A West Bank Whirlwind

   Last weekend, my friends and I decided to travel to the West Bank to see how the other half lives.  Ten of us, mostly from grid 51, decided to stay in Jerusalem Friday night and then take the bus into the West Bank the following morning. 

    Jerusalem was a lot of fun.  We walked around the city without being attacked by men with canes!  We got ruggaluh at Marzipan and shawarma right outside of the Damascus Gate (that leads into the Old City).  Then we got a little crazy and went out (some of us in the same clothes we had worn to the pottery compound earlier that day).  It was a really fun night- even though three of the ten of us ended the night booting. 

The 10,000 y.o. tower in Jericho

     The next morning we met outside the Damascus Gate at 9a.m., hungover and tired.  Unfortunately, Josh was feeling so sick that he left and went back to Ashkelon.  The remaining 9 people crossed the border into the West Bank, which has absolutely no security.  We were dropped off on the side of the road so we could get a taxi to Jericho, the oldest city in the world.  Taxi drivers immediately began fighting about who was going to take us to Jericho.  It got a little intimidating as they were shouting louder and louder at each other in Arabic.  Finally, we settled into two cabs and traveled for about half and hour to Jericho.   The archeological site at Jericho was not very exciting.  Its main feature is a 10,000 year old tower (which actually is pretty cool) but there's really not much else there.  There were a lot of stray dogs, that looked more like wolves, which was fairly unsettling.  It was also ridiculously hot (at least 90 degrees).  By 10:30a.m., we were all melting and wanted to leave for Ramallah. 
We found the taxi drivers who took us to Jericho and asked them to take us to Ramallah.  After some haggling over the price, we started the hour long journey to Ramallah (about 20 minutes outside of Jerusalem). 
     It was the scariest drive of my life.  I thought I was going to die the entire time.  Not only were all of the mountainous roads from Jericho to Ramallah incredibly narrow, our drivers were going at unnatural speeds.  I felt like I was on the most dangerous roller coaster in the world.  The cab was silent because we all thought that if we opened our mouths to speak, we would vomit.  A few times during the ride I audibly gasped because I legitimately thought we were going to drive off of a cliff.   About 3/4 of the way through the journey our cab driver just started talking to himself and laughing hysterically.  That's when we really thought he was trying to kill us.   Even though they dropped us on the side of the highway (we asked to be dropped in the city center), we were all so thrilled to be out of those cabs, alive, we didn't care. 
  It took us another hour of wandering to find the city center (we missed a turn, which took us far away from anything).  By the time we actually reached the city center, we were grumpy, tired, hungry and still hungover.  And then we found heaven.  We wandered into a random restaurant that smelled good from the street.  After finding a table big enough to seat the nine of us, we ordered shawarma and sat in relative silence until it came.  First, they put a bunch of different salads on the table and some pita.  It all smelled and looked delicious.  Finally they brought out the chicken for our shawarma sandwiches and we devoured it all.  After we were fed, everybody was in a much better mood and we decided to explore Ramallah, the virtual capital of the West Bank, a little more. 

     We had heard from friends about a coffee place called Stars and Bucks, a Starbucks knockoff, that we simply had to try.  We found it in the city center (around the corner from the shawarma place) and hiked up the three flights of stairs to get into the shop.  Immediately we were reminded of home, the furniture and general ambiance of Stars and Bucks were perfect copies of Starbucks.  However, once we ordered our drinks (I had an ice coffee- which was topped with hot fudge and whipped cream) and they brought over a hookah to our table, we realized it was about as different from Starbucks as could be.  The drinks were delicious and the hookah was giant and smelled delicious.  We hung out there for about 45 minutes and then half of us decided to go to the Taybeh Brewery in Taybeh, Palestine.

A diagram of brewing beer at Taybeh

     The Taybeh Brewery is in a tiny Christian town about half an hour away from Ramallah.  They're a totally family run and operated business.  They took us on a little tour of their brewery (with freshly brewed beers in hand) and talked to us about the problems they've encountered with selling their beer in Israel and the U.S., but were excited that we were such big fans of their beer (a coveted item during hall beers).  We all left the brewery with merchandise in tow. 

