Monday, July 03, 2006
There is internet at the field school
So Ein Gedi--very cool. It's an oasis in the Judean wilderness with all these waterfalls. In 1 Samuel 24, it's one of David's hideouts from Saul. We swam in one of the pools. Awesome stuff.

Qumran--not so cool. Pretty boring actually. This unorthodox cult who copied a lot of books left one structure where they all took a bath together. For some reason I was under the impression that the Essenes actually lived in this labrynth of caves, but no. They just hid the Dead Sea Scrolls there. And suddenly they weren't that interesting.

And now we're back at the dig site for our second week of work. We're still pouring through the medieval Islamic remains that stand between us and the good Bible Iron Age stuff underneath. We're hoping to finish that stuff tomorrow.

Here's what a typical day looks like. We get up at 5 am and the bus leaves for the dig site at 5:30. It's about a 10 minute drive. We then work until about 8am when we get some breakfast. The same every day--cucumber, tomato, cheese, bread, boiled eggs, chocolate pudding. Then it's back to work in the big sand box. We get a fruit break around noon and quittin' time is 1. Then we drive back to the Mt Hermon Field School, where we're staying, and eat some lunch. After that's a break. I typically shower, read a little bit (already finished Blue Like Jazz and 12 Marks of New Monasticism) and then nap until 4. Then we do pottery washing, where we scrub the buckets of pottery we found from the day before. There's a lecture about various archaeological and local topics at 6 and then dinner 7. Every night for dinner there is the staple meal of chicken schnitzel with potato cakes and cucumber/tomato salad and hummus.

I'm now addicted to hummus and chocolate pudding. Just not together.

Then its journaling time and bedtime. So I'm going to bed now.

posted by Peter at 1:41 PM
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