One more reason not to sleep on the ground....

In mid-June, Mo arrived in Amman from her fieldwork in Turkey; Yo, cleaned up after 11 days living in a tent at Wisad Pools without bathing, met her at the airport. The next day, after a quick visit to ACOR to re-fill water cans and shopping to replenish supplies, we headed out to Wisad to rejoin the other two team members.

We will blog more on that in the near future, and hopefully Mo will upload some images from Turkey and talk about the survey there.

But while you wait, we thought we'd post this short video clip of an unexpected visitor in our camp at Wisad. If you can identify the species, we'd appreciate it. We are guessing perhaps a horned desert viper, although it doesn't seem to have the horns; a sand viper seems unlikely as this one was out in the heat of the day (twice).

Me and my monkey

Over a week ago, Yo and Mo worked on lodgings for the upcoming dig season. After a nice visit to Shorashim, we then drove towards the Sheikh Hussein bridge at Bet Shan, where Mo would be crossing for her flight from Amman to Istanbul. On the way, we stopped to visit Nazareth, a place neither of us had been before. We didn't really know where to go, but finding some of the major churches wasn't that difficult. We visited the Basilica of the Annunciation, a modern Catholic church built on the remains of Crusader and Byzantine churches. The interior is unusual, but its coolness was welcome. The little tyrant with a badge literally yelling at tourists and clapping his hands as if shooing swine flu ridden pigeons was not so welcome. (making more noise than the tourists!).

Of course, Yo is just bitter because he was just starting to drowse after not sleeping one wink the previous night!

The monkey generously given to Uncle Yo by niece L, was thirsty so we had a Coke, and a coffee. Then we took Mo to the border for her adventure, getting to the Amman airport and onward to Turkey.