One thing I hate more than anything in the world are the
toilets that consist of just a whole in the ground that you have to crouch over
to use. I thought that I would only
encounter them during my two year mission in Japan but I have come face to face
with one here. There are traditional
Western toilets everywhere but there is one crouhcer in our house. I tried to avoid it until the other day when
I was taking a shower. I had draped my
pants over the wall separating the shower from the crouching toilet and as soon
as I had done so I heard a thud. I go to
look at the crouching toilet in the sectional over and find that my pen had
fallen from my pants pocket and landed straight into the hole in the ground
with fecal matter and urine. You may
have won this one crouching toilet but I will get you next time!
Things have been progressing on our site. We are excavating an ancient Nabataean water
collecting pool that would store runoff water near the monastery. We are on our third 5 by 5 meter square and
have finally reached a section of the outer wall of the pool. We have already found over thousands of
sherds of pottery that even though it is 2,000 year old pottery I am kind of
getting sick of seeing it. After digging
it up, we go back to the house, wash every single piece, and then analyze
it. Ahhh, medium fine Nabataean
redware. Yum. It will be fun to look at the overall data we
are collecting in the long run but sometimes we wish we wouldn’t find so much
pottery. We found one Nabataean coin and
one Roman one though which has been cool to look at.
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| Me and fellow student Ridge rode up mules to the site instead of walking up |
We have some local Bedoiun workers helping us out. A group of about five students is working on
our site and we mostly shovel dirt into big piles or into baskets made out of
recycled tires and then dump then into a wheelbarrow which one of us carries
off to a huge dump heap. We have a
makeshift shade set up so that we aren’t in the sun while we excavate from 8 am
to one in the afternoon everyday. I
haven’t had to open up my Aloe Vera lotion once as I have actually applied
sunscreen quite liberally.
Last time I mentioned the 852 steps up to our site. Well, the last two days, us students have
splurged on mules which has definitely been worth up. It is a bit of a bumpy ride but getting to
see the view around us instead of staring at the stairs in order to not trip and fall to our deaths is
breathtaking. I wish pictures could do
it justice but it just can’t. We went
exploring around the trail today while we were surveying with GPS and just
happened upon a tomb that had been occupied by crusaders which had crosses
carved into the cave. It is so saturated
with history that a small detour will reveal a site from ancient Nabataeans
water channels to crusader occupation.
Absolutely amazing.
Us archaeology students have been bonding together these
last two couple of weeks. It is actually
kind of scary when you get all of these people pumped up about history living
together for a month. The vernacular
gets to be a bit over your head sometimes and we all freak out over little
things like finding a part of Byzantine grayware. We got five guys and six girls in total along
with some site directors that happen to be girls as well. We tend to have similar tastes and grips
about college life which has been quite refreshing.
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| On the top of the Tomb of Aaron |
Friday and Saturday is our weekend and we usually spend the
days going around sight-seeing. Today we
went and hiked up to the Tomb of Aaron which is the traditional site of where Moses’
brother Aaron was buried during the forty years in the wilderness. They had a couple of really cool caves around
there and a great view of the city. We
could even see the Jordan-Israeli border up there! Friday we went to see the spring where the
locals say that Moses smote the rock to give the children of Israel some much
needed water. It is cool to have all
these religious sites important to Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike close by.
Friday, before having pizza and movie night, we held
sacrament meeting in the dining hall. It
was really simple, just the sacrament and a few testimonies but it was a neat
experience. I have actually been more
diligent in my scripture reading and have grown spiritually since I have been
out here. Something about traveling
halfway across the world causes you to think more. I’ve been thinking about my plan for the future
such as what to do for grad school and my life goals. When
I think about it I get stressed and don’t know what I want or even what I should
do. As I have been out here though, I
have been able to remember that God is there to help me through this decade of
decision and no matter where I go in the world.
He doesn’t have a stringent plan made for us that we have to follow but
instead he will lead and guide us as we seek to understand our best options so
when we do make a choice we will find joy.
So remember who you are and make good choices. See you next week!
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| The desert between Jordan and Israel |
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| Where Moses smote the rock |
An ice cream freezer in a crusader tomb
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