Sponge Bob and pineapples

     Some friends have asked why we’re taking this Jerusalem trip.  It’s actually so I can work on the glass from the site of Sepphoris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzippori.  I worked at the site during the summers from 1991-97 and then again in 2000 and 2001.  Jason and I met at the site in 1992 (20 years ago!!). Okay, we actually met in the Air France terminal at JFK on the way there, but close enough.  This week I’m working on getting the glass from the site ready for final publication.  It’s pretty exciting to be working on this because the glass-workers at Sepphoris were a large focus of my dissertation and subsequent book: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3246414-hot-pursuit.  One piece that’s always been missing is a comprehensive look at the glass types produced at the site over time.

     I can’t show you a photo of the interior of the Antiquities Authority facility, so I drew a picture instead (sorry about the blurry photo).  As you can see, it’s not unlike that scene in the warehouse in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with cardboard boxes instead of big wooden crates on pallets.  The level I was on has unpublished materials, so no Ark of the covenant.  Unless it’s been excavated and not yet published.  Hmm....

     There were 10 boxes of glass (about file box size) for me to go through.  After spending 2 hours checking what was there against my database, I decided to take all of the boxes with me.  I drove them to the Albright Institute in Jerusalem, where they’ll be living in the VERY hot attic while I’m working on them (luckily I don’t have to work on them up there).  The rest of my day was spent going through boxes and collecting data.  There are many days of the same in front of me.  The rest of the family, however, will be doing things more worthy of reading about.  And so here is the first report from Eva:

     “At 10:30 Dad harshly woke us up.  We wanted to sleep.  We walked down Salah Ed’din St and bought a Sponge Bob keychain that was from yesterday’s smurf bobble-head store and two freshly squeezed orange juices on the way to Ben Yehuda in West Jerusalem.  Here’s Eli’s keychain—keychain part already broken—along with his drawing of it.  Dad did the face.”

     “The first thing we did on Ben Yehuda Street was eat at a small cafe called the Holy Bagel—pun intended.”

 “They had ginormous bagels that they stuffed with creams and vegetables.  Eli thoroughly enjoyed his half a bagel, claiming ‘It was the best bagel ever, it had tomatoes and it was delicious.  I forget what else it had but it was really yummy’.  I had a simple, plain white bagel with plain white cream cheese with tomato with plain lox.  It was very, very, very good, but they put on too much cream cheese.  Besides for that, it was amazing.”

 “We wandered around the streets begging Dad to buy us things.  When he said no, we were very very sad but we saw very cool things including a very neat door and some cool graffiti.”

 “Dad needed toothpaste, so we entered a store where first we went through a security machine and had Dad’s backpack checked and walked into the make-up department.  After seeing various blushes, lipsticks and other make-up products, we headed to the pharmacy.  We saw this axe body spray and cereal in small booths in between.  I took pictures of them because I thought they were funny.”

 

     “Then we went to a park with several huge boulders.  Eli said ‘it was great because there was a big stream and we bounced on the rocks one by one.  I jumped like ginormous high, really high, and I still lived.’  We then had the amazing idea to put Eli’s floatable flip flops into the stream so they could float down into a big pool and we could have the opportunity to get in the pool to get them out.  Dad thought it was a bad idea.  One of the shoes got stuck in a waterfall, but Eli got it out.  Here you can see us looking for the shoe while Dad knows exactly where it is:"

      “We saw the tram.  Dad wanted to take this photo because the tram wasn’t here last time he was.  We then walked a LONG way back to the hotel.”

     “This hotel room is much smaller than the one in Aqaba.  This is the room Eli and I share.  We’re both on cots.  Mom and Dad’s room in our ‘suite’ is about the same size.  Dad went out and got us french fries for dinner and then made us go for a walk so Mom could keep working.”

 “I took this photo on our walk because the pineapples are all cute and tiny and spiky.  And they could also be Sponge Bob's house...”