Excavating Canaan as Israelis

For the last couple weeks Matt has been working on an archaeological dig. What this means for me is that I have been sleeping alone. Thankfully it hasn't been too lonely since work has been keeping me busy and our friends are still living with us. 

Being on an archaeological dig is like being at adult summer camp. You live on site (or close to it), you have bunk mates, communal meals, group activities and a giant sand box to play in all day. While it sounds like fun and games, it is also an intense amount of physical labor. You wake up at 4:30am to get in a full day of digging before it gets too hot after lunchtime. The majority of digging doesn't involve uncovering amazing finds, but moving bucket after bucket of dirt. Swinging pick-axes, hauling rocks and collecting broken pottery take up most of your day.  Below, in a first time guest post, Matt explains what it's like to dig in the dirt as an Israeli...

When we made aliyah, the intention was to come to Haifa in order to begin my doctorate in archaeology. The hope was to dig as much as possible throughout the year to get as much experience as possible. If you know anything about our small country here, there is a lot to dig up. Basically everywhere you go there are ruins exposed or hiding beneath the surface of the ground. Quite often, these ruins are integrated into the modern landscape of the country and even find themselves in urban centers. There is so much at stake here that there is an Israeli law that requires archaeological surveys and excavations to be conducted before any construction project begins.

The second week we were here, I spent four days excavating at a site not so far from Tel Aviv called Tell Assur. It was an interesting salvage excavation located in the middle of a field. The project was a joint exposition sponsored by the University of Haifa and the local moshavim and towns in the area. The goal of the dig was to educate local school-aged children on archaeology and the history of the land of Israel.  That meant instead of archaeologists focusing on digging deep trenches and uncovering new finds, we were busy supervising (babysitting, really) a few hundred young Israelis teens hacking away with pick axes, hoes, and shovels in hand. Needless to say, we did a lot less digging and a lot more preventing the kids from destroying the site altogether.

The past few weeks, I have been excavating a Canaanite site that is over 3,500 years old (dates to the Middle Bronze Age). Called Tell Kabri, it is the third largest site in Israel from that time period, and it has the largest palace ever discovered here dating to that time. Located in the middle of Kibbutz Kabri’s avocado orchards (unfortunately it is not avocado season!), it likely once housed a local ruler that was not only Canaanite but that had many connections with the Mediterranean and Greek worlds. A number of years ago, archaeologists uncovered a beautiful fresco wall painting and painted plastered floor with scenes of landscape and the sea. These frescoes are the ONLY ones ever discovered in Israel and the origins of the style are from the Minoan world (a powerful kingdom that existed on Crete, Greece, around the same time period).

What are we working on this year? Figuring out how a large palatial economy functioned. What did Kabri trade, with whom did it trade, and how was trade and commerce conducted, in general? Fortunately for us, we found a large storage room on the side of the palace, filled from wall to wall with large storage vessels, many of which were over a meter tall. Once we are able to completely remove all of the vessels, we can begin to figure out the contents that they once may have held. We are hoping for olives, oils, wines, grains and more.

The past two weeks have been long intense days. The dig week is Sunday throughThursday. We wake up at 4:30 a.m. every morning, start digging by 5:00 a.m., and usually end at around 1:00 p.m. Some days we work double shifts, meaning we excavate through lunch and into the late afternoon. When we are not digging, we are doing other stuff like cleaning and analyzing pottery and bones and analyzing organic samples from soil we kept. It is exhausting work, but it is exceedingly fun.

The hardest part, of course, is being away from home and being away from Stef for so long. This is part of the trade, unfortunately. Luckily, we are only a short train ride away (about 30 minutes), so we’ve managed to sneak in a few extra visits throughout my time on the dig. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures I have been taking!