A shipment of Taybeh headed to Japan

     After our visit to the brewery, we met up with the rest of our group at Stars and Bucks, had some mint lemonade (surprisingly delicious) and took the bus back to Jerusalem.  The border crossing back into Israel was a little more secure (they x-rayed our bags and glanced at our passports).  We arrived in Jerusalem around six, scarfed down some pizza and returned to Ashkelon (we had to be up at 4:30 the next morning). 
     It was an educational experience.  The West Bank was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.  We never really felt the tension of the Israel-Palestine conflict.  No one tried to proselytize to us about sympathizing with the Palestinian plight.  It was not what I expected, in a good way.  I'm glad I went.  It helped me better understand the actual nature of the conflict and appreciate living in a (relatively) peaceful country.

Halfway

     Today is week 4, day 2.  We have officially made it past the halfway point and are now accustomed to digging and each other.   Last Saturday the first set of three weekers left and a new set arrived.  So far, everyone seems to be fitting in just fine.  We also switched squares.  Now I'm working in an ancient street and drain.  Everything we find is an odd greenish color due to sewage- it's lovely. 

Casey and Ben's fruit break shenanigans

     We've also settled into a routine here.  We wake up at 4:30 a.m., get ready and go to first breakfast, which usually consists of bread, butter, and coffee.  By 5, we're on the bus to the site (about a five minute ride).  We arrive at the pottery compound, take out all of our tools and carry them to the grid.  We dig until 9a.m., when we have second breakfast.  All three grids meet outside of grid 47 (where Roman columns are strewn about a field) for second breakfast, which usually consists of bread, cheese, veggies, and usually eggs of some kind.  By 9:30, we have to return to the grid to dig some more.  At 11a.m. we get fruit break, which generally consists of fruit and other food we stole from second breakfast.  Occasionally, we're rewarded with popsicles for fruit break if we've done something especially awesome.  I've found there's little I won't do for a popsicle.  We usually clean up around 12:30 and are on the bus back to the hotel by 1. 

Relaxing in the grid during fruit break

     After digging, there is nothing more refreshing than hall beers.   Supervisors and volunteers alike sit on the floor near the elevators to drink and relax.  It's a lot of fun and probably drives the hotel crazy, but it's great bonding time.  Afterwards we shower, eat lunch, and have some free time until 4 when we return to the pottery compound for pottery washing.  Nobody likes pottery washing.  It's probably one of the most mind numbing tasks.  We stand around tables and scrub all of the pottery we collected that day.  We have random conversations with each other and ask probing questions like "what's your biggest insecurity?"  or "what was the biggest lie you've ever told?"  Sometimes it feels like I'm taking a group psychology test.  After pottery washing, we return to the hotel for a lecture.  The lectures are usually pretty interesting, but everybody is so tired at this point that a lot of people fall asleep.  After lecture, we go to dinner- which tends to be leftovers from lunch. 
    By the end of the day we're all pretty wiped out.  Sometimes I'll go on a walk down to the beach with friends or go up to the roof where we like to hang out and watch the sunset.  Most nights I'm in bed before 9, preferably asleep by 8.  It's amazing how easily my sleep schedule has adjusted to the hours here.  Typically, we're asleep before the sun has totally set and awake before the sun is up.  It's a little backwards.  For all of the hard work, frustrations and minor injuries (I'm covered in cuts and bruises), I feel like my time here is flying by and I'm sad that we're already more than halfway through.

