So Tired

I'm tired.
I'm tired of paperwork.
I'm tired of my throat hurting.
I'm tired of feeling hot.
I'm tired of not having some free time.
I'm tired of walking up that Tel.
I'm tired of not knowing what exactly it is I'm doing.
I'm tired of getting mixed messages from my Field Supervisor and the Directors.
I'm tired of feeling like I'm failing at this.

I just want to sleep and I want to come home. But first, I must go to Germany and learn some more German. *sigh* Fine.

I am so sick of it being hot....

Man, I just want it to cool down...or rain. But it's summer in Israel, not gonna happen. I want coolness. I was looking at the weather in Germany right now: rainy and mid 20's (in Celcius). That's absolutely the perfect weather I'm wanting right now. Gimme!!!!! 9 days left to finish our crazy excavations and write up all our reports and finish section drawings and filling out locus sheets - OMG STOP, ALLI, YOU'RE GONNA MAKE YOURSELF GO CRAZY!!!

*sigh* So the end of the week was just as stressful as the beginning. They wanted me to go MUCH faster, so they gave me 5 more people and had them just hauling dirt out of my square. And what happens on Friday half way through the day? Smashed and almost whole vessels in situ. That meant slowing down, using small tools, cleaning for photographs. We needed to get them out before the end of the day, too, so as not to risk looting on our site. Yea, we didn't get them out...so we had to cover them up with dirt to protect them. ugh...this means MORE work on Monday, which is supposed to be our last day of excavation. Tuesday is mass clean up. Wednesday is final photos and final party. Thursday is last minute work in the dig house and cleaning up in the dig house. The volunteers leave at midnight. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are final reports for supervisors. Most of the supervisors are leaving Sunday night. I leave super early Monday morning. Luckily, Steve will still be around (he's not leaving until Wednesday), so I have a ride to the airport!

Tomorrow is a free day in Jerusalem, and I'm looking forward to get a new bag to replace the one I bought last year since it's mostly broke. We're also hoping to go see a movie and maybe check out one of the archaeology museums. If we can get all our paperwork finished.

Yesterday at one point I noticed something hurty in the back of my mouth. I realized I had some large bump and thought it was probably just a sore from stress (because I get them a lot in my mouth when I'm stressed out). But then after a super long time at the pool and after dinner, I realized that whatever it is that the nurse (or my mommy!) feels under my jaw is all swollen on the right side. And our nurse had just left for her flight home. So I'm just gonna take it easy as much as possible. I've been getting sniffles on and off for the last half of being here, so it might just be something with that.

Alright, I've got a little less than an hour to finish putting up pictures of things! Most especially, Germany. My pictures are still from Germany. Darn...soooo behind!!!!

A Long Awaited Update....

Hallo meine Familie und Freunden. So sorry for the long wait for an update. I don’t remember when I last updated, it may have been a few days ago, but I really can’t remember. The days spread out and sometimes seem like two or three days when it’s really only one. It goes like this: Day 1 – up on the Tel digging 5am to 12:30pm, return for lunch, shower, and nap; Day 2 – wake up for pottery washing/reading at 4pm, lecture at 5:30pm, dinner at 6:30pm; and then sometimes Day 3 is anything that happens after dinner because it’s another refresher time. Whenever there’s a break, nap, refresher of some kind, that’s the end or start of a new “day” here. So that’s why I can’t remember how long ago I updated. haha.

So, last week was our first full week of digging. It was a very long week. And I was a little irked by how things progressed in my square: namely, very slow. But I can’t push my volunteers any more than they’re already pushing themselves because of age and health, so I have to deal with it. Actually, today Jason gave me two of his volunteers halfway through the day because he didn’t need them and then Sam told me to really get moving. So we did. We progressed as fast in half a day as we would have in two. And we’re still really behind other people. Oh wells.

The other week I was moved to another square that had been opened last year because we weren’t finding anything in my original square. The square I was put it is right on top of the Assyrian destruction layer found throughout much of Area B we’re hoping to get to the bottom of. Yay! I have a large pit in the middle of my square, too! Possibly a silo/grain storage bin intruding into the destruction layer, meaning it’s a later addition. How much later, we can’t really tell, probably around Iron Age II. Woop! I also have at least one pillar sticking up out of the square that lines up perfectly with a pillar in another square and they are only about 1 meter apart. I say “at least” because there may be another one a lined up almost perfectly about 1.3 meters away from the other one. But it’s cracked, and as we found out today, was sitting on top of mudbrick and more stones, so we removed it. At the very very end of the day today, Elliot pointed out that it may be a pillar comprised of multiple stones on top of each other because it lines up almost perfectly in another direction with another possible pillar in another square. GAH! In archaeology, you always have a plan…that changes 10 minutes later…and then goes back to the original plan after 30 minutes…only to be changed again in 15 minutes. Archaeologists need to be flexible. haha. We also have found two loom weights! Though the square south of me has 14 in situ in their surface right within the destruction layer…and the square east of me has found at least 25 in the course of 3 days. Well, we’ll see how things go for the rest of the week. Oh, I don’t remember if I mentioned this, but I also had two dog burials in my old square! …but they were completely out of context, so they don’t really mean much. One of them we had almost completely picked out and the other was all jumbled anyways. Boo.

