Jordan Day 9, June 20

Today was a hard day to wake up. Generally I am up like a shot and ready to go, but today was tough. I was sore from using the pick ax, and only getting 6 hours of sleep a night finally caught up I guess. Everyone however was feeling about the same so it was a slower day on site. Well slow is relative…I sifted about 120 goofahs of dirt. I did take a nap on my dirt pile today. Surprisingly, it was very comfortable. Here is a picture of me on my dirt pile.

We have a new man on our field The mad sombrero wearing guy is none other than Walter Rogers. Crazy Canadian, fellow seminarian and all around good guy. We now call him Bacon.

We found some priceless artifact today as well. One figurine head, about 2 x 2 and one head and torso of the goddess Artemis. The figure appears to have multiple breasts and is about 3 inches tall. Very good finds.

Since I still had the car this afternoon, Walter and Sam and I piled into it and headed to Madaba to see some sights. Madaba is about a 40 minute drive from Amman and we had a blast getting there and seeing some beautiful churches and getting lost on on

e way streets.

The first church we stopped at is the Apostles church. The ruins were rediscovered in the early 1900’s and work to restore the amazing mosaics was carried out by a group of …wait for it…. Italians. Yes. Signs were actually up in Italian too! They explained more than the English did. See?

The mosaics here were stunning, very intricate work of animals, St. Thomas, youths and plant life. Apparently the site was built originally in the 6^th century and had two separate chapels on it. This was my favorite church for the day. Dusty and quiet.

The second church we went to see it the world famous St. Georges Cathedral. Why world famous you ask? Excellent question. St. Georges is a Greek Orthodox Church with an extremely rare mosaic inside. On the floor of this church you will find a map of this region of the world. Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, even Egypt makes an appearance. It is quite amazing, especially since I love mosaics. So here are some shots of it in all its geographic glory.