Week Two, Second Weekend

Week Two - Monday, July 8th to Friday, July 12th

Monday was spent cleaning. There were leftover weeds in D1, so people were working on that until 7:00, after which we returned to our own areas. Back in D5, I am placed in a narrow space between a stone wall and a baulk (a foot-wide strip of dirt left standing during excavations so you can see the layers left behind).

Tuesday, I have told Yuli a bit about my extra experience with sketches on previous digs, and she says she has a project for me. We'd found a large stone that looked to be worked and could be an architectural fragment. It's been photographed but also needs to be sketched in detail. Yuli asks me to draw it from a bird's eye view in 1:20 scale but when I begin, I see the rock will be extremely small and I ask Yuli about it, so she tells me to do it in 1:10 scale, so it will be bigger and we can see more detail - 1 real-life centimetre will be 1 millimetre in the sketch.
It's my first time drawing something like this - I am accustomed to sketching stratigraphy and trench plans, and I usually have twine laid out in square metres so I have something to measure from, but with the rock I have to measure it against itself. I don't complete the drawing today, but will finish it tomorrow.
It is also the first day of pottery washing, and we will have it every day at 4:00, Monday to Thursday. The buckets are filled with water the day before, and we clean them the next day. Mondays are a bit heavier due to the lack of washing on Fridays, so we do Thursday's and Friday's on this day. I start on my own area first, and if there are no more left to do, I look to see if D4 or D2 has buckets to do. Someone else has picked out a very full D4 bucket, and we end up with five people total cleaning this one bucket of pottery.

Wednesday, I complete the drawing. Yuli looks it over and says it was too accurate. I only needed the basic lines and not to measure it over too much. I then have to do a slice drawing, where we imagine the stone is cut in half and I have to sketch it an inside view. It is an easier task, as I just have to select a point in the middle and measure around it.
I am also given a new job; at the end of the day, we have a bucket of special finds (like tools, bronze, flint, metal, anything that's not pottery, bone or shell) and this has to be taken to the Glasshouse. Instead of packing tools away in the container at the end of the day, I just take this bucket, walk across the beach and leave it at the dig office in the museum.

Thursday, Yuli tells me I have more drawing to do! I now need to do a sketch of the front view of the stone. I try to be less accurate, though I'm still measuring along the way. When I give it in to Yuli, she sits down in front of the stone with me next to it and starts adding more roughness, more contours. She says she can do this because I measured so carefully. The drawing ends up rather more different than it started, but at least now I know what to do if I'm ever asked to do it again!
I have yet to decide my plans for the weekend. Some people are going to Jerusalem and I try to look into the possibility of going along, but I need more time. So I decide to try and figure out a day trip, but will research more on Friday.

Friday, I am reassigned to the Glasshouse with fellow D5-er, Inez. Once we get there, Marina takes us and Jose from D2 to the Containers. This is where all the pottery finds are stored, and have been stored since the 80s. The Containers are not airtight, however, and various animals have been getting in and messing up the cardboard boxes. So the task is to transfer the contents of these very disgusting boxes into new plastic boxes and give them new, easy-to-read labels.
It's not actually a terrible time, as we have fun chatting with each other. There are lots of neat bits of pottery in the boxes, so it's like we're rediscovering them all over again. There are whole small vessels, or parts of big ones, some that have really nice painted styles, and others that have imprints. So it makes up somewhat for feeling contaminated at the end of the day. Showers are very necessary!

Sarah G. gives us another quick Hebrew lessons, and this time we learn about aspirations! These are the various ways to say a letter depending on their specific location inside a word.

I am offered a spur-of-the-moment invite with a group of people to go out to a pub in Haifa. I split a taxi with some others to a place called The Bear. We follow this up with a short visit to club Sleek. It was a really fantastic time; I spent most of it hanging out with the staff members, who are closer to my age.
When we return to the Kfar, we see a small commotion at the corner of my building. It appears a one of the girls who went out that night had returned very drunk and had fallen onto the concrete and hit her head pretty hard. There was some mild freaking out - we know head wounds tend to bleed more and look worse than they are, but people were pretty concerned. An ambulance was called and actually came pretty quickly. In the meantime, two of the staff had put on medical gloves and were attending to the girl, talking to her and keeping her conscious while cleaning her up. She was whisked off to the hospital and would spend the weekend there. So, an exciting night that ended on a too-exciting note!



