One More Final Push

Today was one last final push...Until the next one, at least.  As mentioned in the last post, the kids and I are helping Owen where we can with his survey work at Tall Safut.  Today is the last day of his survey permit from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, and was the day he had planned to take pictures of the wall lines using a piece of equipment called the "boom."  It's really a handy contraption. 

setting up

We wrangled up another helper, another fellow working here at ACOR (thank you James!).  At 6:00 am, we rolled out to the site and started working.  Things went fairly uneventfully, thankfully...minus an injury free fall by Jack off a wall into some pokey bushes, and some decent sunburns by me (after I spend so much time putting sunscreen on kids, I feel done and forget to put it on myself). 

Owen directing the positioning of the camera

Jack and James at the other end

a view from my perspective, as camera catcher in-between takes

the big picture

me and Fia, laying tape and catching the camera

The morning was surprisingly cool, so Jack wore my nursing cover as a cape to keep warm, and looked super cool.

Safita passed out and slept for a couple hours, which was fantastic.

Both kids were exceptional for what must have been a really long, boring, difficult day for them.  Especially on days like today, I praise the Lord for giving us such happy, patient, flexible kids--without their hardiness, we really couldn't do what we do.  

random people who were curious about what we were doing...and wondering if there was any gold

Local people throughout Owen's time surveying this past week and a half keep stopping by asking if there's gold at the site...It doesn't help that his GPS equipment kind of looks like a heavy-duty metal detector, and it also doesn't help that today we were going around putting X-marks on a bunch of stones.   Hopefully we don't come back next year to a tell pocked with looting holes!

checking the pics

Jack was a big helper

and so was Safita--she helped me hold the pole!

We finished the picture-taking a little after 1:00 pm, at which point the kids and I drove James back to ACOR and got a snack before returning to Safut to pick up Owen, who stayed behind to take some GPS points and finish up.  Things took a little longer than expected, and we didn't get home until a little after 3:00 pm.  It was a long haul: breakfast at 5:30 am, lunch at 3:30 pm.  But, this very important survey project is now complete!  Another very rewarding accomplishment to check off...and one step closer to that coveted PhD in hand! 

Finished!  Descending Safut with the rest of equipment in hand.  Can you tell he's tired?

A Day in the Life

This afternoon the kids and I played sidekick to Owen on his survey project at Tall Safut.  He was walking around the site taking GPS points, from which he will reconstruct the top plans and etcetera...Safita helped him with this task, and was a fantastic assistant. 

Jack wandered around making stone pizzas and dirt soup in any spare bottle cap he could find.  I was in charge of the glorious (but important) job of cleaning weeds off the tops of excavated walls for pictures that will be taken in the next few days.  Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish very much due to frequent requests to taste the aforementioned pizza and soup, amidst tending to other needs of the small ones.  They really did splendidly, though; we were quite impressed with them.  Safita, adorably, was practically giddy over daddy. 

The sunset and dusk from atop Safut were amazingly spectacular!  The site overlooks the Bekaa Valley, so we watched the villages of the valley slowly sparkle to life while the sky burned beautiful deep tones of red, orange, to deep pink, to heathery purple.  At one point, we were serenaded by a surround-sound of the call to prayer, broadcast from numerous minarets all around the site and down through the valley.  It was kind of majestic, with sunset, and the wind, and the twinkling lights, and the echo of the valley.  Jack got excited about the "scary green prayer" and had fun counting all the minarets he could spot.  There were at least 10 in close proximity, and countless more throughout the valley.  Sadly, we forgot our good camera and only had the point-and-shoot, so the pictures just don't do it justice. 

The young man who farms the plot of land at the foot of the tell came up after a while to keep us company, and before we left brought us a bounty of his crop--I'm not sure what the name of it is, but it's some sort of cross between cucumber, zucchini, and summer squash.  It's tasty.  We ate it with our falafel dinner, which Jack requested on the way home.  (We're so proud when our 2-year-old son requests falafel or shawerma for dinner!  He also loved the cucumber/zucchini thingies and ate them heartily.) 

Pottery, Pottery Everywhere

We are up to our ears in pottery around here.  First, it took over Owen's office and the large storage area; then it took over our apartment floor; now, it's also taken over our table.  We've been kept busy organizing, sorting, washing, and hovering over the sherds like a jig-saw puzzle with missing pieces, trying to make sense of the jumble. 

Where does it all come from, you ask?  At the very beginning of this month, Owen finally got all his permission letters in order from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities to haul all of their Safut material from the Department Warehouse to ACOR (see Owen's blog on the subject), so that it is easily accessible for him to scan and study.  He rented a big truck with workers, and at the end of the day we had 115 crates of pottery and dirt from Tall Safut (and some other random sites--oops)...each crate filled with hundreds of sherds, many of which also need to be reconstructed.  It's a MASSIVE job, and we are feeling completely overwhelmed.  Too bad it took half of our time here just to get the material, but I guess that's how governments run: inefficiently.  After this mountain of pottery is done, there is still more material at the Warehouse that accidentally got left behind, as well as another museum to visit.  Phew!  I'm panting just thinking about this crazy race against time.  While Owen focuses on the stuff only he can do, my job is to sort through all the crates and find the most important stuff, to help wash the pottery, and to rudimentarily reconstruct pieces for scanning.  (Anything important goes to a professional pottery re-constructor.) 

The children also help where they can...Safita often finds herself sitting in a pottery crate of her own, beneath towering stacks of even more crates, while Jack wanders around the basement maintenance area to see what trouble he can find.  He usually finds plenty.  (It's not an ideal location for a 2-year-old, but we can only do what we can do!)  He also loves helping with the washing.

The other "commune" kids seem to have found our pottery stash rather exciting, and enjoy trying their hand at washing and fitting pieces together.  We're thinking about hiring them...Except, wait--they'll do it for free!  Even better.

pottery sherds make great "roads" for toy cars

It seems like we're always under a gigantic amount of pressure with a quickly ticking timer, frantically trying to accomplish unreasonable amounts of work in absurdly short periods of time.  And every time, I naively think, "As soon as we're done with this stage, things will calm down and we can relax."  Never happens.  I'm starting to feel a bit like our life resembles the pottery that's taken over it of late: jumbled, scattered, disorganized, a mess of broken pieces...The good news is, each piece is valuable, broken or not!  And one day soon we'll find some glue to put the pieces back together again!  One day soon, we will function normally.  And I can't wait!