A day in square 7K23

We continue removing the east balk to reveal a diagonal stone wall. Anita, and I (Rebecca), worked steadily with our local assistants, 15-year old K'sigh and 23-year old Aboud.
Meaningful employment fosters good morale and with this in mind we rotate duties so that all four of us take a turn at digging, sweeping, hauling quffas with dirt or rocks, and sifting.

While we work K'sigh and Aboud help us learn the Arabic words for our tools and other important things. We write the phonetic English equivalent on a tatty paper that we keep close as we dig. (Rolling the r sound required).

broom: furshya
dust pan: mudroot
pick: mukoosh
trowel: mustrayah
large pick: fas
large: kabeer
small: zarear
pottery fkhar
bone: ahdam
rock: hajar
break: straha
watery: maya
sun: shemps
hot: har

In other news, our team broke through the topsoil (may it be cursed) and began a new locus today. Digging now is much easier. My right wrist, elbow and shoulder celebrate. This layer of dirt is crumbly and full of larger rocks. Before we began work on locus 6, our supervisor Lizzy showed us how to draw a top plan. Thinking I'm artsy and this will be fun, I took on the task with some enthusiasm. Ugh. I do not like drawing the tops of rocks to scale on dicey graph paper. Art, it seems, has nothing to do with it.

Final notes for today: field M brought back a total of 10 pottery pails today, five from each square. That made for a lengthy pottery washing session and one can only guess how tomorrow's reading will go. In pottery reading today, our collection from yesterday yielded three stoppers and one unfinished spindle whorl: our first objects.
Ken and the kids went to the souq with a group and I'm enjoying a bit of quiet. Our next door neighbor, Monique Vincent, and I did a 20 minute yoga session to help stay limber after spending the day hunched over pick and quffa. This post is done so now I'm ready for bed. It's 8:37 local time. Good night.