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...