The one with the final comments

The bad:

Public transportation up north where I live is horrendous. 

So I get around a lot, like most people, by hitchhiking. I've gotten used to it, but sometimes it is a real pain in the arse. I think I would have been much happier if I had a car for only those two weeks of the excavation. 

I wanted to spend more time with everybody and go out to the pub at night with them, but unfortunately that didn't happen. 

The good:

Google translate is bringing the people closer together. The fact that I can even translate Facebook posts on the spot, is just brilliant. With one click I can translate an entire page from Swedish to English, although, it's still not perfect, it does the job most of the time.

General thoughts:

We are very much the same.

We use the same public network, talk on the same mobile phone, watch the same films, read the same books, etc. There are certain variations, but it's not that different as a whole. It definitely helps to bridge geographical and language gaps. I'm also aware that I'm referring to students, mostly, and to the ones that are actually curious, broad minded and connected to the contemporary world (FB, Iphone 5 and the big bang theory).

Closing thoughts:

I'm glad I don't have to get up at 5am anymore. 

I miss some of the new people I've met, and I hope to see them again in the future. 

I should have kept a flint to put on my shelf.

"Be excellent to each other"
'til next time...

Is that a bone in your square or are you just happy to see me?

I can't escape the fact that I'm an Israeli citizen but I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world. I've always had a soft spot for whatever lies beyond the realms of Israel. It still has a memorizing effect on me.

I like my English-Australian-unique accent I've developed over the years, probably due to endless hours of listening to British radio stations and watching British television. I also can't really remember myself ever having an Israeli accent. I think I might like to study abroad one day, and maybe even stay there if it works out.

But at the moment, I really like where I am. 

Well that is enough about me, back to our story...

The sun is high up in the sky, I'm surrounded by mud and busy excavating.

Laura from Italy is discovering ancient cow bones, and I'm working with Marion on her square. 

Next to us is Yorch, the guy from Spain. I swear he sounds exactly like Pedro from "Napoleon dynamite".  A couple of squares to the south were Conny and Francesco, working on squares slightly higher from ours. 

The others were either sieving or excavating somewhere else. Digging takes more concentration than sieving, so most of the interesting conversations took place in the sieving area. Once in a while someone would shout out about something he or she had found, like a tooth or a nice looking piece of flint. I was moved from me old square to Marion's square, where I had some nice finds, a few bones and a cool flint. 

I was pleasantly surprised to realize I was excited about these finds. Finally my work had paid off. Everything we did had to be documented, and Maya, the one in charge of the excavation, marked everything with her laser guided missile device. The information gathered from the  laser-camera-computer thingamabob is used to create a 3D image of the site. 

Meanwhile in the sieving area...

I kept imagining a really big centrifuge that will separate the mud of from the actual findings, but I guess Men-power, scratch that, Student-power is much cheaper. We used a sieve that was made out of a plastic box with a metal net in it. We emptied one bucket at a time into the sieve and took it down to the river. Shaking and rubbing the mud through the holes, a very nice homage to El Dorado and the washerwomen and their washboards, is a boring but semi-therapeutic job. While sieving we talked about everything from food to booze to internet prices (25 shekels for 100mbit dl/ul (!) in Sweden), to pass the time.

I like being stuck with people (certain people) in the same place for hours. It separates you from everything else, and since you're also doing some Sisyphean task, you might as well have a conversation to pass the time. I think it is a great way to get know each other. 


It seems this story is turning into a quadrilogy (I've always wanted to use this word). 
So to be continued once again...

Mud tales - part 2

There is nothing like a muddy shower to get you going in the morning. The whole experience was very muddy. I sat in mud and had mud between my toes and up to my nose.  To mud... and beyond. Besides the.. um... mud, there was the Jordan river. The water was nice and not too cold. Except for the occasional pesky crab, I really enjoyed diving into it. In the early morning time I even got to see a lutra swimming in the river. There was also a rat in the river once. The most interesting and scary thing to come out of there was a snake, a baby viper. 

I got up from sieving and there it was, just beneath me, hissing and moving about. 

Eventually we got it back into the water and it slithered down stream, but it did cause a bit of a scare.

When I wasn't sieving, I was busy demolishing bits and pieces from the past.

How long ago you ask? Estimated at 60 bloody thousand years!

It was back when you had different Homos roaming around the earth, not only the latest limited edition  H. sapiens sapiens. My demolition rate was excruciatingly slow and confined to a 1x1m square. The first square they had me on was a poor one.I spent my first week digging in that square and found absolutely nothing. By that time I've lost all hope to be excited by anything I might find in the future.  However, I soon realized it wasn't about the actual work, and no, I don't mean it was a spiritual thing, I mean it was about the the people I got to meet.

The excavation was a global experience, well, not as global as it was a European one. I met a couple from Italy, a couple from Sweden, a guy from Spain, and 3 more girls from Austria, France and England (one of each).

They made it all worth while. The digging and sieving had their charm, despite the many calluses, bruises and cuts on my hands, but meeting new, interesting and beautiful people is what made me get up in the morning.

more to come right after the break..

It's adventure time!

This is the story of how I took part in an archaeological dig.

Now, I'd be lying if I called this thing a "trip", because of a few things:

1. Too close to home

2. It was mandatory 

3. I didn't actually move from one place to another

But then again, who cares?

I mean who says I can't have a trip that is close to my home, it's not like it was in my backyard. A mind trip is also a trip. From another POV calling something 'mandatory' is just another choice we make. And I can't really argue with my last point, but 2/3 is good enough for me.

I woke up at 5 am every morning, or should I say every night. Only the light of the street lamps had shone through my bedroom window.

They say (some awful people) that you get used to it, but I still doubt it. After finishing my morning routine (brushing my bladder and draining my teeth)  I went out to the balcony where my trousers were hung to dry. I washed my trousers by hand every night before I went to sleep, and they were usually clean and dry by the next morning. Quickly going back inside, because it is cold outside, I went to make myself a cup of Yorkshire tea with a teaspoon of sugar. Hoping that the caffeine and sugar will stir my senses. 

I drank the cup next to my desk whilst checking my emails and such, mostly just staring at the blank screen in front of me.

I've tried catching a few more zzzzz on the ride to the excavation site (30 mins) but due to all the turns and stops on the way it was almost impossible. One time we had to make a long (extra 20 mins) detour because of a roadblock due to an army exercise, boy was I glad. Usually we got to the site just in time to help haul buckets of muddy waters (not the musician) from the excavation area back into the river.

to be continued....