cooking vessel and some things in the other areas like a brick destruction level, though yesterday as we were doing our last digging and starting to clean, we had some more excitement. i, and eric, was starting to take out the vessel, when we got another pottery piece sticking out of a different material. We decided to follow it down and dig it out, mostly because we didn't want to leave it exposed for a whole year until next season. I started digging down and it just keeps going, I got down probably close to 15 cm when Jeff and Aren came over and told me to stop. So far we had the side with intact handle of a large cookingpot/storage jar with the rim seemingly intentionally broken off. We had to stop because it was getting to deep and we don't have the time to excavate around it. So we have to leave it and rebury it, hoping nothing will happen to it for the next year, it was a sad blow to the excitement. You always find the best stuff at the end, like in the square over i was helping with as well, there is a huge plaster installment that dives as well and we still don't have the bottom, but it looks like it abutts the EB/MB (depends on who you talk to) wall and we have to bury that as well :( there are two going theories for the cooking pot/jar i have though, either it's just a storage jar dug into the ground, or it is a baby burial ( as has been found in the iron age/LB surface types we're on), I'm hoping for the latter, it would be much more interesting.

yesterday was jeff's birthday, we had a great party, first of all a couple of us ran to the top of the tell before he got there and made a coca cola tree witht the bottles hanging from all the branches, he was pretty ecstatic, and then one guy's wife made a cake and brought popsicles, it was fun. Last night we also got to go to a concert in the Bell caves,it was really fun, this small natural theater with bats flying around and great acoustics, it was vivaldi, loved it.

Today was the last day for us all on the tell sadly, only a few get to go tomorrow to finish getting ready for the photographs and aerials, but there's a chance I can go and help, so we'll see.It was all sweeping and dusting, yesterday we had taken down the shades so it was a very hot, draining day, but already the area is looking good and you can start to see the big picture and connect all the different squares, it's cool to see the line of stratigraphy our area is especially important for, that we can look on surfaces from the crusader period all the way down to early bronze on this side of the tell. we came back to the kibbutz and did some pottery writing and i also help load tools and equipment and take them to the storage unit which felt like a sauna inside. Tonight is a lecture by Arim Mazar, an important guy from the Hebrew university and is supposed to be really good, I'm excited.

the miracle of Tisha b'av

It's so crazy, i only have a week and a half left i can't believe it! i don't want it to end, especially just as i'm getting to the good layers ( i hate how that happens). I am learning so much and i'm even starting to learn to classify some of the pottery though not near as much as there is. but yep, I'm hooked, this is even more fun than US digging, pretty much i just get to blast big holes in the ground with a pick axe, who has time for measely troweling? Except of course when i almost kill a tiny vessel with it (which i didn't, just knocked off part of the rim, so sad, I don't know if I'll ever get over that)

We definitely experienced a Tish b'av miracle, it was pretty much one of the most amazing days, this whole summer i've been telling everyone i was going to find a whole vessel, that was my goal, and they didn't believe me. We got to a surface at the end of last week and Jeff asked me what i was going to find when we took it down, he laughed when i told him a complete vessel just like area D. three days later i did! and in an area where no one had found a whole one yet :) it was a very cute baby one and next to a huge (we think) base of a cooking/storage jar :) this happened towards the end of they day, so we won't know too much more about it until tomorrow, it actually was not supposed to be in that spot at all ( i told you, a miracle), so we'll see what it turns into. I got to take it out and carry it back to the kibbutz, and got to ride in the car too :) I was pretty darn excited, even the four hour pottery reading didn't phase me too much. Yep, that's why i dig :)

This week has gone by way, way too fast! I'm back in jerusalem already, it's so crazy. we did get a lot of work done, and I better have some good muscles once this is over, besides the hiking part, i have dug with the pick axe for 3 out of the 4 days about. In the group Eric is over there are four working squares, I've kinda been jumping back and forth between, but the main one, and the one i'll be staying on (hopefully, unless he makes me work on another project) is finally starting to produce results, we settled on a surface at the beginning of the week, and then today we think we found the mycaenean floor that had been found in the neighboring square and hopefully right under the surface are some good things, like a whole vessel (cross my fingers). the other day i did find a bronze age accessorie pin, that was cool, it was an aquamarine colored metal. in our area we have also found an egyptian faience scarab (absolutely amazing), a loom weight, some large vessel sherds, and part of a MB, possibly EB fortification wall, and where i am there might even be evidence of a room system with a mud brock wall form early iron age. we try not to be jealous of area D who got ot the destruction layer, and last night pulled out 32 complete vessels (though amit promises that if they have to pull out any more i can come help, i was supposed to last night, but it didn't work out). I unofficially have the position of assistant everything to eric, pretty sure its more a serf-master relationship, but i have been learning so much and he takes time to explain and teach me everything he can. next year he's going to make me official assistant ,though I'm pretty sure it's only because he wants to pass off all his paperwork to someone else :)

On Monday we visited Tel Burna, a new site that is hoped to be the ancient lebnah, it was quite exciting, eric calls it the Lachish of our generation, we'll see, it would be very fun to dig there, though, to be able to be in the opening stages of a dig. And they have it worked out that their dig is the three weeks right before zafit's, maybe they'll make it a discount if we do both. Hopefully tomorrow I'll go to the rockfeller, Eric's going to show me all the vessel and teach me more about identifying them, at the moment I can only identify about 3, maybe 4 types of the pottery when i find it. Last week I was able to go back to the temple mount and holy sepulchre, i was pretty excited when I could find both places and lead my friends to both places on my own :) Jeff also took me and eric around a little tour type adventure over to Mt. Zion and through the old city. We also went to an archaeologist meeting/party thing for israeli archaeology where pretty much all the big wigs go, there were three of us with Jeff, I mostly stuck with Eli who made it a point to point out every important face and position to me, i think managed get 5 memorized, but i am definitely learning the important people and politics or the archaeology game here. The hostel i'm in this weekend, is right inside damascus gate and has a rooftop garden to look out over the city, i love looking out over everything. And it's right by some great food places, i had amazing kabob tonight, there's a reason why Jeff says the only reason he comes is for the food :)

if your interested, there's an actual site blog- gath.wordpress.org

Digging!!!