Sitting in Traffic as Israelis

As part of my job, I travel weekly with my group to places all around the country. And since it is my job, I travel even when I have a bad cold, like I did this trip (and still do). This week's trip was to the Negev, the large desert in the south that accounts for about 60% of Israel's land mass (but only houses 10% of the population).  As our destination was rather far from Haifa, we got on the road at about 6:45am for our 3 hour journey.  

Not even half an hour later, reports started coming in on the radio about a massive crash on the southbound side of the highway we were on. Two large trucks had crashed into each other, essentially shutting down the highway. After consulting with the bus driver, we decided to get off and find an alternative route. Unfortunately for us, the parallel highway was also backed up from an early morning crash and the our third highway option was so crowded from it's regular morning traffic in addition to all the drivers who would have normally been on the other two highways. So we sat in traffic. Eventually we made it off and got onto surface streets only to sit in more traffic. I told my group they were now having an authentic Israeli experience. Long story short, we made it to our destination 5 hours later.

Sadly for my group (and for me) we ended up spending more time on the bus that day than we did at the actual sites we were visiting. While I received my fair share of complaints, I am glad to have a few "silver lining" participants, who always manage to see the positive, no matter how small. "At least we got to see another part of the country, albeit briefly. When are we going to be back here in the near future anyway?"

(Warning: next story is a little gross) 

As we boarded the bus back to Haifa, just a mere 4 hours after arriving in the Negev, my exhaustion, the tremendous heat, my cold and my general bus sickness all caught up to me at once - I was going to throw up. Luckily in my backpack I had a plastic bag, which I grabbed immediately. I tried to ask the bus driver to pull over, but every time I opened my mouth I couldn't get the words out. I knew my only option was the plastic bag, so I nonchalantly (if you can say that about throwing up), did what I had to do.  

I was rather quiet and at first no one noticed.  Then the bus driver caught a glimpse of me in his rear view mirror. Immediately, he started to panic. His eyes went wide and his movements became jerky. Then he started gagging. He wildly pulled the bus off to the side of the road, threw the doors open, ran off the bus and puked himself. He turned back to me: "I have a thing when other people throw up."  He then insisted I get rid of my plastic bag.  When I looked confused and reminded him we were in the middle of the desert and there was not a garbage can in sight, he yelled at me to leave it in the bush, I was "not allowed back on the bus with that thing." As much as I hate littering, I conceded (I mean, I didn't really want to hold on to it either...). My last thought as we pulled away was: "should a man with such an adverse reaction to vomit really be a bus driver? Doesn't it sort of come with the territory?"

On that note, Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt

Hosting Americans as Israelis

I've written in the past about friends and family coming to visit us in Haifa.  We love having the opportunity to use our guest room and show off our new hometown.  This week we welcomed extra special guests, close friends who will be living with us for a month.

When friends stay for extended periods of time, they turn from guests into roommates. Having roommates means there are extra sets of hands to help out with the cooking and cleaning, which I absolutely can't complain about.  At the same time, they remain visitors which pushes us do things outside our normal routine - go out to dinner, sightsee, and have long discussions about politics and life in Israel.  

These friends happen to be here specifically to learn Hebrew. Both are graduate students and received a grant to come to Israel, immerse themselves in Israeli life and, like I said, learn Hebrew.  They will soon begin a summer ulpan course at the University of Haifa to formally work on their language skills, but in the meantime have been grocery shopping, opened a gym membership and traveled around on the train and buses speaking to everyone they can in Hebrew. I am thoroughly impressed with their determination and persistence to speak in Hebrew at every opportunity, even with each other and with us at home. 

