Thursday, June 10

First let me tell you about that pottery I had a picture of yesterday - I got a query and I, unthinkingly, had thought everyone would know what it is. It is an oil lamp, sometimes called a boat lamp from it's shape. Olive oil into the big hole and a flame from the small hole.

Allison and Sarah are guest blogging today:

Hello! This is Sarah and Allison from Bill’s square, your guest bloggers for the day. Today was kind of boring - we continued taking down the tumble in our square and moved a lot of rocks out of the way. So we’ll talk about the highlights of the last few days instead.

On Tuesday, we took a walk to the Jordan river. It’s a pretty walk, with fields of sunflowers and apricots on the way. Here’s a picture of Allison with the sunflowers:
And Sarah at the river:
Yesterday, Allison went to visit Tel Hai College, to meet up with students from the Center for Peace and Democracy, whom her “Background to the Modern Middle East” class at Macalester skyped with several times. At the meeting, they talked about the recent flotilla incident and planned for future joint Macalester/Tel Hai classes.

Meanwhile, Sarah went to a Golan Heights winery with Bill and some others. We toured the winery and had a wine tasting of all the local varieties.

Sarah and many others drink “spa water,” which is regular water in a bottle with cucumbers, lemons and sometimes mint. We’ll get Bill to post a picture of this deliciousness soon.

We would also like to mention that Bill’s wheat lecture yesterday was awesome. Who knew there was so much to say about wheat!

And finally, a nice photo of the sunrise over Syria. It almost makes getting up at 4:30 am everyday worth it. Almost.