Week Five

Sunday, July 28th

Each free Saturday or Sunday I get, I entertain the idea of a day trip somewhere, and being proactive. However, I wake up at 7:30 am, which would be a good time to get up and go to breakfast, but as I lay there, all willpower drains out of me and I return to sleep. I wake again at 10:00 am, but stay in bed reading and using the computer.

When I finally get up, I do two small loads of laundry and reading more of my book between laundry tasks (mainly that due to the copious amounts of dirt in my clothes, they require multiple soakings until the water in the bucket [did I not mention? I use a bucket to wash!] runs clear - or, if not clear, then something other than total brown or grey.)

Later on, I trek to Haifa Mall in order to return a canister of bug spray that was missing its nozzle. I picked up a new one, made sure it was complete, and went to the counter but met with a girl who didn't know English. I gestured to the faulty one's total lack of function, then pointed to the new one, and finally procured the receipt. Then I stood there, looking expectant. The girl called over a supervisor, they said some words, and then all appeared well. I can now take home a can of bug spray that will work instead of mooching off my friends.
I wandered around the mall for a little bit, got some nice iced tea from an Israeli franchise called Aroma, which I have learned exists in Toronto, and then headed for the bus stop. I had to wait 35 minutes for my next bus to the Kfar, but it got me back in time for dinner.

The evening passed slowly, but Lothar, an older German fellow who also works in D5, brought out a small keg of German beer and was generously sharing it. So a few people would gather around the keg, and some chit-chat was going on. It was a nice evening, after all.

Monday, July 29th

I'm in locus 137 now, with the task of scraping down larger bumps so the whole area is level. There's more mudbrick material here that I try not to destroy, and another patch is full of rocks so that slows the work down some.
After breakfast, I wet-sift again with Lothar. This time, I do all eight buckets, so I can just stay in the water and Lothar can prepare the nets and buckets and pass them to me. I am perfectly okay with this because it feels super nice having one's feet in the warm water.
One of the bucket chains put me in the unique position of being the first and last on the line: I'm the first to pass them out until the group of buckets gets smaller and the second person can reach them all on his own, then I can run around to the end of the chain to the top of the dirt heap and catch/dump as they come to me. I discovered it was actually kind of fun to be Queen of the Heap, but not so fun to empty the dirt out of your shoes and socks afterward.

Tuesday, July 30th

Back in locus 137, I continue my levelling work, and do a clean job of it. This takes most of the day due to the rocks. Nothing particularly exciting for the day.

Trevor, Elise and I decide against Kfar dinner, so we go off-campus. Trevor takes us to Tirat Carmel, which is a residential area just east of the Kfar. There is a street with a line of restaurants. We stop at one for a decent kebab-in-pita. We walk back around to the highway and complete the circle home.

Wednesday, July 31st

I am in a new locus, 169. First, Yuli has me straighten some of the section; I do half of it but leave the rest for (hopefully, since it looks awful) another day. Then she has me excavate a layer of the ground. Part of it is already uncovered, and we can see a black charcoal patch and a bit of phytolith floor. I also see mudbrick, which I avoid. So I start to uncover the floor but I see a very thin layer of another floor in the chunks I'm taking off. I try to isolate this layer but it's very wispy and hard to track down. Yuli's presence is in high demand so I call for her but while I'm waiting, I just try to find more of this layer. I do find two small seeds, which might mean something if associated with this little floor.
The bucket chains are still a bit rough with this newer group of people. I'm in the upper stretch of the chain this time. The very last bucket gets thrown into my arm and gives it a good scrape. It's partially my fault, I thought the last bucket had been done, but also the guy was three feet away and threw it pretty hard. Ah, well. It'll bruise and hurt to move for a couple of days, but I'll survive.
I have a new project from Yuli, which I will do alongside Sarah E. I talk to her later in the evening so she can explain the job. I will be doing Locus Sketches, which entails Photoshop work. I'll have a list of loci, along with their corresponding limits (which loci border it to the north, south, east and west) - I take this information and find the top plan that best matches this information. (A top plan is a sketch of the whole area, day by day, with walls and loci as they develop over time.) The sketch is where I zero in on this locus, take out any irrelevant information, put in necessary information and crop the image. I'll start work on this tomorrow or the next day.

