It’s the curse of the blogger that for every one day you
have nothing to say, you’ll inevitably get a day where you have a million
things to say. So I’ll try to make up for yesterday with an extra long post
today.
Let’s start out with a picture of the benches for the three
who donated enough for bench foundations! I actually remembered a photo today
:P
The guys are putting gravel into bench number one, which is
a lot larger and will house some of the nicer blocks for tourists. Then our
numbering system will move from right to left. So, let’s go alphabetically,
shall we? Anne, you gave enough for the foundation of bench 2; Phil and Addie,
bench 3 is yours; and Bob and Debbie, meet bench number 4! Thank you all so
much! Our bricks are arriving, so we’ll get to actually start building soon.
Our morning started by walking to site on streets that had
clearly had rain. It smelled like rain, there were puddles all around, and a
few of us even saw it during breakfast. Now, I’m not talking a downpour, but
pretty much anything that falls from the sky instead of a hose is crazy. The
sky was overcast, making it very humid. We got to site and I tried to take
pictures, but the light was really bad (though I was still able to do about 35
of the ones that don’t need great light- I’m officially over halfway). Just as
I was finishing up, it started to spit again. Not a lot, but enough that we all
started texting each other from around site. We thought this was the end, but
it wasn’t! About 30 minutes later, the real rain began. Again, you’d probably
think of it more like a sprinkle, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned to
expect from the weather in Egypt, it’s that it’s hot and sunny with no
precipitation. How wrong I was proved today! The third time it rained for about
15 minutes. Chicago House even said that they had thunder and lightening in
Luxor last night. At least this means that the weather change we’ve all been
waiting for is on its way (according to the internet, we should be looking at
highs in the low 80s by the weekend- sweet!).
This is a picture before we moved all of Tasha’s pottery
boxes. We wanted to keep the cardboard from melting and the dry pottery inside
from getting moldy. We all tried to grab photos of it falling, but of course,
it didn’t really work. The worst part about the rain, though is that all of my
numbers are written on the blocks in chalk. Chalk and rain are not friends. At
least I’ve worked with these things long enough that I know most of them by
heart. We’re looking into how we can put on more permanent numbers, but until
now, it wasn’t a problem.
Before all the rain fun-ness, we were walking next to the
temple and saw a puppy! We knew that there was a momma dog and had already
found and moved the 4 puppies when they were tiny, but we hadn’t seen them
since. So we went on a little expedition to find the den and deliver puppy back
to mommy. Since it’s really close to where the guys are digging, momma stays
away from the den until after they leave, so we were able to build a little pen
to hem in the pups and give them some water without risking a mad momma (though
so far, she’s been really good and hasn’t even growled at us when she sees us).
The runt is really adventurous, but it was one of the golden
ones we found over the wall. Both of the darks ones have white toes- it’s so
cute!
We also found another kitten today, but aside from giving
her some food, we didn’t do much with her.
What else did I do today? I went back into the temple pylon
to get some pottery boxes for Tasha and I did more mould stats (I got some pics
and will tell you more about it on a day where there isn’t so much to talk
about). I think that’s all for now!
