Monday, 24 May

A light day, but interesting. I got promoted today, in a barrel scrapping move, to square leader. This means I, with a helper, supervise 4 newbies in digging down our 12' x 12' square of Israel, making sure we do it properly (I can do that) and making sure we record properly everything we do and we find. Since this involves over a dozen different forms, not to mention drawings, this is a challenge. But it'll happen. Spare time will be way down though.

After breakfast we went out to the site for a quick orientation. Here you see one of our supreme leaders cluing us in. He will also be eyeing my paperwork for correctness.When we returned we had a talk by a local policeman. One of the bomb squad. Since a landmine was found on the site last year, we will now get an general orientation every year. Omrit is safe, having been tromped around for over 10 years now. (The item found last year was probably dumped by an off-season visitor.) As long as we don't cross any fences that say "Danger Landmines" we'll be fine. Unfortunately a few months ago an Israeli family somehow got inside such a fence with unpleasant consequences. The local policeman says they find mines, shells and rockets ranging from WWI to the Lebanese war a few years ago.After lunch us newly-minted lower middle-management had an orientation where we rec'd our stripes and our paper-work. Later this evening there will be a general orientation for everyone. And then off we go at 5am tomorrow!

Oh yes, my area will be just outside the temple podium where that was a lot "tumble" (a good technical term) when the temple was dismantled, or fell, or whatever. We'll be cleaning around some very big, very important pieces of stone that perhaps we won't have to move.