Adventures and Misadventures in Jerusalem

On Friday, myself and six of my friends decided to take a bus from Ashkelon to Jerusalem.  The bus left at 2:40.  We had been up since 4 a.m. and spent the day in the pottery compound (an outdoor pavilion with tons of pottery from the site) marking the pottery.  For eight hours we literally sat on stools and wrote in tiny lettering on tiny pieces of pottery.  Fortunately we had iPod speakers, so everyone became well aware of the fact that I do indeed know all of the words to "Ignition" by R. Kelly (whether they wanted to know about that or not...).  After sitting on that stool all day I felt a strange longing for my pick axe. 
But anyway, we finally arrived in Jerusalem at around 3:30 and decided to walk from the central bus station to the Old City, where we were staying.  It was a beautiful day and much cooler in Jerusalem than in Ashkelon, which was a nice break for us.  Along the way, we were snapping pictures on Jaffa Street, a main street leading to the Old City.  Here occurred our first adventure, or misadventure.  One of the girls I was with, Delphine, was taking pictures like everyone else, when, out of nowhere, an old man with a cane approaches her.  Delphine is about the size of my pinky (see picture below).  This man starts asking her for the picture, presumably that she took of him.  After she repeatedly tells him that she didn't take a picture he raises his cane as if to hit her.  At this point, our friend Mike intervenes and basically cowers over the man until he backs off.  Needless to say, it was pretty scary. 
Fortunately, our adventures did not continue on this unlucky path.  We continued walking on Jaffa Street, stopping at the shuk (open-air market) which houses my favorite bakery Marzipan.  We got chocolate rugelach that was fresh out of the oven.  It was still so hot we couldn't even pick it up at first.

Josh, Michael and Mike on the Cita

Eventually, we arrived in the Old City and checked into our hostel, the Citadel.  We were staying on the roof, which had an unbelievable view of the Dome of the Rock.  We decided to claim the corner of the roof facing the Dome of the Rock and spread out our stuff on five mattress pads(even though there were 7 of us), which we dubbed megabed,  and hoped that random articles of clothing and bottles of sunscreen would be good enough to save our spots. 

Mike, Caroline, and Emma on the roof of our hostel

We explored the Old City for a while, went to the Western Wall and walked around the marketplace.  We went out to dinner on Ben Yehuda street and hung out at a bar for most of the night.  By 11:30 (yes, we lead particularly thrilling lives) we were dead tired and decided to return to the hostel and go to sleep.  Lo and behold, there was a large, hairy man sleeping on a corner of megabed!  As we raced for spots as far away from this hairy stranger as possible, we arranged ourselves basically on top of each other on 3 1/2 mattress pads.  For seven people.  Uncomfortable does not begin to describe it.  If one of us moved, the other six would wake up.  The one benefit of sleeping so closely together was that it was freezing and none of us had thought to bring very warm clothing.  We were woken up at various points during the night: once by a plastic bag that had rolled onto mine and Emma's head, a second time, at 3:45am, for the Muslim call to prayer, a third time when Emma's phone alarm went off at 4:53am, and then pretty much every hour after that when church bells chimed.  It was not the most restful night. 
Regardless, we got up the next morning around 8am (very late for us).  We walked to the Mount of Olives and visited various churches along the way.  The mountain itself was tough to climb as it was more of a cliff face and less of a gradual slope.  When we visited the Church of Agony, where Jesus allegedly awaited his fate, we saw a service going on.  It wasn't a mass, but there was a man singing with a guitar and priests dressed in fancy robes performing some sort of ceremony.  None of us knew what was going on, but it was still very beautiful. 

The exterior of the Church of Agony

Inside the Church of Agony

Delphine and me at the Church of Agony

After we climbed up and down the mountain, had a delicious meal of shwarma or felafel from a street vendor, we took a taxi home and spent the rest of the day relaxing poolside at our hotel in Ashkelon.  The trip was a whirlwind, but a lot of fun.  I'm glad I went, even though I went to sleep at 7:30 Saturday night (to be up at 4am the following morning). 
   