Thursday, August 1st

Back in 169, I'm still trying to trace this wispy floor. I also level down another bump of dirt. When I'm able to flag Yuli, I can tell her about this other floor. She tells me I can work on it, but first, to please finish the rest of the sectioning because it is rough and uneven - I gladly agree. I barely get started before the Tel Olympics begin.

Tel Olympics! This is an event that has been running for a few years. We have our usual 11:00 food break first, which is good to boost water reserves and energy.
There are four events, six people from each area participate:
1) Bucket Circle: each group stands in a tight circle with two buckets half-filled with dirt. They are to pass the buckets around, and when a full cycle gets completed, each person is to take a step back. This keeps going until a bucket is dropped. D2 dropped out pretty early but D4 and D5 battled it out a while. D4 totally cheats by not taking steps back and unfortunately win the event. D5 held strong though, and we are by far the loudest cheerleaders.
2) Rock Toss: there is a line and a wheelbarrow full of pre-selected rocks. Beyond this line are three wheelbarrows. Each person is three tries to get their rocks into the wheelbarrow. It is three points for a complete throw, two points if it goes in and bounces back out, one point if it just hits the wheelbarrow and nothing at all for a miss. D2 and D5 tie but D4 takes this one as well.
3) Poetry & Interpretive Dance: at 7:00, each group received four words at random (or supposedly at random, I think D5 just got the leftovers), and has to make a poem out of them. Our words were Kimama (for the children's camp that runs at Kfar Galim), vuvuzela (for the horn that blows at the end of each break), Hellenistic and elevations. I wish I had a copy of it, but our poem was pretty killer and way funny. D2 barely put in an effort so they barely count. D4, however, had this long, involved (admittedly funny) rap so of course they win this one too. I later learn they had their words since the night before, which says it all.
4) Dirt Triathlon: the most complex event. It starts with the six people at a starting line. When the horn blows, everyone takes off for the dirt pile that has buckets on top of it. Each person has to half-fill two buckets with dirt and sprint down the heap back to the starting line which has a wheelbarrow for each area. The buckets get dumped into the wheelbarrow and has to be pushed/pulled/conveyed to a point on the dirt heap, but it's not that easy! No, this has to be done with the entire group having his/her two buckets on their feet. The best way to manage it was to get the wheelbarrow onto the one rubber track before any other group can do so. I am proud to say that D5 totally won this one, and it should have been worth all the points.
So, we put forth good, solid, honest effort but came in good, solid second place. It was a lot of fun though. We finish the day brushing down our areas and putting away tools.

Later in the evening, in preparation for this project, I download the trial version of Photoshop which takes my poor little computer two hours to manage. I am also feeling under the weather (again! I thought I was done!) which doesn't bode well for the next days.

Friday, August 2nd

I wake up feeling pretty fuzzy, so I opt to stay in bed. I know there are some end-of-season things being done today, which makes me a bit regretful but I really just need to sleep instead.
I wake again at 10:30, feeling much better. I can't sleep any more, but I stay comfortable in bed and read 180 pages of my book. About noon, I get up, change my clothes and take my book outside. I read a little more, and chat with Sarah G., who's been feeling poorly herself for the past week. This whole day off leaves my cold much diminished.

I'm feeling well enough to go out with people later that night. It is the birthday of one of the staff, Colin, so we head to a pub in nearby Zikron. The pub is called The Hobbit and has themed paintings on its walls, which is fantastic. The night began a bit slowly but got a lot more fun as time went on. It was nice to hang out with people outside of Dor/the Kfar, and be more informal. I get home by 2:30, but stay up a bit to chat with others and finally get to bed at 4:00.

Saturday, August 3rd

I wake at 8:00, briefly consider breakfast and return to sleep. I'm up again at 10:00 and finish off my book. Around lunchtime, I head to cafe Aroma with Sarah E., Molly, Elise and Colin; we meet Yuli and David (from D4) at the cafe. We order some food first and then proceed to work on our laptops which we've all brought with us. My computer's slow but I'm able to complete a few locus sketches. After a few hours, there's a small blackout, so we can no longer take advantage of the free wifi at the cafe. I head back with some of the others. I continue to work a little more at the Kfar but otherwise, I'm just hanging around, killing time.