Dreaming in Arabic

You pay to participate in a dig. (Or in our case, the college paid.) It was pretty funny considering that under different circumstances, the work could be considered manual labor. It took my body a few days to get adjusted. For one thing, on the first day I went for 9 hours without using the bathroom despite that I was drinking water all day. The same thing happened on the second day but then at some point I got back to normal and started making frequent visits to the Johnny-on-the-Spot. MA and I absolutely loved the Israeli student leader who was over our area. His name was Amos and his clothing consisted of cut-off jean shorts, a t-shirt and the standard Israeli sandals. I could imagine him as a dark-haired cute Israeli boy who'd only gotten bigger over the course of twenty years. Archeology was his profession, not quite as Jewish as being a doctor or lawyer, but certainly far more Israeli. Tolerant, easy-going, but committed to his work, he was the ideal supervisor. I was told he could read pottery as well as he could read the Torah. Amos always had to be called over if we found some pottery since it had to be measured in its spot to know what level it was at. Sometimes he would warn us that we might get moved to another area since they needed more people over there and we'd say, “No, Amos! We want to be with you!” And he'd smile modestly and say in his thick English, “Better the devil you know, yes?” And he'd go away shaking his head.