Friday, June 25th | Tel Hazor 1993

3:27 AM (CST) 10:27 AM (Rome Time)

We’re in Rome now. The flight got here right on time. We were served breakfast on the plane as well. Coming in for the landing at Rome gave me my first real sight of Europe. It didn’t appear at first to look much different than the US, but I saw quite a few differences, including the pink houses. It is impossible to see any of the city from the airport, from here everything looks like wide open spaces. After arriving at the airport, we rode a bus from the plane to the building. It was different seeing airport guards with guns. One even had a machine gun. We wandered the airport, mostly just to see what it was like. The other group arrived around 3:00 AM (10:00 AM). Now we’re just all waiting for the flight to Tel Aviv.

Michael Whitmire and Matt Stocking on the flight.

Don Harms, also on the flight.

9:34 PM

Now that we’re finally in Israel, I have converted to using local time. The time spent from leaving campus to landing in Tel Aviv was right at 26 hours. The flight from Rome to Tel Aviv was uneventful. No movie was shown, but we did have some sort of lunch, which was pretty much nasty looking. I was able to get a little bit of sleep for the first time in the air. I had dozed off a little on the floor of the Rome Airport.

We landed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv at 4:00 PM. It took us about a whole hour to get in and get our luggage, and get outside the airport. Thankfully all of the luggage arrived safely. We were supposed to be picked up and taken to Jerusalem by a bus, but it never showed up. We finally had to take taxis. I rode in a Ford minivan while others rode in 6-door Mercedes.

Sharon and Shawn Wiese outside waiting for our bus at the Tel Aviv airport.

Alain Cataga, outside Ben Gurion airport.

Hey, that's me. Looking as good as possible with my glasses.

Still waiting for our bus outside the airport, Stacey Linsley, Renee Norman, and Sarah Campbell are thrilled.

The trip from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem gave us a good chance to see what the countryside is like. It is so beautiful. The hills and mountains look wonderful. We were dropped off at our hotel, Ramat Rachel, and had only enough time to get a little cleaned up before we ate dinner.

Michael Whitmire and I are in Room 307, which coincidentally, is also Michael Elliott’s box number at college. We were both impressed by our room. There is a balcony which looks to a valley, and Bethlehem. It is really beautiful at night. Dinner was excellent, it started with an appetizer, and went on to soup, main course, and salad, and desert. After dinner, I came back to the room and discovered the great night-time view. Michael and I decided that bed would be in order. He took a shower, and then I took a bath, which felt so really good after the long trip.

The view from room 307. This is 3 shots stitched together.

This is our view from room 307 a bit later in the evening. Lots of lights to be seen from the other side of the valley. This is also a stitch of 3 shots.

Until next time...

Thursday, June 24th | Tel Hazor 1993

Well, this is it, the official beginning of my journal and my trip to the Middle East. Keep in mind when reading my journal entries that I have noted the times that I actually did the writing. The entries are also very much written in first person.

12:30 PM

Well, we’re finally on our way. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night, especially considering that I got up at 4:30 this morning. A few last things to pack away, and I was ready to start carrying stuff down to the fieldhouse. I made my first trip at about 5:00. Suitcases can get really heavy when you’re going up all the steps between the old men’s dorms and the fieldhouse. We actually got everyone on the bus, and we rolled off campus at approximately 6:05.

Our group ready to board the bus to head to Dallas. Can you tell that we are still half asleep at such an early hour? That's me on the far left side. (Apologies for the blurry image, what do you expect from a point & shoot camera in the low light of early morning?)

We hit Dallas right in the midst of rush hour traffic. We arrived at the airport and got to the terminal with no problem. Check in for our DFW to O’Hare leg of the trip was fairly quick. We had about an hour to waste before we could board the plane. I spent a little time looking in the gift shops, but not much. After boarding the plane, we had a delay of an hour, because they had to bleed the brake lines of some air. At last we took off and are on our way to Chicago/ Rome/ Tel Aviv. We were able to watch some CNN Headline News and some Wimbledon updates. We were served turkey sandwiches and “I can’t believe it’s yogurt.” They were both really good. I also had some Dr. Pepper.

Don Harms (from Colorado), Mark Schafer, and Julie Hales waiting on our flight at the airport.

Michael Whitmire, Shawn Wiese, and Robert Stahl at the airport.

Julie Hales, Renee Norman, Matthew Stocking, Julie Edgedus, and Mary Ann Baylosis (still at the airport).