Saturday, July 13th

I failed at sleeping in, which happens when you're on a dig that requires a 4:00 am wake-up call. I get myself up at 8:30 and took it easy the rest of the day since the night before was pretty hectic. I missed breakfast but had snacks in the room. Weekends here, breakfast and dinner are provided for but you're on your own for lunch.

In the evening, after dinner, 9 of us decide to head out to Haifa Mall and shop for a little bit. It is a large mall, with three floors and over 100 stores. I spent most of the time there browsing with Sarah G., and we find a store with good options and each bought a nice item - for myself, it was a dress, which I plan to wear if there's an end-of-season party.
Afterward, we decide to head out to the beach area for drinks. Most of the others either remained at the mall or left early. So it was just myself, Sarah G. and Myr who were left. We walked to the train station and could see the beachfront just beyond the tracks but there was some confusion as to how to get across. We wandered a bit before realizing there was an underground walkway to the other side.
We found a bar with English menus, and I ordered a refreshing lemonade. Sarah got a full litre of this lemon-mint slushie, which she loved. It was enough for three people but she happily consumed it all herself, which was quite amusing.



Sunday, July 14th

At breakfast, Janice, who is an older, 50-something teacher of Gospel history, is talking about a trip around the Galilee. I'm hesitant to go at first, but she is quite convincing and gets three people to go: Jordon, Jose and myself. We will charter a taxi, and she says she'll pay for most of it, and we put in what we can for the tip. It's hard to disagree.

Our first stop is Nazareth, and the Church of the Annunciation. The Annunciation is the moment where an angel visits Mary and announces she will bear the son of God. It's large and very impressive inside, with a gated area in a lower level that contains what is believed to be the childhood home of Mary. It is large and there is booming, orchestral music playing. We walk through it to the Church itself, and see a sermon being held. Around the room, there are enormous paintings, each showing a country's interpretation of New Testament scenes. Outside the Church, there is a wall full of mosaic pieces showing Jesus and Mary as created by different countries, so you get a lot of variation in artistic style, clothing choices and even how the characters are depicted.
We also take a brief look inside the Church of St. Joseph, and the Cana Church of the First Miracle (the changing of water into wine while at a wedding, and actually, in one of the shops outside, we taste a small sample of wedding wine). We see the nuns setting up inside for a wedding. This church also sits on top of ancient remains.

The next stop brings us to Yardenit on the Jordan River, near the supposed site of Jesus' baptism by St. John. It's a nice spot, lots of overhang trees. Janice, Jordan and Jose all dip their feet, but I'm wearing regular socks and shoes, and don't feel like taking them off so I opt out.

It's a short visit there but for a stroll through the gift shop before we're off to see the Jesus Boat. Really, it's the Boat from the time of Jesus, but it could've been used by anyone. It's a 2000-year-old boat that was discovered in 1986 in the Sea of Galilee (which, let's be clear, is a giant lake). The banks of the Sea had lowered that year and revealed a vessel that had been protected by the lake sediment. The boat was rescued in an 11-day excavation. We watched a brief movie that chronicled the boat's rescue. They had to keep spraying it with water so it wouldn't become dry and crumble in the sun. They eventually encased the boat in fibreglass and polyurethane foam and floated it down to a place where they could carefully begin conservation efforts, which took eleven years.
It's about eight metres long and made up of several different woods - there was a drawing nearby that showed every plank and its separate makeup. It's called the Jesus boat because it fits the description of a type used by Jesus' disciples in the Gospels, but it also fits as a boat that was used by the Jews against the Romans in a nautical battle in 67 CE. It now sits in an atmosphere controlled room, though I do find it odd it's not permanently behind glass, like all other atmosphere-controlled items.

We moved on to the Church of the Beatitudes, placed on the Mount where Jesus is supposed to have "blessed the meek for they shall inherit the earth" and various other proclamations. The Church itself is small and nice, but not as impressive as the others I already saw that day.

Our final stop was Capharnaem, the site of Jesus' growing up. It also contains various ancient remains including a synagogue! After seeing so many Churches and Jesus-related things (which, to be fair, thrilled Janice to no end) it was nice to see a Synagogue. But then, the signpost said it was a "Jesus Synagogue" so there was still no escaping the good son.

It was a long, and very interesting, day. But also very warm. I forgot to mention the brief stop at the Sea Level signpost before we descended into the Galilee. When you go below sea level, it gets very warm. The temperature-reading in the taxi stated it got to about 38 degrees, whereas Haifa was about 31. I was glad to get back home and relax again before the week ahead.