This past weekend we had a tour through the Jerusalem and the City of David with world renowned Near Eastern archaeologist and world leading expert on anything to do with the geography, history, religions, cultures, life, everything of Jerusalem: Dr. Gavriel Barkei!!!! He is a fascinating man! We’d walk down a market and he’d stop us all and point to two stones and tell us their entire history, then we’d turn a corner and he’d point up to a wall and say, “There’s a late Roman inscription on that stone up there.” And then he’d stop us outside another wall and he’d say, “This is Ottoman, still in use, in fact you can see the bullet holes in the wall from the siege on Jerusalem in 1948 (can’t exactly remember the date). And if you look at the bottom course of stone – do you see it? Does everybody see it? Ok, that bottom course of stone you can see if different from the rest of the wall, that it because it is medieval and was reused by the Ottomans. In any case…” And he explained to us every hill and every valley and every tomb/cemetery that consists of modern day Jerusalem and its entire history and the history of every large building on each of the hills. In the City of David, we walked through Hezekiah’s tunnel again. And because he is GAVI BARKEI we got to see the archaeology currently in progress throughout David’s City. We walked down and saw a man who went, “GAVI!! What do I owe the pleasure?!” And he said, “Can we take a look at your excavations here?” And he said, “Of course!” Marcella and I looked at each other in awe because we didn’t get to see any of these excavations last year and they’re extremely important/controversial/fascinating right now! As famous and well-loved as this man is, he also can make people a little angry. He literally stopped and talked at every spot for at least 15 minutes, and there were tour groups behind us that included what he termed “the wild beasts”, 12-14 year old boys who liked to make a lot of noise. He yelled at them at least 3 times. haha.

We also went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulcre, which I was happy about because I was sick as a dog when we saw it last year. I could appreciate it better. He also gave a purely archaeological view point of everything he showed us and gave a lot of evidence for one thing or against another, which I appreciated a lot more than the almost purely theological one we got all the time last year. He would say, “I am not religious and not Christian, so I could care less. But if the tomb of ‘Christ’ really could be said to exist, it would most likely be this one here in the Sepulcre and not the so-called ‘Garden Tomb’ the Protestants claim because that is an Iron Age tomb…this one fits the time period for Jesus perfectly. In fact, we know that it can’t be later than 44CE (and he went into some explanation for why it’s stopped at that date) and Jesus is said to have died in 33CE. This tomb is almost exactly pin pointed to be the ideal tomb for Christ. But I could care less and we’re not going to see it because it’s not impressive and the line would take at least one hour. Let’s go.”

We did not get to go to the party for Israeli supervisors all throughout Israel because (and by “we”, I mean Marcella, Lesley, and I) we did not get to finish our paperwork. And Gavi likes to talk…a lot…lots and lots, I mean LOTS AND LOTS. So we were at all our places A LOT longer than we originally thought. So we didn’t make it to the cool party. L

But that’s the update for the week. I’m off to watch some German soap operas to wind down. Alles was zählt!!!!

Tel Aviv! And the Beach!

Today Marcella, Lesley and I had an adventure!!!! We went to Tel Aviv to go to the beach! We had to take a bus in, but we didn't really know the way the buses worked. So we figured it all out by asking random people and receiving assistance from the bus drivers. The schedules aren't set up near as nice as they are in Germany. lol. It took us two hours to get into Tel Aviv (we got to the bus stop at 8:30am) and two buses and a lot of guess work. But we made it to the beach finally!!! The black flags were up, unfortunately, so we couldn't really go swimming. poo. But we had fun climbing on the rocks and playing Frisbee. We ate falafel and gelatos. mmmm....

Then we figured out the bus schedule back and it only took 1 hour that time. lol. We had a good time. It was nice to be adventurous in Israel. And we also forgot how very good lookin' those Israeli Defense Force boys look. ;) The IDF filled every bus we were on, going from one station point to the next.

So it was a nice day of exhausting traveling, but a whole lot of fun doing it. Next weekend we're going with the volunteers on their second trip into Jerusalem and Sunday all staff from all Israeli archaeology sites were invited to a get-together party at the Rockefeller Museum....but I don't remember where that's at. We decided to totally go and mingle with other peoples, try to get some connections going. Yea! haha.

Well, that's all for now. Bed time. The digging continues tomorrow!

