I'm grateful for: one photo loaded at least; a working fan in my room; a miracle.

I'm beating my head against the wall, trying to get photos up on my fotolog. It's been a long time, so I'm going to have to see if this is usual or if I'm just having a bad night. If it really is this bad, then I will have to go someplace else with my photos, now that I am taking them again. It would be too bad, 'cause I've been quite comfortable with fotolog, and while I've checked out other photo sites, none of them have seemed as appropriate for what I do and how I do it. *sigh*

I anyone wants to click on the fotolog link above and see what, if anything, I've managed to get up, please do.

What started me on the fotolog thing is that we went to an archeological dig today, and I took photos, and I want to post them. But then I found all these other photos I'd taken and just left on the camera card. I really haven't been keeping my head above water for such a long time.

Another homeschooler here has posted about archeological digs fairly often, but this was the first time it was possible to go to one. TH and I, S2, S3 and D3 all got into our (extremely small) car and headed north. At the same time, S1 and the boy he takes care of got on the train in Petakh Tikvah to come south. D2 phoned just as we were leaving, her work was cancelled for the night and we discussed whether or not she could/would join us, but she ended up deciding it probably wasn't worth it. Oh, well.

It took us something more than an hour to get to the area, Modi'in (I can't think how to write out how it's pronounced, that is how I've seen it transliterated). As it happened we were going directly past the train station where S1 and D (the boy) were waiting, so we talked it over and agreed to pick them up and deal with the resultant squishing. It also allowed us in the car to use the train station bathrooms.

I did mention that our car is extremely small? If you do visit the fotolog, you just might get the impression, if you look long enough, that we are not a small family. D is not particularly large, but he is the only one. We did it, it's a five-seat car and with S3 on my lap and D on S1's lap, four in the back and three in the front we did it. Thank goodness we only had about three km to travel like that. Oy!

We went about two km on unpaved roads - roads which resembled our class 4 road in Vermont except for the lack of mud. There is a municipal dump site along the road, and obviously we weren't the first to go by, as someone inside stuck an arm out the window to indicate which way we were supposed to be going.

We parked by about a dozen other cars, and hiked in to the site. The absolute miracle, and it was a miracle, was that I actually hiked in with them. I'd been reasonably settled that I would wait in the car, figuring that was the way it had to be, but I actually made it. The steep slope down from the parking area wasn't the bad part, although that's how it looked at first. The dig was a city/town/settlement (I don't know which) from the Hasmonean period, and there was a stone wall still standing in parts, and several times we had to climb over fallen stones and/or parts of the wall. Still, I made it. Whoa.

It looked like any number of archeological digs you might've seen on a PBS show. Squares marked out with tape, and people sitting digging in the dirt, breaking up clods, sifting through for pottery shards and, if one was very lucky, a coin. We weren't so lucky as to find a coin, but we were quite successful in the area of pottery shards, particularly S1, who was digging away from everyone else and found quite a bit of larger pieces.

It's a wonderful thing - it's set up by the city, and a university, and a bunch of students. The public is invited, and it's all volunteer (we had to pay a nominal fee of ten shekel per person). There are people to explain what to do and how to do it. Why the dig is here and what they might be looking for or have found. And answer just about any other questions. There was a young woman (I would probably say girl) wandering with a roll of toilet paper, and plenty of buckets and pick-axes and spades and brushes and a few dust pans. And plenty of people, many with toddlers, which were so very cute to watch. That was probably my second favourite part.

They told us a little after 6:30pm that they were packing it in. TH arranged for me to get a ride back to the car with some of the people who had organized and run the dig. We were SO dirty. It was SO fun.

S3 and D actually didn't dig much at all, they each did a little, and D was so thrilled when we found him some 'natural' chalk, he started to collect the bits we dug up. Then he and S3 went off by themselves to play for the rest of the time. Two 8yo boys together, 't's wonderful.

I remember thinking, while the rest of us were at the dig and the boys gone off, that if we were in the U.S., at least in most parts of the U.S., we could've gotten in an awful lot of trouble at the very least for sending a couple of boys that age off by themselves to play by the parked cars. It's just a different world here, in some ways definitely a better one.

When we left, and piled all seven of us back in the car, one of the organizers asked didn't we have another car? I think she was worried we would drive all the way back to the Negev like that. I told her that the two boys behind me, S1 and D, would be taking the train and she was okay.

Another interesting thing that happened today is that we got stopped by a police - drat! What is the word? - I can't think of it. I suppose I'll have to call it a checkpoint, but it's not like the permanent checkpoints on roads where you enter or leave pre-1967 Israel. For whatever reason the police officers gestured us to pull over, all the way off the road, and gave us a serious looking-over. Shined their too-bright flashlights in the kids' faces in the back seat and everything. We had and have no idea what that was about, but our best guess is that they were maybe looking for a car like ours and were pulling them all over, or something like that. Our nice white anglo faces, red-headed boys, and generally wholesome appearance mean we are waved through almost everywhere.

We got home very late of course. S3 had a hard time falling asleep, and according to S2, he doesn't expect to sleep at all tonight. I don't know why. It was a good day. I can't tell you how much a hurt right now, too. Yesterday I did my exercises, a full work out doing everything that I ever do with the exercycle, weights and resistance tube. So I was sore *before* walking and climbing up and down all that way.

TH has to go in to work tomorrow, print, fill out, and mail or fax a complaint of a fraudulent charge, find out if my computer is ready (please!) either pick it up if it is ready, or get the car to D2 so she can get hers if mine is not ready. And be home in time to take me to the nutritionist. Also hopefully getting some actual work done in the office. Rough day.

Not for the rest of us, though, and I am going to do my best to rest so I am able to do stuff at the end of the week, like shop for groceries, and maybe even cook something.

Da**it! I've got a rash coming out all over my leg. I did bathe after we got home, but apparently that wasn't soon enough. It's not fun being allergic to half of the known world is all I can say.

I've got to stop, my hands and arms are tired, and I still have to hold myself up to type in the big computer. Good night

I'm listening to the Vienna Philharmonic doing Tannhauser. I'm not going to put in all the info about conductor and all that.

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06