Well, not really...that would have been T.E.Lawrence during WW1, though we did get a chance to briefly browse around Aqaba on the last leg of our 3 day tour of Wadi Rum and Petra in Jordan last weekend!
Highlights: Wadi Rum was fantastic (especially seen at sunset as we did) and we felt was much more dramatic and grand than even the Painted Desert in the Southwest! Everything here looks like it just got pushed out of the depths of the earth yesterday! After our excursion and racing back across the deep red sand to the waiting bus our beduin driver in his haste to beat the other jeeps nearly tipped us over twice and then lost the back bumper!! It made The Wild Ride Ride of Mr. Toad seem tame! Subtract about 85 years and it would've been a camel race back to the camp and we'd've lost a few riders!
Petra was fantastic (how could it be otherwise?)! Mary and I had been here 10 years before but only for about 2 hours, so our 2 day stay was more than compensation for the earlier. I'd forgot how majestic and huge everything is there as we walked down the narrow canyon to see the famous Khazneh ("The Treasury" made movie famous by it's appearence in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade)and further along the gorge. We enjoyed the hospitality of beduin refreshment occasionally as we explored here and there, hiking up to the "High Place," seeing the current excavation of an enormous temple and just getting lost in the wonder of it all!! Be sure to ask Mary about her donkey ride down the stairs from The Monastary...
The evenings were a sight for the eyes as we wandered in and out (quick! Out! Before we get handed another glass of tea!!)of little shops near our hotel. We almost bought a rug the next day but, wonder of wonders, the shop never opened before we left!
Susannah and I had an opportunity to have a dip in the Red Sea a few days ago. We drove down the coast south of Eilot to within a kilometer of the Egyptian border and found a good beach. Susannah liked all the multicolored fish that would swim up to her but hated the salty taste of the water! She didn't last long so I took her underwater camera and got as many shots of the fish and coral as it lasted. We'll see how they turn out when we get back.
Mary has been assigned the job of recording all the material that comes in from the field. It's quite a time consuming operation. The pottery gets washed, dried and applied with a little bit of nail polish (and not just any old nail polish as they've been finding out!) so a catalog number can be written on it and then the numbers recorded in the catalog notebook. Mary likes it because she gets to see all the goodies that are unearthed at the site.
We can't believe our stay here at Lotan and YotVata are within a week of being done!! And then back up north and more adventures. We'll be seeing Nora Kort again and hope to have Susannah attend some of the school that one of the Palestinian social services provide. Plus, we're going to try and get over to Jordan again, hopefully Amman...
Too much to see and time is feeling like it's starting to run out!
'Til the next post, this is your Senior Dig Slacker Husband Assistant-type signing off!
Randy
1 comment:
Hi Mary, Susannah and Randy,
It's so great to get your words and pictures from the desert. I'm back from General Assembly which had its own dry winds, as well as one elder commissioner arriving just in time to have a heart attack and die. Our histories may be uncoverable in the sands of time, but lives do get cut off unexpectedly. GA didn't really do much of consequence. We are still studying investments and it could lead to a recommendation on divestiture; we worship a triune God; peace, unity and purity exists because we allow dissent and agreed to take no new action (which is a form of action); people in Colombia may be safer because PCUSA supports an accompaniment program.
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