Hello again! It's been a while since I last made a post, so I thought I would write one today. I am in Tel Aviv with Melissa and Bronwyn. Creighton is back home in Canada, Laurine is in Jerusalem and Noah is in Akko. I will be here in Tel Aviv until probably next Sunday, at the latest. After that I will go to Beit She'an.
We were supposed to meet at the French Hospital in Jaffa to get introduced to our work site Tuesday morning, so we decided to go down Monday and stay the night. We stayed at the Overstay Hostel, the same one I stayed at over Passover, and then went out to explore the area. While we were out we got a call saying that we were no longer able to work at the French Hospital, so they were changing our plans and would let us know Tuesday morning. This last-minute change of plans caught us off-guard, so we decided to have a "crazy" night. First we ate a barbecue dinner at an American-style barbecue restaurant we found in the Jaffa Flea Market and drank some wine. When we got back to the hostel we bought a bottle of vodka and partied on the roof of the hostel. We got quite drunk, but had a good time.
Tuesday morning we went to the hostel we were staying at for the next two weeks. We met Alison there who got us situated. We then went on a tour of the French Hospital with the head of the company that we were supposed to be working with. We worked with him previously in Akko learning masonry. The tour was interesting. The hospital was built in the mid-19th century on a site that had crusader ruins as well. We saw the church as well as some of the corridors, and learned what they were doing to conserve and renovate the building. The building is being transformed into an apartment and hotel complex, so it needs a lot of modern renovation. The church is being transformed into a ballroom-type area, to suite its already fancy nature. The tour finished up our day Tuesday.
Wednesday we started with a tour of Jaffa given by the head archaeologist of the Tel Aviv area. He focused his tour on the history of Jaffa since the middle of the Ottoman Period, and it was very interesting. He is currently directly overseeing two excavation sites in Jaffa, one in a French School near the French Hospital and another in the "Greek Market," and let us into the French School to show us what he was doing. After we left the French School we traveled to Lod to visit Shay Farkash's studio. The studio is where they do their work if they can't do it on site. It also seems to be Shay's personal garage. There are old signs, posters, doors and other knick knacks. Some of the stuff he had was pretty cool. After our tour of the studio we headed back to Jaffa and finished the day.
That was the last of my structured time here so far. Thursday Melissa went to work with Shay, but there wasn't enough work for Bronwyn or me to join her. These last three days I've been wandering around. Walked through the Carmel market in Tel Aviv, walked along the beach promenade, walked through Old Jaffa. Today I spent most of the day lying on one of the beaches in Tel Aviv. Next week I'll post what I do. There won't be much work since Tuesday and Wednesday the country is off for the holiday of Shavuot.
Until next time!
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