So i've been here for 4 days, I've been reminded of how much i love doing this! It's super hot and sunny, you start sweating by 6:30am and feel like you're going to lunch when it's actually breakfast. There tons of prickly weeds and rocks and dirt flying everywhere, you come home caked with a layer of sand you hope is a tan, but quickly find out it's not. By the second day you are sore and bruised and absolutely sick of walking up the stupid tel to the main site and then to your own across to the other side. And then spend hours putting up stupid canopies without the right amount of rope or poles with wind to finally be able to start shooting levels and pick axe the top portion of the unit before it's time to start cleaning up.

It is absolutely wonderful!!!! I love it.

These first couple of days we've been clearing out the weeds and winter fill from the site an setting up the shade canopies , huge tent like things that are beasts which we try to hold up with these plastic poles that threaten to fall on top of us when the wind picks up. We had to make one putting two sheets together, it was crazy , took us about 6 hours in all, but we finally got it up and got to start digging. It was a very exciting day :) The area I'm in is on the west side of the Tel right below the peak and the ruins of the crusader fortress. We're working on the slope and attemptiong to connect the stratigraphic layers, at the moment there are 13, going way back to Early Bronze age period. Our team is divided into groups working in different sectins within that area. In the group I'm in, we get to start two new units to north of the other open pits and try to see how the middle bronze fortification wall extends and if there are any other dwellings around it. there are three of us for that, and we managed to get the section stringed and the points plotted with the tripod, i kinda missed the total station we used last year though. And we started taking off the top soil level, trying to get to a brick level we see in the connecting unit. So at the moment we're not finding quite as exciting stuff, lots of sherds and some bone fragments, there was a cool bead, and lots of rocks. Tomorrow we'll fet that level through and actually be getting to the rich levels we can actually do things with, we are all very, very excited. Jeff makes sure the guys let me have a turn at that pick axe, so all in all it is going great.

We finish working around 1pm then come back for lunch, followed by pottery cleaning and reading, which will actually pick up more starting tomorrow when we're getting more pottery from all the areas. I am slowly starting to pick up the typology of the pottery, there are so many different kinds and people like Jeff and the other supervisors can look at it and pull up some period for it, from early bronze to iron 2b to philistine..., it's pretty crazy. At the moment I have marmluke pottery down (though tomorrow I'll probably get it wrong) and somewhat early bronze. I just have to keep asking and asking and learning to try to take it all in. But I'll get there and eventually be able to understand everything I'm doing. I am really good at eavesdropping (though i guess it's not real eavesdropping when they know you're there) and listening in on conversations between the supervisors and other wise individuals (the funnest are when there are heated debates over certain issues like the david and goliath story or 3D imaging) it's pretty fun and interesting and I am learning bits here and there. On saturday one guy is going to take us to the museum and an antiques shop (though we're not buying anything there!) so we can look at some whole vessels and learn a little better how to differenciate pottery between the periods. i am so excited to be going back to Jerusalem this weekend. k my computer's dying, that's all i got.

So the first leg of my adventure is over. It was kind of a bittersweet day today, leaving everyone on the tour who i've grown so close to and who all adopted me, but then finally getting here to Safi and starting to dig. I hate having to do things like that. But I am here, my new home for the next for weeks pretty much. The last couple days have been absolutely amazing, as it all has been. We've been staying in jerusalem over on the west side and went into the old city a couple days and every night, absolutely wonderful. Friday night we went down to the western wall to celebrate with everyone ushering the shabbat. We pushed our way through the crowds to touch the wall, and then danced around with all the young jewish girls. I went to the wall twice, it was a marvelous contrast, all the way up to it people are singing and dancing and mingling around, and then you get to the wall where there is a quiet solemnity, both times I went i would take a few minutes and just watch the faces and hear the mutterings of the shabbat prayers, saw people placing their prayers in the cracks. it was a beautiful site, you could see the devotiona and feel a sweet spirit of prayer. And then of course i went out with Christi and Mary and joined the circle of other younger girls and clapped and pretended to sing along with them and danced in the circles, it was great fun, a rejoicing for the shabbat. then last night we went down to ben yehuda street which comes alive at the end of the sabbath and all the shops open and people are out meeting up and watching the world cup on all the cafe screens.

We also went to the old city for a little shopping, we thought we did pretty good,

I am getting the hang of bargaining , though i always had Paul doing most of it, he was pretty great at it. We did go into one shop with the most obnoxious guy. He would talk and talk and talk, half the time we didn't even know what he was syaing, something about Jesus being his neighbor but just a prophet and because we were mormons we would just end up changin our minds and becoming muslims the next day and some other weird stuff. We think it was mostly an attempt to get us side tracked and keep his prices higher, but we made it out of there alive and with what we wanted.

Yesterday we also went to church at the Jerusalem center. it was quite wonderful, the room for sacrament meeting has three glass walls, so when you're sitting there you look out over the city that whole hour, it was fantastic, it was also fun to be there on fast sunday.