One of the highlights of partaking in their experience is seeing their reaction to Haifa. Both of them have spent some sort of extensive period of time in Israel before (she was once my roommate in Jerusalem), but neither have spent much time in Israel outside the "tourist cities" aka Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. As people working on spoken language skills, being in Haifa has been a huge advantage even in these first few days of their trip. One of the challenges of having an American accent in Hebrew is, when detected by the Israeli who you are trying to engage in conversation, the conversation easily switches over to English.  Turns out that many Israelis are just as interested in using their English as we may be using our Hebrew.  In Haifa, however, this happens much less frequently. Our friends appreciate, just as we do, that local Haifans are more willing to speak to you slowly and allow you to stumble through your Hebrew without making you feel bad that you aren't quite fluent.  Maybe this is a result of us living in a particularly non-touristy part of Haifa where English is much less frequently heard. Maybe Haifa is just a slower paced city. Either way, we feel proud of our city when our friends come home from a day out on the town and express how nice everyone they encountered was.  We hope during the rest of their time here, Haifa continues to live up to their first impressions.  

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt

Living in a Small Country as Israelis

Writing about hospital visits three weeks in a row was not my intention, but sometimes that's just where life brings you.  Let's rewind a bit... On my group's schedule this past week was our big weekend trip/Shabbaton to Yerucham, a tiny town not too far from Be'er Sheva.  We left early early on Thursday morning for Jerusalem, where we spent the day, and then headed off to Yerucham to spend our weekend in the middle of the desert. We planned ahead that Matt would join the group for Shabbat - he would take the train to Be'er Sheva on Friday and then a bus over to Yerucham.  

On Thursday we got a call from Matt's aunt that his uncle had suffered a heart attack and was being treated at the hospital in Be'er Sheva. Rewind... Matt's aunt and uncle live on a kibbutz just north of Eilat (all the way in the south of Israel). When he wasn't feeling well, he went to the hospital in Eilat which is the closest, albeit very small, hospital. He then suffered the heart attack while in the hospital (which, if you're going to have a heart attack, is the best place to do it) and got medevaced in a helicopter to the larger, better equipped hospital in next biggest city, Be'er Sheva. 

Even though Be'er Sheva is on the opposite side of the country from Haifa, as fate would have it, Matt and I would both be in Be'er Sheva anyway on Friday, which allowed us to easily pop over to the hospital to visit with Matt's uncle and family.  It was a meaningful visit and we're glad we were able to do it with such little planning on our end (but lots of "planning" from the powers-that-be).

A quick story about getting to the hospital. I had agreed that morning to accompany a group of my students to Beer Sheva (with the intention of sneaking away for a bit). I also agreed to run an errand for a kid from another group who had broken his leg and had also recently broken his crutches. There is an organization with branches all over Israel called Yad Sarah that provides rental crutches, wheelchairs and other medical equipment to anyone who needs it, including tourists, and I was heading off to go switch out the broken crutches for working ones. As I walked down the street carrying the crutches and trying to hail a cab, our bus driver, who was patiently waiting in the parking lot for our group to finish the activity, began honking his horn at me.  "Where are you going?" he shouted at me through the window, "Do you want a ride?" I hadn't even thought about asking the bus driver for a private ride around town. In the end, I got a personal ride to Yad Sarah and also to the hospital, had a nice conversation with the bus driver and saved myself s few cab rides.  

Matt's uncle is now recovering well and has been released from the hospital. He asked us to reiterate to you all that he got to ride in a helicopter (for only the second time in his life). While in the helicopter, the paramedic struck up a conversation: "Where are you from? Oh, you're from a kibbutz?  A real socialist kibbutz? I'm also from a kibbutz, Ramat Rachel. Oh, your daughter works there?  Of course I know her! She's my children's preschool teacher!"  And so it goes in this tiny country where your helicopter paramedic's children are students in your daughter's preschool class.  

Let's hope that this is the end of hospital themed weekly updates.  Stay healthy everyone.

Have a great week,

Stef and Matt  

Keeping Things in Perspective as Israelis Part II

(Warning: this is a long one)

Being responsible for a group a tourists sometimes means you need to spend a week in the hospital.  Which is precisely how I spent much of this last week, but thankfully it was only 5 days.  And also thankfully, the kid ended up not actually being sick, story to follow.  

