By Rachel Belcher
Students scaling the Roman Theatre (often called the “Amphitheatre”) in Amman (Photo By R. Belcher)
Well we successfully made it through our second week here in Jordan and in my opinion the hardest week as it was the highly anticipated first week on site! It was definitely harder than expected but we all made it out alive and with some pretty amazing experiences in our books already. The work week here starts on Sunday and goes all the way until Thursday with Friday being our day off. Waking up on Sunday morning for our fist day on site was a whole mix of emotions. Excited, nervous, scared, curious and who could forget TIRED from waking up at 4:30am. It’s about a 15 minute bus ride to site and when we first arrived Deb gave us the grand tour of the mountainous area where we would spend the next four weeks working our butts off and learning as much as we could possibly soak in in what seems like both a long and short period of time.
One of the first things I noticed when I got to site was the unbelievable view that we got to look at for 8 hours a day. The site of Khirbet al-Mukhayyat looks over the Dead Sea, Jordan Valley and West Bank. It’s really convenient when you’re dying during the day to look at where you are and take in the enormity of what you’re actually doing. After the tour we split into our squares and got to work. The first day of course was the hardest as we all tried to train our bodies to adjust to the extreme heat and hard labour I’m sure were not used to at our cushy homes. Throughout the week peoples’ squares really began to develop and you could see the project starting to come together as a whole. Skills were developing fast and people were learning how to properly deal with things like paperwork as well as things going on in their square such as getting to use the pick axes or troweling away at the ground.
One of my personal favourite things about working on site, and also about being here as a whole is getting to work on site with some of the local Jordanians that live around here. I think it really adds to our cultural experiences as a whole getting to know them, having them teach us Arabic words, such as rock (of course) and being able to teach them some English words in return.
In addition to the 7-8 hours a day we spend on site we also get to spend about two hours a day doing lab work and practicing the jobs that we’re assigned too. The first hour of this is usually spent on the roof washing pottery and the second hour is spent doing something like data entry, pottery registration or if you’re lucky like me, pottery drawing.
This week was also an extremely exciting week for two reasons, the first reason was that we had not one but two birthdays this week. Ashley and Deb both celebrated their birthdays on site this week and we got to enjoy a lovely cake at breakfast for Deb while enjoying live music by one of the workers, Mohammad, who brought his oud which is a Middle Eastern type of guitar/lute, and sang for us on our break.
The second reason this week was so exciting was because we got to go on our first field trip. On Saturday we all packed into the bus (literally) and headed to Amman for a day filled with history. First we were able to go to the Amman citadel where Deb gave us a brief explanation of the history and then let us wander around and explore for about an hour. After taking many, many photos we all got back on the bus and traveled to our next destination which was the Roman “amphitheatre.” We all got to hike up the structure and hang out at the top. The view was absolutely incredible and it was an experience ill never forget. Our last archeological stop on the trip was supposed to be the new Jordan Museum but that plan got slightly derailed, as it was closed for the day. We finished our trip on Rainbow Street and soothed our disappointment of the closed museum with shopping and food and then headed home to get to bed early for another day on site.
Although this week had its ups and downs and it was an amazing experience that I wouldn’t change for the world. So even though I’ve never cleaned so much dirt out of my ears and nose and I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this tired, as I lay on my bed ready to fall asleep I think that everything will be worth it and even though I’m tired and sore it just means I’m working hard. I can’t wait for what the rest of this trip holds, bring on next week!! (AND PETRA!!!!!!!!!!!!!)