Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

May 27th: The Day it Rained in the Desert

Not to spoil the surprise with the title, but it's pretty amazing when you wake up to an overcast morning, especially when the first day I woke up with the sun on my face, I had to move down the bed to avoid a burn. 

Today started with the usual motions, with a few exceptions - first, the addition of Brian to our party, meaning that Khris is now responsible for our square only! Exciting news, and especially so since Brian is such a treat to be around. Secondly, there were wild dogs runnign down towards us on the highway, and crows at the site - the first groups of animals we'd seen. So strange, but definitely fitting given the odd things that followed.

It seemed a fair trade that after fighting through our square with us, we spent the first half of our morning working on Darcye and Mike's space. Theirs is digging through a modern road to an ancient one, meaning hard-packed dirt and stone a LOOONG way down. Overall, pretty difficult but fun to do - you get to use the Fas Kavir (Big Pick), which I really like. The next big change was that the sky was pretty dark - dark with clouds. We were wearing sunglasses and having trouble seeing properly, and it was so lovely and almost cool.

We had second breakfast with Mohammed - it was so wonderfully delicious, with fresh feta cheese even, and such a pleasure to sit with him and enjoy our quiet time together. He's just the sweetest man. While we were drinking our shai, I felt something like a plop on my head, and assumed a bird had flown there, until another droplet fell on my arm. Like children on Christmas morning, we started getting excited. It was barely spitting - in Ottawa, I probably wouldn't have noticed or cared. But in the middle of a desert, there is nothing more spectacular than a few droplets of rain shading the ground and cooling your skin. Especially when you're so coated with dirt, that they leave a water mark.

While we were digging in Darce/Mike's square, we kept hitting massive rocks, until Meaghan and Mike taunted me about how I wanted to get a heavy one out by myself. I couldn't loosen it, but I DID lift it after and carry it to the dump site - really funny and Mike took advantage of his SLR's amazing picture-taking capability to catch about 20 embarrassing shots of it. Needless to say, I let him have the next (and THREE TIMES LARGER) rock that I discovered - it took 2 to carry.

After second breakfast, we dug until Khris called us back to our square - finished with our 00 locus, we were allowed to continue down. At last, usable finds! We got our first bone, shell, pottery - it was so fun and such a satisfying feeling to get rid of some of the soil and discover our first finds. 

Final weird thing, but amazing - Salim gave Khris a ride on his camel, and then offered to give me one too! So I had my FIRST CAMEL RIDE! It was SO COOL! They are such strong animals, you don't really get a sense of it until it's carrying you, though its motions are a little bit odd. Still, SO COOL! 

It rained a little bit more, and we returned to the dig house to go through the motions once again - wash, eat, wash pottery - but while pottery washing, the rainfall continued - this time with enough water to cool us down pretty significantly, though even then it wasn't even enough to create a film on the ground. It was so great.

The evening passed in the usual way, and it was really wonderful to relax and enjoy the strangeness of today. Loving the roommates, the square partner and the general pace of the day!

Another bit of news that's quite exciting is that when speaking with Mohammed and attempting to describe the beauty of Wadi Rum, he invited us to go camping there with him! Hopefully that will happen sometime soon.

Best wishes from Aqaba!