the night has a thousand saxaphones

Home safe.

Things that I did not expect to happen on this trip:

Negotiating with a Bedouin grave robber
Riding a camel
Going to all four corners of Israel
Having drinks with the Latvian ambassador
Having marriage proposed
Ending up on the terrorist watch list.

Last day in the city, still too sick to walk properly. Took the round-the-city hop-on-hop-off tour buss. Off at Jerusalem mall to buy books, off at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum/memorial. That is amazing- incredible building with view over this huge green valley. The huge room of names, with the Isaiah quote- "And I shall give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name… that shall not be cut off". It’s… absolutely devastating. Just... gutting. I really can't. Anyway.

Tightest security I saw in the whole country.

Took pictures looking down from the Mount of Olives, back to Jaffa Gate for some last shopping, last look at the Sepelchre. Franciscans were doing a service.

Organized a few actual tours- supposed to be to Caesarea today, Masada/Dead Sea tomorrow. The Tour company mixed up, though, and didn’t come to get me at 6:00 as arranged. Spent awhile in the very early morning on the phone with them, and they picked me up for a Masada tour today a little later. Not a lot of confidence, but our actual guide turned out great. Funny, knowledgeable and relaxed.

Cable car up Masada, walk around the ruins. Really incredible. The engineering, especially of the water system, is just something else.

The Aussie family I was with had a whiny kid and a shopper mom (so much time in a gift store!) Kid hated the mountain- too hot, didn’t care. Mom spent two hours at a jewelry counter. Then down to a kibbutz on the Dead Sea. Unbelievable hotsprings to a 39C pool- wow! Freshwater pool, and the actual sea. Actual sea water was very strange. Leaves a kind of film. Stings like a bitch on scrapes and girly bits. Leaves you… slipperier than normal water. You feel very strange for a few hours later and then it wears off and your skin just feels great for a day.

All in all, tours like this are easier and cheaper than trying to arrange something on your own but they always move too fast through the interesting bits and linger at gift stores.

Jenny is tired, mopey, overly silent, and easily ripped off. I'm not sure I've seen anyone except maybe Ariane who is this bad of a traveler. However, the actual city is unbelievable. Bus to old city, grabbed random tour guide for walking tour. Ton of time spent in Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It's not what I expected at all, not one beautiful soaring unified building. It is a little maze inside, with levels and layers built and rebuilt and subdivided ever smaller between sects, with styles of decorations and lamps and icons changing radically from Catholic to Greek Orthodox to Roman Orthodox to Coptic to Assyrian to... within feet of each other. It overwhelms the senses, especially the Greek Orthodox parts. The supposed actual tomb is not displayed in all its glory, but tucked inside a tiny cramped alcove heavy with incense and too small to stand in.

Through the markets of all four quarters. The Cardo, the old market street of Byzantium, now a very posh little gallery. Views of the Dome and the Wall. Jenny was tired and sick, had to go back to the hotel at one.

I went back out, explored the little shopping mall at the bus depot and walked down Yafo street (cognate with Jaffa, the port at Tel Aviv). How can she be so unexcited, not want to see anything else?

Trouble getting in touch with Katee. I have crazy dreams, want to follow up on this Rockerfeller internship thing, but feel the chance slipping away.

Last day! Dr. Rowl made a big deal about how today was compulsory, to try to make the Israeli students show up. Didn't work. The ones who are only here because it's required for their degree are incredibly flaky. Instead, it was only the foreign volunteers sitting around with nothing to do. Had breakfast and could go. Got t-shirts, lots of extended goodbyes, etc.

Waited around for D to burn picture CDs, had a very good hotel lunch, then a LONG day at the beach. Absolutely wonderful, though got burned badly. The beach is such an interesting collection of bizarre juxtapositions. Nudist (and rumored gay) beach just around the headlands one direction, crusader harbor with a dangerous falling-in cliff, then the Islamic beach with girls in ankle-length suits and woman wading in full long robes, then rocky local section, then tourist bit with bikinis and ice cream stand and all.

