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Colleen: Hope you made it home safely. See how far we got today on your column!

First off, square “ZZ99” indicates one of the many surprises in the NE church complex. When “the other Dr. Schuler” (that is, the archaeologist, not the blogger) first laid out the grid for the church in 2002, he thought row A1 was as far east and north as he would need to excavate. NOT!
Rachel’s team of Cheeseheads (all hail from Wisconsin) worked and worked and worked in square ZZ99. Here they are on a break, from left to right: Rachel Hedberg (returning volunteer from Seoul, S. Korea); Ellie Bach from Concordia, Irvine; Anna Fink from Concordia, St. Paul; and kneeling in front, Emilie Bach, sister of Ellie.





“Gosh!” you’re probably thinking, “I didn’t know everyone had to wear hardhats to dig.” You’re right. Everyone doesn’t—just the “lucky” women of ZZ99, who had to dig and dig down three, yes, THREE METERS (that’s over 9 feet)! Below are the Bach sisters (they have such great musical talent, one wonders if they’re related to JS himself) smiling UP for the camera.





When they found the top of the door jam on Monday of week 2, it confounded Dr. Archaeology Schuler because the door opened the opposite way he predicted. It took them another two day (a total of nine dig days) to find the threshold at floor level:





I think they missed this spectacular sunrise from Wednesday morning because they were deep in their pit:




Ellie and Emilie and everyone from Irvine (plus Heidi, Colleen, and Tina), we miss you already!

Please excuse the poor quality of this video! It was filmed on the boat ride arranged by Veteran Digger Darryl Schmidt for Thursday night, July 16. For more pictures and commentary about the boat ride, see Andrea and Cameron’s blog and photos.
Jody and Jocelyn Harrison were here as volunteers for the Haifa team. They each came up on alternate days while the other stayed on the kibbutz with the kids. Some days Max and Chloe came up for part of the dig day. The entire family joined us for our Sunday evening worship on July 5 and 12, and Darryl invited them to join the group on the 2 hour boat ride on the Sea of Galilee this past Thursday. It was a great closing activity for the Harrison’s and the Irvine Group, both of whom left this weekend.

I promised more information about our Jerusalem trip from last weekend. A group of us walked to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after dinner to watch the door closing. Six different Christian groups have rights in the church (Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Latin, aka, Roman Catholic, Syrian, and Coptic, and Ethiopian), but they can’t agree on who should have the key. For the last 200 years, the key has been held by the same Muslim family. This guy is obviously used to a crowd watching him; and one can tell I’m not the only person there with a camera—count the number of flashes!

Colleen and friend Tina arrived on Wednesday of week one, but Tina was sick, and Colleen, a first time volunteer, stayed on the kibbutz to care for Tina and only had one week to dig. On Sunday of week two, Colleen’s first dig day, she worked with John, Carl, and me on E5 west (on the west side of the church complex—at the bottom of the aerial photo on the main web site). On Monday we moved to the east side of the complex to open a new square, ZZ1. As an experienced digger at opening squares (this was my 4th time), I KNEW there would be nothing to find or save (including pottery shards on the first day. Imagine my surprise when Colleen unearthed this!





I don’t have a picture from Tuesday, but here’s how far we got by the end of the day Wednesday. We all took turns sitting on “Colleen’s column”:





By the end of the week (Thursday), we had uncovered enough to see the second column drum, a sure sign that this column is resting on the floor! Colleen’s feet are dangling freely!





Here she is hugging her column at the end of the week. In spite of a rocky start to her time on the dig, Colleen had a great time on the dig!