November 15

This morning, I sat through a four hour lecture about the history of Israel starting in 1914. Wow. What an eye opener. I now understand a little more why there is so much conflict in this area of the world and why some of the people in this area of the world hate Americans. It was very insightful. I also figured out the exact location of where we are digging. We are right smack inbetween the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The width of the land between the west bank and Gaza strip is pretty small. We are about 2 miles from the perimeter between Palestine and Israel, and probably about 10 miles from Gaza. I haven’t felt threatened at all and it amazes me that I’m pretty much a sitting duck and have not felt nervous about it once. Before digging this afternoon, we cleaned the pottery we found last week. We took buckets with the pottery, filled them with water, grabbed a basket and brush, and scrubbed the caked dirt off of the pieces. I was pretty slow and one of the archeologists had to help me finish my bucket. Cleaning pottery helps the archeologists look for certain patterns and characteristics to date the pottery. Then we went on the dig in the afternoon. We were all assigned new areas. I am now working on the entrance to the columbarium….that’s the thing where pigeons and other animals were kept (right now it is underground). Michal (pronounced Me-kal) is my new “boss.” She is a year younger than me and a grad student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We’ve had a couple opportunities to chat about different things, and it has been fun getting to know her. I'm excited to work with her. Our group had to clear out all the weeds, boulders and dirt to make the main entrance, and while doing so, we found parts to a bottle, some glass and an oil lamp. I also found some baby scorpions under a rock…they are so cute when they are the size of the tip of your finger! Today is Women’s Day in Israel and we were invited to a “Ladies Night” at the kibbutz….NO MEN ALLOWED! That’s what our guide told us! Anyway, there were women who were selling things they made or there were different businesses selling their items, we could eat food and later they are having a performance, but since we have to be up at 6am, most of us left. We dig for four hours on Thursday, and anywhere from 6-8 hours on Friday and Saturday. Tonight, Big Mike from the bistro (where we eat our dinners) cooked me a sirloin steak for bringing him skittles! Because it was so dang good, I ate the whole thing and tomorrow he is cooking me a filet! The filet costs 100 shekels, which is about $25...and I'm getting these two steaks for two bags of skittles! I can't wait! Good food for a hard day’s work!