Super Super Fast Update...and Happy 4th of July!

Ok, well, I realized yesterday that I'm super behind on paperwork. Nuts. So this is just going to be fast. So I can work on paperwork...and eat lunch.

This week was crazy and made all our heads hurt. We're tremendously farther along now than we were this time last year. I've already found two possible Hellenistic dog burials and had to remove them. They would be I think the third and fourth ones found on Southwestern's exhibitions on Tel Gezer. Dever's crew in the 70's found a couple, too. But my burials have no context with them, so we can't really tell when they date to. We're actually barely a half meter down...but we may be reaching some mudbrick detritus! Yay! We had a super super awesome exciting find the other day, but unfortunately I cannot talk about it here. It's a severely important find and anyone could happen across my blog and read about it. It would be fine for me to talk to my intended audience about it in other forms of communications. But the next morning after the find, Steve and Sam were already getting phone calls from other experts about it, which means that it has leaked out. This also means that I won't really be discussing our significant finds and ESPECIALLY not putting up any photos of them here, where they can be stumbled upon. I apologize, but I will have pictures upon my return that I can show and share.

Monday started off with some mistakes by most all the assistant supervisors, things moved quite fast all week. But we were lucky enough to have cloud cover and cool breezes all week. Which was weird. Sunday it actually looked like there were storm clouds and that it would rain at any minute. It was super bizarre and creepy. But the clouds stayed with us all week, much to all our relief. Lesley and I have found that Marcella can talk to GOD! Yes, because after Monday's lovely clouds, Marcella prayed for them again on Tuesday. And they were there! She forgot to pray for them that night, and sure enough, there was a significantly less amount of them and they only lasted until second breakfast. Wednesday night she prayed for cloud cover all morning AND a cool breeze, and we got both. haha. We told her that she has to keep this up. Someone said she should try for snow, but we decided not to test the Lord Almighty. Marcella also fears that she just doesn't have faith large enough to produce a snow storm. haha. But despite this relief, it was still a horrendously strenuous week. We didn't get our chance to go to the grocery store on Wednesday, the bus driver refused to take us. Monday they refused to drive us right up to the site and we had to walk 15 minutes. Tuesday they were 30 minutes late in picking us up in the morning, too. We've been having a very difficult time with the bus company. After a lot of arguing, and even a bit of shouting on Sam's part, we were able to get to the store on Thursday, but we had to leave 15 minutes earlier, which meant the end of the day was packed. Wednesday also Dan promised to take Lesley, Marcella, and I to Elvis Burger, but pottery reading was super backed up and ended up going all the way to dinner at 6:30. Elvis closes at 7, so we couldn't go.

Paperwork has really been bogging me down, but I'm trudging through. We've decided that it's exactly like being back at school with homework, except that our homework has to be as close to 100% correct 100% of the time. haha, that sounded like a line from Anchorman: "60% of the time it works every time..." lol, good movie. We've had cereal and milk for breakfast now and I had some during the first week and went to drink the milk from the bottom and said, "Wait...milk was a bad choice..." Those of us who'd seen Anchorman laughed.

Concerning our food supplies, we decided to give our budget a severe break by having Dennis and Terry (our "Den Mothers", even though they're both guys) go out and buy our food themselves instead of ordering it through the grocery store. Not only has the USDollar lost significant value over the past year, the cost of living in Israel (and especially food) has soared, and Steve and Sam had decided not to increase the cost of the dig, in case they lose volunteers. This has put quite a large financial strain on our budget. Despite all this, Dennis and Terry have managed to reduce our food budget so well, that yesterday Steve announced that he could not only give the paid staff a bit more a stipend, they could also afford to give the assistant volunteers a small stipend of 100NIS (New Israeli Shekels)!!! So now it's as if I haven't spent any money at all since I've been here! That was extremely kind of them to do that, and we're all quite grateful.

Thursday night was our 4th of July BBQ! It was fantastic! The music was an amusing mix of 60's and 70's with today's hip hop, and HAIR the musical...weird. lol. The food was delicious, especially the FRIES!!!! MMMMM!!!! And a rowdy and severely amusing game of Frisbee mixed with soccer ensued, and half the staff joined in, too! Many pictures and video of this to come...

Yesterday was filled with paperwork, so will today, but tomorrow...tomorrow! Marcella, Lesley, and I WILL go to the BEACH in Tel Aviv!!! We have the bus schedule!!!!!! Yay! So we're going to make sure we have all our paperwork finished for tomorrow.

But now I'm absolutely FAMISHED and will go stuff my face in the dig house, where we have saved more money by not purchasing our weekend meals from Neve Shalom's guest house cafeteria.

It was nice to see everyone last night during the Skype meeting, even if I was too sleepy to engage in any real conversation. Love you all!!!