I get very distracted when I come to the museum to check internet stuff cause i keep finding family online to video chat with.  It is such a different experience of communication internationally than other experiences I've had abroad.  It seems too easy to get online and see my dad's face as we talk about his upcoming arrival.  It is so convenient but some of the mystery of being abroad seems to fade a bit.  But I'm grateful.

So I'm sitting on the back of the museum here at the Ginnosar Kibbutz and it is a really windy day.  There are a handful of people out windsurfing on the Galilee.  I keep laughing out loud when ever one of them is gracefully gliding across the water and BAM!  They totally bite it and face plant into the sea...oh it's good times.  :)

Ok, so they are falling so much that I've decided to put in an * whenever I see a windsurfer bite it.  

* no but really...

Tomorrow is my last day at the dig.  I really will be sad to leave.  Shai, a volunteer at the site who has lived at the kibbutz for over half his life, ask me this question: What is the difference between a volunteer and a slave?   Answer: a slave gets paid.   Yeah, we are pretty much paying to do slave labor in some ways.  We spend a significant amount of time digging, hauling dirt, moving rocks and attempting to move boulders.    However, he does exclude the fact that another difference is that volunteers (some) actually like to do that.  I am one of them.  All of that * hard work seems to fade from memory when we are passing around a roman ax from the 1st century, as we did yesterday afternoon.  

I have learned a LOT about archaeology by being on the dig site.   I was talking to my dad yesterday and I told him that I will never be able to look at pottery in a museum the same way again.  When they are on display at an exhibit, the all look similar and quite boring really.  But now that I know what it takes to get them, how exciting it is to excavate them and the ** significance of even miniscule pieces of pottery, it makes the museum experience more exciting.   Wow, that sounds so nerdy.  It's ok.  I'll own it.

My experience here at the Ginnosar Kibbutz and at the dig has been irreplaceable.  I have absolutely loved it.  History has become much more tangible and exciting for me.  I am also absolutely humbled by how much I don't know.  I have learned an incredible amount about archaeology that I really don't think I ever would have understood in this way had I just been reading about it.  Plus I've had the amazing privilege of intersecting with so many great people who have come and gone to volunteer at the dig.

*** (those are the one's I forgot to include cause I was in the middle of typing.)

There really is SO much I could share about but I have to get to pottery reading--our last one :(

If i get a chance to write some tomorrow I will otherwise I probably wont have a chance to until I get into Jerusalem this weekend.

so grateful,

Haley

Dad's arrival: 3 days and counting (yes it will be on Father's Day)