Dry Dusty Day

Not only dry and dusty but a bit dull. Perhaps I had some premonition that this would be a slow day when I started today's photo journal with shots of our bathroom. Who knows? Ken and I share a hall with one other married couple, Matt and Monique Vincent. The four of us share a large bathroom at the end of the hall. Water is precious so we wash with care and pour water from laundry buckets down Turkish toilets, or squatty potties, as I call them. Also, and this may be too much information, no paper of any kind can go down the toilet, but must be put in the trash.

Sure enough, work struggled to gain momentum in square 7K23 once we arrived. Graeme was seen lounging several times through out the day, and my work was so slow that I had time to capture a short series of pictures featuring our dig site latrine including views from inside. Returning to the square I managed to catch my first glimpse of the Joshua cloth; this handy device allows for shadowless photos on bright days. Remember the story of Joshua asking that the sun stand still? Thus the name. Anita and Aboud continued work on locus #20 and I hauled quffas to the sift – I have the dusty face to prove it. Instead of changing pails every 10-15 quffas, we brought back two pails, and these only because removal began on the balk in locus #20. Once again the rock to dirt quffa was one to one.

Second breakfast brought on a wave of drowsiness for many of our group. In the square next to Ken's, a fire ring, small mound for mortar stone, "table" surface and other signs of a kitchen in the middle of a house were found. Very unusual. Amjed, the guy who likes to tease Graeme and also one of the workers in Ken's square, gave him a beautiful copy of an English/Arabic Q'oran. This compliments the prayer beads that Abu Turkey gave him last week.

After supper I joined Monique, Carrie and one of the Stephanies for yoga. Then off to conversational Arabic from 7:00-8:00. Now done with blog, so time for bed.