It seems that literally overnight, our waterbottle - "Jerry" - has become the supreme deity in a bizarre pagan religion centred around worshipping him. On the bus this morning, all anyone could talk about (particularly Ari and Burnett, the Kohanim Gedolim of "Jerryism") was Jerry: how he scored with the chicks last night; how he is all-powerful and all-knowing; and basically how important this waterbottle has become in the lives of all of us.
Ely, the Israeli security slash madrich slash funny man, announced on the bus that from now on, the 5 latest people on the bus every morning would be contestants in the tour's "Big Brother", and one of them would be voted off and sent back to Australia. The "Academy Awards", he called them.
In the morning, we went to the site of an ancient village, and got our hands dirty in an archaeological dig. Our Canadian tourguide took us down into some ancient caves, where we all got some "Hoes" (yes, there were many jokes about this!) and buckets and dug for long-lost artefacts.
I dug with Asher and Beck, and we found a hell of a lot of old pottery pieces. Unlike a group of religious girls a year before us, we did not find a [and I quote the tourguide]: "large, undamaged, anatomically correct clay penis": true story!
Sifting dirt at Tel MareshaOnce we'd dug up enough dirt and pottery, we formed a long line up and out of the cave, and passed all the buckets up the line. We sang some funny songs while passing these buckets up. Huddled in a dark cave, with our hands and clothes covered in dirt singing silly songs: as I stood there passing buckets up the line, I felt incredibly happy and fulfilled, as I realised that this was the pinnacle of our group experience so far. Never before had there been such a warm atmosphere, and such a strong connection between us all.
When all the buckets were up, we sifted through the dirt to see if there was any more pottery (or treasure!) to be found.
All of Academy 2 at the caves.Having finished with our digging expedition, we then went and explored two caves. The first one was reconstructed to look much as it did 2,200 years ago: an olive press. The second one was an untouched catacomb, and when we went through it, we often had to crawl through holes barely bigger than ourselves. The way was lit only by tiny flickering candles, and my strong flashlight came in very handy at quite a few points in here.
Throughout the archaeological expedition, Jerry the pagan idol featured prominently: the Canadian guy was amused but slightly alarmed at our obsession with this waterbottle.
The afternoon was spent exploring various caves, including the "Polish cave" (full of pigeons); the scary "Ada Givron Yarog" (Green Ping Pong Ball) cave, where Nimrod told his silly story; and the ancient Hellenistic cave. We bumped into many soldiers on the way: Burnett insisted on bugging all of them, and even managed to get a few machine gun bullets off some.