Just as I sent out last week's update, I went to check my work phone and realized it was off.  My battery had died about an hour and a half earlier and when I plugged it in to recharge, I forgot to actually turn the phone back on. 30 seconds after turning it on, my phone was buzzing out of control.  There were text messages and missed calls from basically everyone I work with.  I quickly called someone back to find out that one of my participants had been rushed to the hospital.  

Let's rewind a few days.  One of my participants got sick, nothing out of the ordinary, just classic upset stomach/potential food poisoning type symptoms.  After a few days with no symptom relief, he saw a doctor who prescribed some pain killers and told him to rest.  He went to work the next day anyway.  Since this participant works at a hospital (a different hospital than last week's story) and he was still feeling pretty off, he decided to walk downstairs and check himself into the emergency room.  Anyway, when I got the call from him that he was there, I hopped in a cab to go meet him.  We were there for a good 6 hours while they did a basic work up on him, including some blood tests, and they re-hydrated him with an IV (it seems that everyone who comes into an Israeli ER gets an IV regardless of why you're there - pretty sure I saw a guy with a broken leg also get an IV).  In the end, they said it was probably food poisoning, they sent him home, told him to eat plain foods and prescribed the same pain killers as the previous doctor.

Now fast-forward to Friday at 5:00pm.  I was just about to start cooking dinner when I had to abruptly leave and rush to the hospital. By the time I got there, my participant was already checked in to his own semi-private room (with an incredible view of the Mediterranean Sea, may I add).  The doctor explained that one of his blood tests from the previous day's visit to the ER had come back showing traces of bacteria in his blood. This, I found out, is quite dangerous and could lead to heart damage, which is why the hospital had actually sent a cab to pick up my participant from his dorm and bring him directly to the hospital.  No one I have spoken to has ever heard of a hospital here doing that before (maybe it's because he volunteers at the hospital?  such VIP treatment...). Nevertheless, he would have to stay in the hospital for at least a few days while they did more tests and pumped him full of antibiotics. I helped arrange that a few of his friends would bring him his stuff from his dorm and keep him company over Shabbat and I actually made it home just in time for candle-lighting and Matt had cooked Shabbat dinner in my place.  (So glad a married someone who can also cook).  

The next few days became increasingly frustrating as I spent long days in the hospital trying to get straight answers about this participant's condition.  Every visit from the doctor - a different doctor each time - seemed to come with a different story and a different diagnosis. "He has bacteria in his blood, but we don't yet know what it is."  "He hasStreptococcus Viridans, which is very dangerous and can cause heart damage and he needs to have an EKG right away."  Back to "we still haven't gotten conclusive results on the bacteria." And then "He could be here for up to two weeks with intravenous antibiotics" to "It seems that there was a contamination in his blood test and the bacteria is not actually in his blood and he will likely be released tomorrow."  And then "I don't know who told you he would be released today, but we're still waiting for conclusive results from his blood test and depending on how it comes out, he could be here for 6 weeks."  

At that point I lost it and demanded to speak to the head doctor on the floor. I needed one person to tell me exactly what was going on because after 4 days of sitting in the hospital, my participant, who was now feeling completely healthy, was itching to get out of his hospital bed and, let's be honest, I was not looking forward to spending another day there either. A nurse brought me into the doctors room and I demanded to be told all the most up to date facts and when we would be getting out of there. The answer was inconclusive, they were still waiting for test results. The doctor did manage, however, to insult me in the process: "Well, maybe you just didn't understand what the doctors have been telling you. Where did you learn your Hebrew from anyway? How well can you understand Hebrew?" I told him I understand Hebrew just fine which is why I have understood that every doctor has told me something different. He then confirmed that we would not be leaving the hospital that day and sent me away.

