I'm still getting used to the physical strain of the work, but 4am wake up isn't so bad! I've gotten to the point where I don't have to take a nap every 10 seconds which is a vast improvement from yesterday.
I was so excited today when I thought that I had gotten a little bit of a tan ... but it turns out it was really just a film of dirt caked onto my body. Gross, right?! The food here is AMAZING! Breakfast (which I am in charge of with Hannah) is bread, chocolate spread, peanut butter, melon, tomatoes, cucumbers, and either cheese, pudding, tuna, or humus as the main course. Lunch is AMAZING ... it's a buffet of a variety of different cheeses, fresh baked bread, salad, tomatoes and cucumbers 15 different ways, rice, tahini ... it's amazing. Dinner is usually chicken, a meat dish, rice, tomato and cucumber salad (notice that I have tomatoes and cucumbers with every meal?). It's nice because you get to pick and choose what you want. And it's all FRESH FRESH FRESH. To drink your options are water, lemonade, and this weird orange thing that tastes fine. Basically, we're not picky. We just put whatever is handy in our mouth and drink and eat it. Dirt and dust pervades everything so you get over that REAL quickly. When you sit in dirt, it's on your hands, clothes, hair, skin ... you stop being afraid of eating it as well.
A bit of background about the site we are at: Tel Kabri is about 10 minutes south of Lebanon and 5 minutes east of the Mediterranean (the fighter jets doing maneuvers over my head currently are a good reminder of just how close to Lebanon we are). It is a middle bronze age site (17th-16th century BCE). It has a painted floor and several painted walls that are painted in the Aegean style (very similar to Santorini). They are frescoe (which means they were painted when the plaster was still wet). Roughly 10 years after the painted walls were put up they were ripped down and used as scrap fill to build up some stairs. We're not sure WHY they were pulled down ... but they were. Kabri (emphasis on the first syllable) is the 4th largest mound in Israel and has two BEAUTIFUL natural springs (probably why the palace was located here). The palace is HUGE. I am working in DS-1 which we BELIVE is a courtyard. A piece of worked gold and some bronze was found there in 2005, so we are thinking that it was the location of a workshop but until we start excavating below the surface we are at we won't know for sure.
Anyhoo, I'm going to go read for an hour before pottery washing! More later!
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