Monday, June 28th | Tel Hazor 1993

9:17 pm
At 3:50 this morning – knock, knock, “Boker tov.” That meant that it was time to get up. Yay, our first day at the Tel. After getting dressed and ready to go, we went to the dining hall and had a light breakfast – milk, bread, and spread.

The bus to the Tel left about 4:40. Normally it is supposed to leave at 4:30. The ride to the Tel is about 20-30 minutes. Once we were there, we were divided into areas. My area is A-3. Today we were just cleaning. I was working mostly with a lady from Brooklyn (Laurie Sackler) and a Hebrew University student from Japan (Nozomo Tanabe).

We had a coffee break at 10 til 7:00, and I got to serve coffee because my square is so close to the food tent. The coffee is totally different from any I've ever had, but it's okay.

The thing I was mostly cleaning in the morning was supposed to be a silo. We found quite a few pieces of broken pottery.

The silo I was cleaning in on that first day; photo taken some time later.

At 9:00 was the big breakfast – boiled eggs, vegetables, bread. We got 45 minutes for breakfast. After eating we got a chance to see the entrance to the water tunnel. It is really huge, and I hope to go down it sometime.

After breakfast I helped clean other parts of Area A-3. We worked until 1:00 and went back to Safed and had lunch. After lunch I learned how to wash pottery. I finally got a chance to take a shower. I got in the shower with my clothes on to wash them a little.

After my shower I went into Safed with David Morker, Walter Perez, Julie Hales, Julie Egedus, and Caroline Sag. Safed is an interesting town with quite a few shops on the street. There is really a great view of mountains from within the town. I bought some Goldstar beer while in town, but it isn't as good as Maccabee. Julie Hales, Caroline Sag, and I got back about 5:30.

Part of the view from where we stayed at Gesher House. [Click to view larger.]

I ended up laying down and falling asleep until almost dinner time. Again, dinner was at 7:00. At 8:00 Amnon Ben-Tor, the dig director, gave a small lecture on Hazor. Matt tried taping it, but only the slides turned out well. After the lecture it's bed time.

Sunday, June 27th | Tel Hazor 1993

8:48 pm
We had a 6:30 wake-up call this morning. We had to be packed up by 8:00 so we could set our luggage outside to be taken downstairs. We thought they would take it to our bus, but they only took it to the lobby.

I bought 10 postcard stamps and sent the free postcard from the room to my parents.

We got on our way a little after 9:00. Dr. Germano had rented a car earlier in the morning, so he followed the bus. The first place we stopped was Jaffa. I got to see the Mediterranean Sea good for the first time.

View of Tel Aviv from Jaffa

Along our walk in Jaffa

Our next stop was Caeserea Maritima. Again, it is on the Mediterranean. The major thing there is an amphitheater. When we were getting back on the bus, I found a 20 Shekel bill in the sand (worth about $8 US at the time).

Most of the historical sites have signs like this one. I photographed many of them throughout the trip.

Some of the view at Caesarea.

Some ruins at Caesarea.

We were going to stop at Dor and Mt. Carmel, but we were running out of time, so we stopped in Haifa for lunch and continued on to Safed. On the way we saw many mountains and beautiful landscape. Sarah Campbell and I decided that we will probably try to go climb a mountain next Sunday, July 4th, since it is our only free day to ourselves.

We got to Safed and the Gesher House in the late afternoon. I am staying in the Villa (room 30) with Mark Schaffer, David Morker, and Walter Perez. Dinner was at 7:00. We had a meeting at 8:00. Our wake-up call is around 4:00 in the morning for our first day on the Tel.


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Sorry for such a delay in posting and updating this. I'm hoping to keep up and hopefully have it finished before the 20th anniversary of our return back to the United States later this summer. The biggest effort is in typing up my handwritten journal.

Saturday, June 26th | Tel Hazor 1993

11:03 AM

I woke up twice this morning before I got up. I woke up at 5:44 and I noticed that Mike was gone, and he was still gone when I woke up at 7:15. I finally woke up at 8:12, as Mike was returning from breakfast. He informed me that I had plenty of time to catch breakfast. I got ready, and got down to breakfast at approximately 8:30. They had just about everything for breakfast: cottage cheese with fruit, fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers, boiled eggs, cheese, olives, yogurt, bread, fish, etc. I didn’t eat everything, but what I did have was really good. At breakfast I sat and talked with Mark Schaffer, and Dr. Germano showed up at about 8:40. Breakfast was supposed to close at 8:45. It was a good, help yourself style, breakfast.

After breakfast I came back to the room, sat on the balcony overlooking Bethlehem, and read in my bible a little. I heard noises in the hall and looked out to see if it was any of our group, and I saw Mr. Stahl. He had just gotten up, and I invited him to come look off our balcony, because his room doesn’t look the same direction. He really liked the view. Mike has been sleeping since he came back from breakfast.

Daytime view from the room, looking toward Bethlehem.

A few of our group taking a Sabbath walk on the hotel grounds.

11:51 PM

I went and took a walk around the place and found the pool. I was surprised at how packed the pool was on the Sabbath. They even have a water slide here. Lunch seemed to be leftovers from last night’s dinner. After lunch we took a walk to the war memorial, which is 3 olive trees on top of three tall columns. After the walk, it was about time for church, so we had to get ready.

Church was held at 2:30 in the television room. We had one guest, Jonathon Rudder, who is from Dallas, and is traveling around the world. We all talked for quite a while after church, then we went to change for dinner.

After dinner, and after I watched the sunset, I changed $40 into 106.4 NIS (New Israeli Shekels). When the bus showed up (8:30) we went to Ben Yehuda street. Dr. Germano paid the bus fare for everyone. Ben Yehuda street is full of shops, and people. My only purchase was a Maccabee beer, it was also the only thing the Michael Whitmire bought. One exciting thing was when Michael asked an Israeli soldier if he could take a picture of him. The soldier said yes, and was more than happy too oblige. The soldier was from New York and had only moved to Israel 6 months ago. After I took Michael’s pictures with the soldier, the soldier let Michael hold his Uzi. I had my picture taken with the soldier, but I didn’t hold the Uzi. We all met together at 11:00 and rode the bus back to the hotel. Mike and I came back to the room and turned on the TV. The only thing on is Jordanian TV.

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Sadly I don't have more photos for this day. The photos with the soldier were taken with Michael's camera, and I don't have a copy to share.

It's good to be updating this again, hopefully it won't take so long before the next installment.

Keeping Track of Rolls | Tel Hazor 1993

Yes, I know that I've been terribly slacking with updating this blog. You would think that it would be easy since I already have all of the content. Seems there are always other things that distract me and take my time.

Anyway, since I haven't posted in a while I thought that I would share a bit about the photography aspect of the trip. I took several rolls of film with me and  shot over 20 rolls total. That's not really a lot of photographs, but it seemed that way since it was film. Today I would shoot many more using digital.

Knowing that I would be taking many rolls worth of photographs I wanted to make sure that I had a way to keep track of them. This was done in two ways. I used a log sheet to record the subject matter of the photos I was taking. This way I didn't have to rely on my memory to know where the photo was taken.

Secondly, I used the first frame of each roll to shoot a roll ID. Most of the time this was just a piece of paper (my log sheets) with the number of the roll written on it. At other times I was a little bit more creative, or so I think. It wasn't always convenient to write on a piece of paper. I also enlisted the help of some of the other group members at times.

This image shows the more creative of my roll numbers.

 

Hopefully soon I'll add more of real content. Sorry for the delays.

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.