My blood boiling with frustration, I walked down the hallway, replaying what just happened in my head, trying to hold back tears. An elderly woman, whose 85 year old husband was 2 beds away from from my participant, saw me pacing the hallway and asked me what was wrong.  I sat down to speak with her and as soon as my mouth opened, the tears began to flow. I explained how I couldn't get a straight answer from a doctor, how my kid felt completely healthy and was more-or-less wasting hospital resources at this point, how I didn't know what to tell him when he kept asking me if he could just check himself out and go home, and how I felt like an idiot reporting back to my office and to the kid's parents that we still don't know what's going on after 4 days.  

To calm me down, the woman just starting telling me her life story. Both she and her husband are Holocaust survivors. She was just a young girl, 5 years old, when the war ended and came to Israel on a boat full of ma'apilim, illegal Jewish immigrants trying to come to British mandate Palestine.  The boat she was on was intercepted by the British and was rerouted to a detainee camp in Cyprus. After statehood was declared in 1948, she finally made it to Israel, grew up, married her husband and started a family. She had two children, a boy and a girl. Her son was later killed while serving in the IDF in the first Lebanon war. Her daughter, who had been in the hospital visiting earlier, now has children of her own and they are proud grandparents. Her husband, however, is very sick and she doesn't know how long he will have to spend in the hospital. She doesn't drive and she had to take two buses from their home just outside Haifa to come visit him that day. 

I sat there and listened. Here is this woman who has suffered a tremendous amount in her life and here am I crying because a doctor insulted my Hebrew and my perfectly healthy participant is stuck in a hospital while they complete further tests. Talk about keeping things in perspective. I thanked the woman, mostly because I didn't know what to say, but also because I was honestly grateful for her opening up to me the way she did and helping me reevaluate my situation. She told me to stop thanking her and sent me away to go get myself something to eat.  My participant was released from the hospital the following morning when it was confirmed that the first clood test had indeed been contaminated and he had been fine the whole time.

Later in the week I took my group to Atlit, a British mandate detainee camp near Haifa. Tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants were interned in this camp, similar to the later camps in Cyprus, between the years 1939 and 1948. The majority of my participants were unfamiliar with this part of Israeli history.  As I watched their faces in near disbelief that Jews were imprisoned for trying to make their way to what would become the State of Israel, I thought of the woman in the hospital and prayed for her husband's quick recovery.  

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekends,

Stef and Matt

Keeping Things in Perspective As Israelis

Well, it happened.  After 8 months of writing to you weekly, I missed a week.  It was bound to happen eventually.  At least this time I had a good excuse.

My summer participants arrived!  After months of prepping and searching for their internships, they are here and our program has begun.  Let's just say, I've been busy.  In the last week and a half I have received more phone calls and text messages than the previous 8 months.  It is really amazing what happens when 25 new people suddenly come into your life.  But not just any new people, 25 new people who are dependent on you for, well, basically everything.  As it turns out, I have a pretty great group and aside from a few minor glitches, everything has been running smoothly.  

I'll share one quick story.  For months and months I was basically playing a vicious game of phone tag trying to set up a participant's internship at one of the hospitals.  I was trying to plan ahead, settle the internship in plenty of time before the participant arrived and get as many details as I could so I could pass the info along to said participant and our Boston funders.  The volunteer coordinator at the hospital, however, had a different sense of the necessary timeline.  As far as she was concerned, we could call her the day before and it would all happen.  As this was not going to work for me, we spent many many weeks going back and forth until I got almost enough information to satisfy me.  The last step was for me to meet her in person before the summer began.  She was not going to have this.  We compromised and agreed that instead of meeting ahead of time, I would come with the participant on his first day and we would meet then.

Come day one of summer internship, I accompany my intern to the hospital.  We locate the correct office and we find... a note with my name on it  tucked into the doorknob.  I read the letter outloud, translating into English, which said that she was sorry she couldn't come in that day, but we could go directly to the lab where my participant would be working and meet the lab director there.  She left his phone number.  So began our scavenger hunt.  As the two of us wandered around a massive hospital that neither of us had ever been to before, meandering through winding hallways, asking for directions at every corner, getting into the wrong elevator, which was actually the right elevator, peeking our heads into hospital rooms we probably shouldn't have been in, I decided it would be a good time to share my "new to Israel" philosophy with my new-to-Israel-participant.  

