Yesterday was another all day field study. We went to a number of interesting tels, saw where Samson (of Samson and Delilah) lived, and the valley where David was when he slew Goliath. Both of these areas were full of wild flowers, red poppies and other yellow, purple and white wild flowers. There are a lot of rocks on these hills and the wild flowers push their way up between them and then spread out over the rich soil. It was so pretty there, I had wished I had my paints with me and could have stay all day.
We also went to Ashkelon, a city on the coast of the Mediterranean. In the cliffs above the beach are layers of antiquity, some of the students climbed up the cliff and pulled pieces of broken pottery out of a layer about half way up the cliff. I picked up some pieces including a pot handle that still had part of the pot attached to it. These pieces are probably from the Roman period 37 AD to 180 AD. The sky was clear but there was a cool breeze, a couple of the girls had worn their bathing suits under their clothes, they stripped off there clothes and ran into the water. The swim was very short. The water was cold. I took off my shoes and sox and waded in the water and sorted through the piles of shells that had been washed up onto the beach from the last few storms. I would have liked to stay here all day too.
This morning Don and I found another “Waffle House”. The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, fresh vegetables and fruit, olives (of course), a French bagel with creamed cheese and seasoned olive oil, coffee, juice and a cookie. It was a lot of breakfast so we skipped lunch. We eat well here, when I say well, I mean healthy. With all the hiking and healthy food, we should be in great shape after two years.
The lady next door is sharing her cleaning lady with me. She will be here every other week and next door every other week. It doesn’t cost much, 125 shekalim (divide that by 4 to get dollars) and she does a good job. Boy am I getting lazy!!!!
We hope you all are doing OK, we miss you a lot..................
Shalom.....................Bernice