Finally got to see the free Friday night concert at the park- Irish concert in the castle, great fun. Lots of chat with Inara's husband, the Latvian ambassador. Inara thinks she may be able to find me a room next year, may make it possible to come back.

Down to the Marina for dinner at an Irish pub. Incredibly, shrimp and chips. Absolute heaven. Wonderful milkshakes at the Marina too. Talked with D untill late- talking with him somehow gives me big dreams. It's hard to describe, but he makes crazy adventures seem doable. It's unsettling- is that just the presence of a romantic stranger talking, or will I be brave enough to actually do these things?

Can't believe it's over.

Reached mortared wall today- nice squared ashlars, whole nine yards. Katee finally sits up and pays attention. General conclusion is that the unmortared tumble they tore out was from rough wall of Byzantine pit, over Roman architecture. Of course, not enough documentation to prove for sure. Still going at a furious pace- they're desperate to find enough reason to open this site next season.

Greg had me help draw sections in the next trench over. Nice guy, being good to me- really like him. He is a bit of an odd duck though. Not terribly assertive about his subject area, seems like he feels like he's floundering a bit. Has no practical experience, which makes him even more intimidated than he was already inclined to be. Very anal, with a desperate desire to do things right, which of course directly contradicts the "seek-no-conflict" imperative and makes him kind of tie himself in knots. Very interesting to be around.

Finally, the promised "fareval" party held down on the beach. Lots of rowdy guys from the first two weeks showed up. Lovely sunset, Ilan's kids, wife (very young!), dogs... fun.

Lots of new people arriving for this last week. Mother-daughter team, obviously loaded. Daughter is 17, acts 13- annoying and precocious, won't stop hitting on all the 30 year old Israelis, chattering at them constantly about her private high school while they try to escape. Entertaining. Also new- the wife of the Latvian ambassador (very nice!) and a Finnish graduate student by the name of Carolina. She used to be a gymnast, has the body of a Norse goddess, wears absolutely nothing to the dig. Also incredibly nice, works like an ox, knows her stuff- it gives a girl a complex.

They closed the other area, which hit the foundation of the Crusader fortifications and found virgin sand, so we're working with lots of their lot for the first time. They seem to be a tighter knit group, entirely of Israelis, with slight attitudes and smoking habits but big muscles and some experience. Used them to bring the whole area down to the level of the new architecture. Still using total destruction methods- hell with record keeping, nothing matters but the wall.

D and Sh took off to Jerusalem today to see some fresco work at the Rockerfeller museum related to Sh's thesis. D brought back all sorts of interesting news about a fellowship there that I am having wild fantasies about but not the courage to pursue. Sh's last night here, so down to the beach with him for a good swim, drinks, pizza. I've really gotten to like those Polish boys. They're so cute by the beach too- lovely swimmers, and just so EXCITED about the whole beach idea.

We got across the border into Jordan this morning- a long but not terrible process, including a rather creepy walk across barbed-wired no-man's-land. Took at absolutely insane taxi ride for an hour and a half (lanes mean nothing!). The desert remains indescribable. We drove past the area used in filming Lawrence of Arabia. It's bizarre- you see the presence of water everywhere. The wadis are these steep water-carved desert valleys- the entire place looks like rivers and flash floods and it's dust-dry. Truly strange. Bedouin everywhere, with little herds of goats, and some donkeys and camels, and their big open-sided camel-skin tents. Hard to believe it's all real.

Wadi Musa is the city outside Petra- grown from a tiny encampment to a city of 30,000 local booming with hotels. But with the war in Israel, there are simply no tourists. Everyone is desperate- the taxi drivers, the hotels, the restaurants. All the ratios between tourists and services were off. We stayed at the CleoPetra (cute) a little family-run hotel absolutely overflowing with the rituals of Jordanian hospitality- the little rituals of tea-drinking and effusive thanks and elaborate conversation- a culture I would not do well in at all, frankly, but is wonderful to experience as a guest. Everywhere you go: "Where from? Welcome American! Welcome to Jordan!"