"Sometimes (aka often) annoying and frustrating things.  People and things aren't where they're supposed to be.  Expectations aren't met.  Conventions and manners are broken.  You feel lost and confused.  But, when you stop and think about what's happening, it's actually a funny story.  Even in the moment, think about the way you'll tell this story to your family and friends and how absurd and hilarious it will sound.  That is what helps gets though the day."

And ultimately, that is why I write this blog.  To give me a chance to keep things in perspective and to laugh at myself and my life at least once a week.  Thank you all for reading and to my Dad for noticing that I didn't write last week.

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt

P.S. Happy Anniversary to my (Stef's) wonderful parents and Happy Graduation to Brittany (sister/sister-in-law), who is graduating from UCSB this weekend!  

Comparison Shopping as Israelis

One of the hardest things to stop doing after making aliyah is converting shekels back to dollars. I still find myself, when trying to figure out if something is expensive or not, calculating how much it would be in US dollars. This practice is obviously not fair (to me) and can only lead to frustration.  We have generally come to terms with the fact that as Israelis we will be making less money than we could have in the States and most products will nevertheless cost more than they did in the good ole USofA.  Such is life here (but thank the lord for trips back to visit family, aka trips to Target).  

The one place where I have completely stopped converting back to dollars is the grocery store.  Even pretty early on I got to know the average prices of food stuffs and felt no need to compare to what we paid back States-side.  But now, instead of comparing to dollars, I incessantly compare between grocery stores, which is both a blessing and a curse.  A blessing because the prices between stores really do differ and in pretty significant ways.  For example, there is a cooking oil that I sometimes like to use called Zeitola - a combination of olive oil (zeyit) and canola oil.  Sometimes I have a hard time even finding this product because you never know when it's going to be in stock or not (more on that later), but when I do find it, the prices are all over the board.  The average price I pay for Zeitola is 17nis (nis = new Israeli shekel).  This morning, at the Chareidi market (more on that later, too) they were fully stocked with Zeitola and it was only 14nis!  When I continued my shopping expedition (going to multiple grocery stores in one trip has become the norm), I found that our local branch of Shufersal Sheli was also fully stocked with Zeitola, but selling it for 23nis!  These two markets are less than a block from each other.

These "extreme" price differences can drive one crazy (here's where the curse part comes in) as you travel from shop to shop buying different products in different places, trying to keep straight in your head who has the best prices on what where.  And there is no logic to it.  Our corner store, which is generally the most expensive overall, has the cheapest tomato sauce in our entire neighborhood.  The Chareidi market, which generally has the best prices, is least consistent in stocking the products you're looking for, so every time you go in it's a gamble on whether they'll even have what you want anymore.  I used to go this this store for two products in particular, carob spread and 100% natural apple juice concentrate, which were cheaper here than anywhere else I had seen. Neither of these products are stocked there anymore, which has taught me the lesson of not getting attached to certain products or prices.  You just never know.  

To add the the shopping madness, I like to do my fruit and veggie shopping either at the shuk (open air market) or at the independent  fresh produce stand.  Quality and prices are much better than super markets.  I also generally buy my fish at the fish monger and my meat at the butcher, which adds two more stops to my shopping excursions.  I'm not sure the prices on fish and meat are any better than the grocery store, but I like the experience and freshness of going there.  

Many of our Israeli friends have moved past this madness by driving to the big discount super markets (those with cars) or simply moving past the price comparison shopping and ordering all their groceries online, after which they get delivered directly to their door.  We might get there one day (we'll see what comes first: a car or succumbing to online shopping), but as for now, I kind of enjoy my crazy shopping method.  

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt