Day Two at Bethsaida.

Ok, so first foray into the wild and wonderful world of archaeology at the historical city of Bethsaida is picking weeds. Not just any weeds mind you, we're talking some pretty freakin tough plants. There are thorns, there are screams of pain. We have been schooled in the finer arts of setting up tarps and the breakfast crew for the next couple of weeks has been chosen. I figured this was a test of our mettle (not to be confused with nettles... of which there were plenty) as well as a test for the gloves most of us had brought along with us. My own Target brand bright green beauties would serve me well throughout the dig.

We were back at Kibbutz Ginosar by noon and were at the pool by one. The sun blazed a dry heat and I spent about two hours as a disembodied head, paddling around the pool, making conversation with other Diggers as I met them. We were shortly introduced to Zachary, lifeguard of the chiseled abs and sly smile and C and myself swiftly dubbed him Cabana Boy. S and C and I shared a beer and conversation at the hotel bar and S then made a trek that he would make many times... showing newbies the route to the kibbutz supermarket to buy beer. The supermarket was manned by a surly woman who said precisely three words (in Hebrew and English) and failed to share my excitement over the abacus that was for sale. Armed with Tuborg and Goldstar, we headed back to sit in front of S's room, slapping at bugs and listening to the kid watching TV in the dorm. Eventually we all meandered to our beds as 4am quickly approached.

First day in our chosen Locus's and my group at 1765 are instructed to clean away all of the dirt and boulders, displaced by an earthquake and time, lining the road into the city. We set about our task somewhat merrily... picking and poking, dumping all the dirt into buckets to be heaved up over the side and sifted . Quickly we became envious of other sifting stations throughout the site as we eyed our red-headed stepchild sifting station. Where others sifted in the shade, contraptions held up by trees or stands, excess dirt falling into the coveted wheelbarrows, we were forced to sift by hand, over a pile of dirt, in the blazing sun. Our sifter was carefully placed on three buckets and by 9am, sifting became decidedly not glamorous and more torturous.

By breakfast we were wrung out slugs, slithering into line for a bounty of bread, cheese, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, cereal and Turkish coffee. Someone mentioned that the productivity of work decreases by at least 50% after breakfast and we would soon learn why.

After breakfast, fortified and chipper we once again attacked our road with a fever of young Indiana Jones's...until energy waned with the rising of the sun. Sweat mixed withdirt and dust, pasting my body and glasses. I had been chosen for the seemingly innocuous job of Getting Popsicles. Now popsicles were to play a pretty large role in life at the Dig as I would soon learn and so therefore this early trip was a mere break from life at 1765 for me. We piled into the little rental car and chugged down to the local restaurant where Benny had been providing Diggers frozen treats for many years now. Hauling into the parking lot we felt a strange forboding descend around us in a shadowy haze as we made note of the darkened windows and lack of any movement whatsoever. My compatriot S seemed to be getting stressed and as we walked around the building, setting off alarms when I tried to open the side door, he became more agitated. "You don't understand... if we go back empty-handed they'll KILL us... seriously!!" I really couldn't understand the severity of the situation, and it would in fact be a few days until I really and truly understood the manic need for popsicles. We rode back to the dig and I abandoned him to the vultures of the other areas while I went back to my trusty compadres at Locus 1765, whom I knew I had already forged a tight bond with and who probably wouldn't tear off my limbs and dump them over the side along with our sifted dirt.

The next day seemed eerily the same: same locus, same sifter, same wheelbarrow envy, same breakfast. With the sun rose an uncomfortable feeling of fear...I was once again to go on the Popsicle Run and I felt my skin crawl as members of my group relayed their extreme heat exhausted need for a popsicle and murmurs of rebellion played upon sun parched lips. S and I once again loaded into the rental and putted down the road to Benny's only to stop in horror as we, once again, saw the dim windows and tumbleweeds blowing through the parking lot. We frantically asked the nearest human, in this case a man selling cherries on the side of the road, where in gods name Benny WAS... we must have looked possessed, covered in dirt, filth and sweat...fear burning white hot in our eyes...he mumbled in Arabic and ambled away, casting frightened glances over his shoulder. I felt like pummeling my hands on the glass doors or kicking something or running far far away but we dejectedly loaded into the car and drove about negative 3 kilometers an hour back to the site.

There's this path that leads up to the city road where my group was working... it's a long, steep thing that is easily eyed from up top. I could see people standing up there, armed with pickaxes and brooms and I swallowed heavily, fresh sweat breaking out on my upper lip. S and I convinced ourselves that years from now, other archaeological diggers would find our bleached skulls propped on the side of the road, popsicle sticks jammed where eyeballs once were.

