Sprechen Sie Englisch?: Digging Rocks! or Can you Dig it? Week 1

And now comes the most unique vacation I have ever taken- working on an archeology site in Israel! This is something my dad has always wanted to do and we decided it was finally time to make it happen! I have not seen my parents since September so it was interesting having them pick me up from the Tel Aviv airport!

We stayed in a very nice hotel for the night and then left the next morning for Yad Hashmona, our place of residence for the next two weeks.

The reception area at our residence. This place is more of a retreat center than a hotel. Large communal areas with rooms for people to stay all over the campus.

We took a nice walk through the biblical garden.

Israel looks a lot like the Sierra Nevada mountains or Utah. A very high desert feel.

Ancient olive oil press in the garden.

First day on the dig! Our hotel was just outside of Jerusalem but the actual dig site was a 45 minute bus ride away in the West Bank. There were quite a lot of volunteers (almost all American). This is our introductory talk about the history of the area.

All the volunteers were split into smaller groups of about 5 people. The small groups were assigned to a 6 meter by 6 meter square. This is our square early morning day one. It really doesn't look like much; it was the equivalent of walking out to a field and saying dig!

The archeology group has been digging here for about 10 years. They hypothesize that our site, Khirbet el-Maqatir, is actually the ancient city of Ai in the book of Joshua. One of the most startling realizations about the site is that there is 2,000 year old pottery EVERYWHERE. This is my mom holding up a piece.

We filled many a pottery bucket.

Move those rocks dad!

Our square supervisor and head archeologist Scott doing some paperwork.

In the first few days we came across a couple huge scorpions. This pictures doesn't really show how big it was but no one wanted to get near for a size comparison- about 4 inches.

The site was basically in a huge field right next to a Palestinian settlement.

Every morning around 7:30 a Shepherd would come by with his flock of sheep.

A nice neighbor who lives in this house (also the man who owned the land

where the site is) would let us store our tools there.

Part of the morning routine was to get the tools from his garage.

This is my dad and Tom, one of our square-mates, doing the heavy lifting.

Most of our time was spent moving dirt and rocks to the

dump pile. And it was A LOT of dirt.

This is just the beginning of our second dump pile with King of the Mountain Tom.

The ladies were lucky and got this as a restroom.

The guys had to fend for themselves.

Early morning on the dig site.

There are a lot of caverns near by. This is one that the team excavated a

few months ago and found it was used to make oil.

The only way we found any coins was with a metal detector. The coins are

very small and covered in dirt so they are nearly impossible to find on your own.

Our first wall uncovered in our square.

I got recruited to help dig in a cistern discovered in a

neighboring square! It was pretty cool.

My birthday happened while on the dig- my mom gave me a Cadbury Egg!

They don't have them in Germany so it was an extra special treat.

At the end of the first week my dad and I helped the photographer take pictures. He had a super fancy get up with a camera on a pole and an iPad to tell the camera when to shoot the picture. My dad is in the red setting up the arrow and measuring stick.

We walked by this sign every morning.

We ate very well on this trip. Dinner was at the hotel buffet every night and there was a great amount of variety. Lots of fresh vegetables and a dessert buffet!