Petra itself is bogglingly huge. From the visitors' center it is a 20 minute walk to the canyon entrance. It's then over a mile through the canyon into the actual valley, and from there it's another mile or more through the outlying tombs to the Roman city proper- another mile through the city, and another hour's climb up the far edge of the canyon to the monastery. Something like 45 square kilometers. It's so huge that it could never conceivably all be excavated, will never even be well-mapped.

The canyon- Roman road, Roman water-pipes running along the sides with horse troughs, older Nabatean tomb niches and Roman niches everywhere, little stairs leading up to these little goat-path guard stations up top. And the colors! Yellows to oranges to pinks to REDS, swirling and beautiful. The canyon is so high, and so narrow, and the final turn opening on to the treasury is infinitely more dramatic in real life than in Indiana Jones.

Worked the entire time today- won't die after all! Finally feel like I might pull my weight. In a relative sense, of course- many of the Israeli students are 22 year old guys who have lived in this climate all their lives and are straight out of the army with obsessive physical conditioning. I have met few guys as strong as they are, but I'm not sure I've ever met any who are able to work that hard, that steadily, in that kind of heat (Erez and Carmel foremost among them). It's astonishing. But, in an "all things being relative" sort of way, I feel like I can pull my weight.

Took over my own little square today- they're pushing the trenches out to the very edge of the cliff. Working next to Erez, who, frankly, I've taken quite a fancy to. Went down to the beach with him afterwards. His English is the worst of the Israeli students- apparently lived away from the city for quite awhile, never practiced. 28. Got out of military duty on a trumped-up psychiatric excuse. He's a fascinating personality with fascinating politics, language barrier aside- very serious with these little flashes of really quite smart humor underneath that I keep missing until they've gone by. Also works like an ox.

Hagi gave the lecture at lunch today- He's the head of the National park, the absolutely huge dark guy with the pistol- radiates "gentle giant," always smiling, loved by all. He has huge plans for the future of this site, which he may never see done in his lifetime. Incredible dedication to it. Really an inspiring vision. It also explains some things, like their obsession with architecture- architecture draws tourists, which is the only way to fund these things. Had some long conversations about how different it is from archaeology in other places, which is much less taken for granted, valued much more for reasons outside tourist attraction. Also about the politics of human remains in Israel, the problems with the Orthodox rabbis- utterly fascinating and strange. I wouldn't have predicted that at all.

Had to do laundry in the tub. Pain in the butt- nothing every gets really clean, and NOTHING ever gets dry. The food has been good- I especially like that yogurt-ish cheese spread and the egg dish in the mornings. But I never want to see cucumbers or tomatoes again.

First morning actually digging- there's this urge to prove yourself. Unfortunately, it turns out this is not a very smart urge. Never worked so hard in my entire life. Lasted until 9:30 before I had to go back and wash pots. Talked with Judy and her little group of ladies in waiting- she also is an interesting character, and they seem to have a pretty serious grudge against lots of the other students- lots of petty politics in Israeli camp. Lots of good cultural info. Unfortunately, even though I went back so early, heatstroke already set in and just kept getting worse. At a certain point, you stop being able to think clearly, and you stop being able to drink water because of nausea. At that point Katee offered to drive me back to the hotel, thank god.

Very cold shower and a nap. Also complete panic- if I end up on the verge of hospitalization after working for 3 hours, how in the world will I manage this?

Got picked up for the trip to Tel Aviv University. Guided tour by Oren Taal- saw their huge pottery collection, restoration workshop, restored Crusader fineware from the last Apollonia season. On the way back, bought a bikini (aack! go me) and have a swim. The ocean is absolutely perfect- warm and sandy and salty and calm and perfectly situated for beautiful sunsets- though oddly lifeless and tideless.

Among the foreign students are the two Polish grad students from Krakow university, apparently here because their school might sponsor a group of students to dig the west wing of the castle next year. Mikhail and Prezmek (Shamak. Oh those wacky polish names!). They gave lectures on their research topics at lunch- especially Sh's, Arthurian frescoes in Polish Medieval castles. Absolutely fascinating. Had pizza and drinks with them after the swim, and I'm left desperately wanting to see Poland (unexpected). Tomorrow is M's last day- barely got to know him, liked him absolutely immensely.