We woke up at the Sde Boker Field House and started off our day with a beautiful hike through the Ein Avdat canyon/oasis in the Negev desert. In addition to the amazing scenery of the canyon and pools of water, at different parts of the hike some students saw a desert mouse, vultures, ibex, and a chameleon. The second part of the hike was a challenging ascent up the mountain to the top of the canyon. There were some metal ladders built into the side of the mountain, which made the climb even more special.
After the hike we spent time talking about Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion was one of the great leaders of Israel. He believed that building and developing the Negev desert was essential to the success of the modern state of Israel. Since Ben Gurion was a member of Kibbutz Sde Boker it was his wish to buried in the Negev desert by the kibbutz rather than in the National Cemetery in Jerusalem. We went to visit his grave and saw the magnificent view.
Next stop was a pizza lunch. I never saw so much pizza consumed!
We then left the desert and drove north to an archeological dig site at a Tel which is the ancient city of Maresha. We learned about the history of the Tel and then we went to work digging in caves, that were actually basements from 2,000 years ago.
We found all kinds of large and small shards, handles and bones. it was nice and cool in the cave and the time flew by. Next we carried buckets full of the dirt we dug up and shifted through all of the dirt to be sure we didn't miss anything important. there were archeologists there to help identify and explain our "finds."
After digging we went "Spalunking", crawling through a series of narrow caves by candle light. Yes, it was as cool and fun as it sounds!
Our final part of the dig experience was seeing pictures and stories about the major archeological finds that have been found at Tel Maresha. We all got to take home real pottery shards as souvenirs of our experience. The archeologist who was our guide told us that we were the best behaved group of Middle School students she has had in her four years of working with groups! We love getting those well deserved compliments!
An hour an a half later we arrived at the Alexander Muss High School Campus, took showers, dropped off our dirty laundry and walked around the corner to the lovely city of Hod Hasharon where we had dinner on the street- falafel, shwarma, hamburgers, whatever the kids wanted.
It was a great day, only the students (and teachers) were disappointed we didn't have wifi in the dorm at Alexander Muss. Hopefully we will have it tomorrow.
Today we really had a chance to feel some Israeli hot weather. Tomorrow will be hot again.... good thing we're going to the beach!
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