10:35 PM (Chicago time) 5:35 AM (Rome time, 6/25/93)

Well, we’ve been in a 747 since 3 something, and I still haven’t slept a wink. Right now the sky out to the left of the plane is really beautiful with the sunrise and all. We must be over Europe by now. Our flight to Chicago arrived around 2:00, one hour behind. We quickly had to check through on Alitalia so as to make our flight. Shawn Wiese’s parents met us at the airport, and were able to help us find where we needed to go, since they had met the first group on Sunday, and the flights were the same.

We had to ride a bus from the terminal to the plane. This was a unique experience for me. Another new experience in flying for me was the headphones available on both flights. I had expected to have to pay for them, but on both planes they were free. On the current Alitalia flight, we have seen two movies: “Groundhog Day” and “Forever Young.” I have seen “Groundhog Day” twice now, but I have enjoyed it each time. Each movie was preceded by a cartoon. We were served a decent meal on this flight. I could have had beer or wine (it’s free on this flight), but I choose not to. I did share a bottle of wine with Julie Egedus, because she hadn’t tried it yet, and she didn’t really want the whole thing. It was pretty good wine, even though I personally don’t care for wine that much. In a couple of hours we’ll be in Rome, wow! A little different than Big Sandy, TX, I guess.



I referenced above "the first group".  This was a small group of four students that had been at the Hazor dig the previous year and were spending a few days at Rome to do some video work with Dr. Germano. We met up with them at the Rome airport. One member of that group was Shawn Wiese's sister, Sharon, hence why his (and her) parents met us at the airport in Chicago.


*With this post, and this blog in it's entirety, I am making every effort to be as accurate as possible, especially with regards to photo captions and additional information that I provide outside the contents of my journal. If there are any inaccuracies, I will gladly correct them when accurate information is provided to me.

Preparing for the Trip | Tel Hazor 1993

Being accepted for the dig was just the beginning. There were a lot of things to do before we actually left, including a whole semester of college.

Perhaps I should have started keeping a journal right at that point, but, honestly, I didn't even think of it. There was a lot going on.

As I said in the last post, I found out on January 8th that I would be going on the dig. Just a few days later, on January 12th, a group of us went to see the Amonhotep III exhibit in Fort Worth. (Doing a quick internet search uncovered an article about the exhibit.) I believe that most, if not all, of us on the trip had been selected for the digs. It was archaeology related, plus I've always enjoyed ancient Egypt.

We had various meetings for dig participants during the spring semester. I can't tell you the dates or topics of most of these meetings. I know that at one meeting photos were taken for passports and visas. This was a good thing since I did not have a passport yet at this time.

One requirement for being selected as a dig participant was to enroll in the Introduction to Middle-Eastern Archaeology class. I still have the paper that I wrote on Biblical Hazor. I won't bother sharing it with everyone, but I am quite pleased that I received a 93 on it.

On April 5th I went to Longview and took care of getting my passport application submitted. I have a receipt showing that I paid $10 to the District Clerk, which was their processing fee. If I remember correctly the passport fee itself was only $60, far less than what it is today.

On April 26th we had a meeting to sign up for the required summer courses that were part of our dig participation. For those of us going to Hazor, we had to sign up for History 499 (Archaeological Fieldwork) and Theology 399 (Undergraduate Open Seminar: Biblical Archaeology and Geography). These courses consisted mainly of the work we were doing on the dig site and a few evening meetings and touring on Sundays.

At some point I learned that one of the additional duties that I would be helping with was videotaping the events of the dig. I had taken a Television Production class (and passed) during the fall semester, which apparently qualified me for this. There were four of us on the video crew, two of which had been on the dig the previous year.

After the end of the school year I began working for Dr. Germano, one of our group supervisors. I was doing some preparation for the video crew as well as some research projects. I distinctly remember working to put together a handout for a group that had a lot of information and photographs of Tel Hazor. I spent a lot of time in the library working on that. I was also in a position to do the video editing after the dig, a job which ultimately did not work out for me.

Finally, in late June, whether we were ready or not the preparations for the trip were done. We were to leave on June 24th. I had certainly been looking forward to it for several months. That will soon be the topic of a post on here as I delve into the contents of my journal.

The good news about getting to the point of divulging the contents of my journal is that there will also be some photos included. So far this has been a pretty plain blog, but that's all about to change. Stay with me.