At 4 o’clock the phone starts ringing. My 1roommate Trisha is eager to start the day on time, so she is always the first one up. While she is getting ready, me and my other roommate Liz are still in bed. After I realise I probably won’t be sleeping anymore I also get up.

The breakfast is served at 4:30. We are always all trying to walk on toes, carefully move the chairs when sitting down, speaking in low volume so the other guests in the hotel can sleep. Although the other guests sometimes tend to have large parties in the night. So the breakfast topic is usually who was able to sleep and how good was it. On some occasions somebody might drop a cup of coffee or tea on the floor and make noise which is perfectly acceptable.

Some people don’t go well with hard work, heat, sun, local food… So every breakfast we do a head count to be sure who is coming to the site.

We then rush for our bags, equipment and get in the cars (at the moment we have 15 people in the group so we have 3 vehicles, next week we will have a small bus for the larger group)

Ideally we reach the site before the sunrise so that Jacob can take a photo of each field holding his industrial selfie stick.

By that time each field members make sure they have their tools, sifts, guffas, buckets…

The basic idea is to determine where to dig, sift the dirt, document the process. But sometimes you get stuck with too many rocks, so after an hour your hands feel useless, or your back is ina lot of pain. Sometimes you have to take a GPS reading of your square, or locus so while supervisors are busy the rest of us can just sit and enjoy the view. Of course if you dare to sit on the rock. After finding a small snake, a big black scorpio and small yellow one (the deadly one), small viper (deadly if we don’t get to the hospital in two hours) and several large spiders (which where considered “cute” by some strange members of our group) just on our first day I was determined never to sit on the rock or the ground no matter how tired or exhausted I get.

Around 9 o’clock we have the second breakfast. It is strange how time flies when you work and so cool when you hear the car honking meaning the food has arrived. Our dear leader, Željko is driving half an hour in each direction to get us some lovely falafel sandwiches, fresh bread, hummus and fruits. Watermelon is a must, we all eat it so we don’t have to drink too much. But yesterday was special because we had bananas as well. There were some plums but I am not crazy about them.

After that we all feel fresh and ready to dig up everything, but the heat gets to us all. The sun is burning, if there is a breeze we feel we are in heaven. Most of the days we just become slow. You just feel that you are moving slowly. And since everyone around you is the same work slowly gets continued.

Going back means everything must be cleaned, back in order, put to place but we manage to get to hotel before 1 o’clock.

Showers feel like heaven, but more important lunch is the highlight of the day. Yesterday we had the softest lamb meat ever, today was curry chicken. There is always a variety of salads, hummus and the best dessert ever.

After lunch we are reading and washing the pottery. A perfect opportunity to learn from the best. Paul Ray was teaching us about the deciphering of the pottery sherds. It is always a pleasure to see how people get excited about diagnostical pieces.

After that we just have rest, sleep, talk to our family, write emails, write essays…

Until dinner time and then we go to sleep hoping we will fall asleep soon so we will be fresh the next dawn.