There was anger, I'm not gonna lie... there were looks of evil from dejected, hot Diggers. There were moments I feared for my life. Popsicle duty was really not all it cracked up to be. The following day did, in fact, come armed with popsicles... this time I totally bailed on the Drive of Shame but S pulled through like a champion. I recall standing over the sifter and looking down the sun-drenched road, seeing his head bobbing as he practically ran up the path, bearing a brown sack, triumphant where I had failed. Diggers surrounded him, gloved fists plunging into the bounty, sifting through the booty. At the precise moment I tasted the lemon frozen goodness, and as we sat with our feet up, not talking, slurping away...I finally understood the mystical allure of Popsicle Break.

Day 1 - Kibbutz Ginosar.

The sweet scent of spice and I am busy swirling air through my drink. I am on an exotic plane of existence... a foreign land heavy with the spell of the unknown. I am....
...leaning far back in the chair and tipping, nearly falling backwards and cracking my skull open on the chipped asphalt of the dorm porch, exhibiting my classic grace and style.

I stared deeply into my nalgene bottle, 1/4 full of lukewarm coke that I nicked from the dorm fridge and a healthy dollop of duty-free rum which I had to hide beneath my bed. Already the scavengers have prowled forth, looking for treats and alcohol and it is only the first night.

So I sat back, stretched out my legs and pondered the meaning of life and travel as the black flies congregated around my nativity and began to mercilessly chew the skin off my ankles. The dorm is ablaze with the sound of 20 somethings watching an Israeli version of Dancing With the Stars. They have jut returned from swimming in the Sea of Galilee and are clearly not going to sleep anytime soon. My bed (well, let's call it a cot) lies directly in front of the door in the room I will be sharing with three others...that is to say, my drooling scrunched up sleeping face will be seen my anyone who wanders down the hall to the two other dorm rooms since the room averages about 90 degrees and the air conditioner is broken, meaning we keep the door open at all times. Not exactly the evening I had dreamed of...

Chapter 2: Test of Faith, Goodwill and the Bus.

Ah, Tel-Aviv... land of overzealous border control officers who are paid (handsomely I hope) to ignore the snaking lines of tourists acting like Americans. I suppose I expected to see at least one machine gun due to the may reports I had gotten from friends and family visiting Israel, but nary a gun was to be seen. I saw a whole lot of visors, of matching T-shirt groups, of flight manic travelers wandering aimlessly the wrong way on the moving sidewalk...but no guns.

And I got my backpack off the turnstile almost first time around. I nearly started to bawl: never has my luggage been reunited with me with so little drama... in fact it is rarely reintroduced to me until my return home. When I saw it's lovely form glowing its way around the carousel, I was moved to tears of joy... I wouldn't be washing the carry-on underwear I had brought with me over and over again, nor would I have to buy new clothes. I am not one of those people who carries a complete change of clothes in my carry-on. I know the Rules of Travel, I understand their necessity and really I would be the prime candidate for following these guidelines since my luggage has been lost before, often showing up days later, if not at the end of my trip. But seriously, when I am packing my bags (the night before or the morning of) I have that fleeting sense of propriety... which quickly gets washed aside by the nagging fear that I haven't brought enough books. And so clothes fall into the category of non-essentials and more books are crammed into my backpack.

The group met up scraggily... we boarded the waiting bus in a bit of chaotic mess...some people (from the various universities) already knew each other... some, like myself, were interlopers. The trip from Tel-Aviv to Kibbutz Ginosar took a few hours and was dotted with historical facts by EM, most of which we were all far too exhausted to take in. "yeah, yeah, and there's the birthplace of Mary Magdalene and yadayada... when do we get to EAT?".

My seat-mate was the venerable VH and we made much small talk by totally snarking on the American movies she watched on the flight over and we bonded over the peanut butter crackers I brought along. We rumbled through the entry gate of the Kibbutz and, as with any new place one ventures to, it seemed so foreign, scary. We ceremoniously dumped our stuff at the office and all 30 of us plowed into the dining room where a bounty of food presented itself: fish, salads, olives, cheese, fruit, potatoes, coffee...we ate like the vultures we are and tried to ignore the few pitiful bleatings of "I don't know what this IS" and "why don't they just have HAMBURGERS?"... my own inner-bleat professed a desire for beer, but it being the first night and all, I suppressed the need to ask.

