And then I blinked and it was over. Some of the days were long, but the weeks flew by far too quickly!
I really, really wanted to find a coin! They are extremely difficult to discover by hand because they tend to be very small and covered with a round clump of dirt. That makes them look exactly like all the other little clumps of dirt at the bottom of the sifter.
The second square where I worked and where I spent most of my time. We hit lots of bedrock, with a supporting wall, but not too much exciting pottery.
I have participated in several different excavations, but this one was the best organized and even had a formal banquet on the last evening! It was very fancy and featured a number of courses to the meal.
The hors d'oeuvres, before they served the lamb shish kebab and the baklava and other delights.
All of the first-time participants received diplomas! They came wrapped inside ancient Roman storage jar handles.
Every square supervisor gifted his or her volunteers a pottery shard with an inscription of some sort. Some of them were awfully funny or creative.
I'd had laryngitis and was speechless for three of the four weeks, making this an apt award.
At first I didn't mind the mutism, then it became irritating, then it made me mad, then it became embarrassing and I wondered whether people thought I was doing it on purpose (jokes were circulating that I'd taken a vow of silence), and finally I accepted that maybe I had some lesson to learn.
Once I'd gone that long I accepted it and actually liked not having to comment.
Finally, a few more pictures of the sort of food they served us in Nazareth. I tried to not take too many but wanted to show how scrumptious it was. Tomatoes and cucumbers always, lots of eggplant, and on this day we had bulgur which was delicious.
A typical lunch back at the hotel after a morning of work. Hummus, salad, falafel, some sort of grain.
A falafel I picked up down the street for an afternoon snack.
I didn't take this picture because it always seemed rude to enter a store and start taking pictures. But this is the sort of thing you come across in some of the grocery stores.
It makes me think that we Westerners could think about food in a very different way! What if everything were available as only one ingredient and without a brand name?
An Ode to Shoes.
It was time to leave my faithful little companions behind in Nazareth.
No comments:
Post a Comment