The Pit

The view from the top of the pit

     So, by the middle of week one each member of my grid was assigned a square, a 10x10m portion of the grid.  My grid has three open squares, I was assigned to square 74.  Under the guidance of my supervisor Larry (who I affectionately call Lar Bear), each member of my square was assigned an area that would become our homes for the rest of our time in Ashkelon.  Whether because of his nickname or some other unknown offense, Larry assigned me to the bottommost region of our entire grid: the well.  Not only is there a virtual obstacle course to get in and out of the well, but it is also incredibly difficult to actually accomplish anything (like pick axing, shoveling, or sweeping)  because it is an incredibly small space.  Sometimes it feels as if I'm an animal at the zoo.  Other people in our grid enjoy standing at the top of the 20 foot drop into the well and laughing at the unfortunate well crew. 
     Strange things happen in the well.   I was given a new nickname- Ray-Ray, which pretty much everyone on the trip has started to call me.  From this nickname, we created an imaginary TV show called "Ray-Ray say say it's not okay-kay."  Think Jerry Springer: Excavation Edition.  Recently, my grid supervisor (Kate) has informed me that we will be getting a video camera on the site so we can film my TV show.   Great. 
    I spent the first few days cleaning out the well and articulating stones that, later, my beloved Lar Bear decided were unnecessary and ripped most of them out.  Again, great.  After that, though, I actually got to start excavating.  I was lucky enough to get a fine grid (a 1x1m square) that had lots of pottery sherds and bone fragments.  My fine grid was on the surface above the well (about 20 feet below everyone else)  and used to be a floor, which meant that it had the most material in it.  I didn't find anything that cool but I certainly found a lot.  I filled a whole bucket with shirds.  I also found some obsidian, which was very pretty and some blue glass from the Persian era. 

Week 1: Part 1

    Because I decided to write this blog in the middle of Week 2, I'll summarize, to the best of my ability, the goings on of Week 1.   Upon arriving in Ashkelon, the volunteers, students, and staff found their rooms at the Dan Gardens Hotel in Ashkelon, about five minutes from both the beach and the archeological site.  Most people here are either in college or grad school but there are some older folks too.  There are probably about 50 people on the dig in total, including staff. Ashkelon is situated less than 12km from Gaza and recently unveiled a fancy new defense system to prevent Palestinian rockets from destroying us all.  Essentially, if Sarah Palin was here she might claim that she could see Gaza from her house. 
     We arrived on a Saturday and immediately began work at 5a.m. the following morning.  I was assigned to Grid 51 (one of three grids).  Each grid is a 100x100m square in various parts of the national park in Ashkelon.  The grids represent all different time periods, ranging from the early bronze age (around 1500BCE) all the way up through the Islamic Period. 
      I spent my first day in a drain that dated back roughly to the Byzantine period (Late Antiquity-Early Middle Ages).  This 3x10ft drain housed myself and two other girls while we cleaned, scraped and swept all of the dirt that had coated the site since the previous summer.  Our other gridmates did the same in various parts of the grid.  Because it was impossible to tell exactly when the pottery and other materials came from, everything we found had to be discarded. 
     We worked until 1p.m.  I don't think I've ever been so dirty in my life.  My skin felt gritty and was a completely different color than it had been eight hours before.  It's amazing how easily I adjusted to being so dirty.  Now it really doesn't bother me anymore, even though the water circling the drain still runs an ugly greenish-brown color whenever I shower. 
     Most of the first week was spent cleaning the winter-wash from the site.  I spent two days pick-axing.  Yes, friends and family, someone actually decided to trust me with a pick axe (and I didn't hurt anyone or myself!).  We also had a day of workshops learning about everything that happens to our beloved pottery sherds post-excavation.  Some of it was really interesting- especially the workshop about GIS (geographic information systems) which maps out our site based on geology and helps us date various artifacts. 
     Overall, I had a great first week.  I learned a lot, worked really hard, and generally managed to avoid sunburn.

An Introduction

Following in the footsteps of many of my friends, I have decided to take up this blogging business in order to easily communicate my activities in Ashkelon without repeating myself to various friends and family members.  If you don't already know, but are for some reason reading this blog, I am currently residing in Ashkelon, Israel.  Why, one might ask, should I take a 10 hour flight to visit a city comparable in size and appearance to almost any town along the Jersey shore (a mere hour or so away from home)?  After my parents nagged me to read a particular article in the New York Times, I found a program that sounded interesting and applied on a whim.  I decided to endeavor on an entirely new project: an archeological dig.   Those who know me well might laugh and say, "Rachel, you hate physical labor.  What on earth are you getting yourself into?"  The simple answer: I have no idea.