We then made our way out to the dock which extends quite a ways into (atop of) the Sea of Galilee, where the Kibbutz was situated. While some hardy souls had a prayer meeting and sang hymns I was oblivious to, I spent my time staring across the sea (lake) trying to discern whether the brilliant orange glow in the general direction of Tiberias was something to be concerned with. The eerie quiet of the place inspired me to start to chatter with the random person next to me who turned out to be A, one of my roommates. Sleep proved to be rather elusive, though time change had little to do with it...almost as soon as I closed my eyes, one of my roommates issued forth the low rumbling that is a precursor to the inevitable snores and another one stumbled into the room, armed with what must have been a military issued flashlight, the illumination of which could have been seen by Venus.

The next morning was all clamberings and rumblings and chaos as people jostled for position in one of the two showers. I had awoken at the lovely hour of 5am and was firmly ensconced on the porch, bleary eyed but happy with the Folgers coffee singles I had thought to bring along. Breakfast was a grandiose buffet of hard-boiled eggs, thick french toast, potato pancakes, vegetable pies, muffins, fruit, cereals, fish, fresh squeezed orange juice and salads. We were not to eat this well for another week...

Two of my unbending Rules for Effective Travel are : Keep track of your underwear and Learn the Local Currency as Quickly and Accurately as You Can.

That's that.
All else can follow...

That being said, my introduction to the shekel came as I dutifully doled out at least 35 of them for one beer at the kibbutz bar. With the shekels conversion rate being about 4 to 1 dollar, the bartender was clearly thrilled at my ineptitude. Later, when I figured out my mistake, I vowed to master the elusive shekel and its actually very easy to convert existence before I became known round the kibbutz as an insanely good tipper.

The underwear saga will come later.

To Israel and Back: Missing unmentionables, Dirty Popsicles and First Class Dolts.

Feeling like an interloper in my grubby jeans, sweatshirt and backpack I passed over my ticket to the skeptical Gatekeeper of the first class lounge. He scanned it, peered at it closely and licked it to ensure authenticity before passing it back and inviting me in. Loftily I breezed into the cavernous room, marveling at its emptiness and luxuries. Free beer? Peanuts? No children scrambling over already weary parents legs? Wi-Fi? Check, check and check. Not a bad way to start the trip.

Due to the overwhelming generosity of a certain individual, I was flying first class all the way to Tel-Aviv. This for the person who has never even had the tenacity to get herself bumped to first class...truly it would be the flight where dreams were made. On previous transatlantic flights I had always gazed longingly at the disheveled remnants of the First Class folk...the blankets strewn about, newspapers, totally reclined bed-chairs. When you're exiting an airplane, de-cramping your legs, bleary eyed and traumatized by over-excited children and you see the glow of the first class your first thought is what slobs those passengers were with their linen napkins and champagne glasses littering the floor, the feeling of rest and relaxation hovering in the air, strictly forbidden to enter the rest of the plane by the blue snapping curtain. You know that you would never simply toss those luxuries to the ground, were they granted to you

I am the sort of traveler who over-thinks inane things... I never think of downed planes or terrorist plots... I, instead, think that I am going to be that statistical passenger who gets the horrible leg disease where you don't move around enough and blood clots in your leg causing your heart to slow and eventually stop. For this reason I like to sit in the aisle seat and get up frequently, annoying all around me. I also, inevitably, have to go to the bathroom at least 45 times during the flight and if I am stuck in the window seat, I sit and plot about how many minutes until I can politely beg of the person next to me to get up, yet again. I also have this nagging fear that as the plane is taking off that I will see my checked baggage rolling around the ground outside of the plane as the attendants snicker and point at my face pressed against the plexiglass.

This trip abroad would be different though. First class would enable me to emerge in Israel a changed woman, super immune to the time change, bright, plucky, refreshed and sated. I would brush my teeth and be one of those travelers who thinks ahead and packs a change of clothes in their carry-on so they disembark looking as if they had just spent the previous twelve hours sipping complimentary cocktails and watching free movies, sleeping fully extended and being awoken by freshly squeezed orange juice and a fine sumatra blend.

Instead, I managed to disembark looking like I usually look... bleary eyed, stuffy nosed, books hastily stuffed in my backpack, same wrinkled clothes, same messy hair... I did manage to brush my teeth but new socks? Nope, not this obviously planning-inept traveler. I did manage to remember to grab my duty-free bottle of rum, however, so things were not decidedly all bad.
And thus, I entered Ben Gurion airport and made my way to passport control.