After several years of faithful service, the old virtual dig has been reborn under the design expertise of Jessica Meyer, Hippos alum and summer art intern. In addition to site design, Jessica is working with team members on setting up their blogs. During the dig season, she will take new photos from the site and build a virtual tour with 360-panoramas. Follow the adventure starting 26 June at http://virtualdig.org.

Up, up, up we go every morning before the sun rises. Today was another day digging atop the mysterious Hippos. The morning began with more digging in the street. There was only a little dirt left and the thought was that it would be finished by tomorrow. Apparently there was only enough to last through today. Dr. Schuler started a wall rebuilding program in the street. The basic idea behind the program was to pull out the wall stones level out the dirt and replace them so they were nice and neat. Rumor has it that there will be a parade in the street tomorrow because the street is finally finished after a long season. The other squares continued as normal. Linda lead a team in F2 sweeping and Rachel continued her leadership in the A squares. The F square is on the western side of the church and the A squares are on the eastern side. Focus shifted from the F squares to the side middle rooms to the south end of the complex. Tomorrow is one of our last days digging atop Hippos. Im sure it will be a great day.

Well, I am very pleased to say we are almost done with the street! Yay! We began this morning on a quest for pavers, but we didn't find very many. Apparently all the large stones were robbed out from the half of the street closest to the decumanus. Frustrating. Then the tractor came and removed some large stones, and pushed some dirt down from the sides. But we are doing great, and we are almost there! We might even finish tomorrow! In other news, the teams in C and A are doing wonderfully. New walls seem to be sprouting all over the place. Other than that, not much exciting is happening other than we are moving dirt, and exposing a lot of walls. In really other news, we have an oral exam today that I am really not excited about… shoot… Your Bro in Christ, Kevin

Today was another day up on top of Hippos. This morning was particularly special because we had the reburial ceremony for the ‘saints’ whose bones were extracted from the grave under the chancel. The service was a liturgical service by Rhoda, Dr. Schuler’s wife. There were quite a few people from other teams who attended as well. It was cool to do the burial as the sun was rising. We did the liturgy, a prayer, and the doxology, and Dr. Schuler poured the bones into the grave and anointed them with oil. Dr. Schuler even made a new friend with a big hairy spider that was down in the grave with him.
The street provided another rough day for the 7 people who were working on it. The POD, Pit of Despair, gave up more rocks today but Arny and Linda were not phased. They hauled dirt, and it was almost hard to keep up with them. Kristina and Kevin did a great job too today. They started out on the Decamanus and began working toward Arny and Linda. Mark handed buckets up to Jon and I who built a pretty fancy ramp out the excessive amount of dirt hauled from the pit. The ramp was named Ayd Mill in honor of the street in St. Paul. The A team worked hard today too. They took their squares down another level toward horizon C. They continued to expose the many walls that have appeared in their square.
Tomorrow brings another day of hard labor on the street and more dirt flying through the air as both teams work towards their goals. Thats all for now…peace!