July 15

The weather has been brutally hot here as of late. Temperatures in the daytime can rise to 100 degrees, with the full force of the low latitude sun beating down on everything and everyone. The evenings and early morning are quite pleasant though, when the air feels warm but not oppressive. If you looked at the schedule for a typical day, you may have seen that we work at the site from 5:00 in the morning until noon. Originally I had wondered "why stop at noon?", but now I know why! Thank goodness for air conditioning back at the kibbutz!

Much of the land near the shore of the Sea of Galilee is used for fields of bananas, dates, and other fruit. Some of these fields are completely enclosed by a giant mesh tarps, which serve to preserve humidity that the wind would otherwise carry away. To the east of the agricultural areas, the land starts to climb upward to the Golan Heights. It is very rocky and full of hills. Surprisingly, there is a lot of plant life here, though it will be brown until the rainy season begins. Grass, shrubs and thistles are abundant. The view of the Golan Heights is spectacular, especially from the dig site at Hippos.

River Trek: Several days ago Erin, Kat, Andrea, and myself boarded a bus along with members of the Polish and Israeli teams. We were going to a place where we could swim in a spring of water, somewhere in the hills. Supposedly there was a pool where the water was 3 meters deep. Well, they took us to a small stream somewhere just north of the Sea of Galilee and told us that it was a forty minute hike to the pool. We started walking alongside the stream, but soon the path ended and thick vegetation started to close in on both sides of the stream. Before we knew it we were wading right down the middle of the stream! The streambed was full of large rocks and hard to see, making for a very slow and tedious progression. As the depth reached our knees, we realized that some of us had digital cameras in our backpacks. The group leader, Michael (assistant to Dr. Arthur Segal, excavation coordinator) provided us with plastic sandwich bags to put our cameras in. What in the world did we get ourselves into? At one point the water was up to my waist. Eventually we stopped. The leaders realized that we were lost, so we turned around to go back to the bus. It was a great, crazy experience that I will always remember, but it was a failed excursion, nevertheless. Due to our not swimming, we had some extra time, so they drove us to the very top of the Golan Plateau near the Northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. The view was great, being almost twice as far above the lake as we are Hippos. We drove back, only partially dissapointed by not finding the pool; the journey was just as memorable as the destination would have been!