Opened this Aug. 27 from Shai wanted to share with you
Well, the war is over for almost 2 weeks, many of the reservists are back home & the fragile cease fire seems to be holding. maybe, just maybe Lebanon is getting its act together & is saying that only its army will be armed southern Lebanon (not counting unifil). So, maybe in the end there won't be an armed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. They're even making noises that they won't be a puppet state to Syria.
Ginosar has returned to be a nice quiet, peaceful place. It looks like tourism, at least local Isrealis tourism, is returning. During my morning walk along the lake & skirting around Nof Ginosar (the kibbutz hotel) I notice that there are lots of cars parked by the hotel. I don't think that it's full, but much better than being empty as during the war. It's nice not hearing warning sirens from Tiberias & from the north, followed by loud booms from both of these areas. We been to Tiberias a number of times & haven't seen signs of missile/rocket damage. Also went to safad, where many, many missiles/rockets fell, the other day & also didn't see any apparent damage, but we probably didn't look in the right places.
So, our life has gotten back to normal, although there are many in Lebanon & Israel who can't say that. Death & destruction rained on many areas, but not on Ginosar.
The last 2 weeks of the dig at Bethsaida were badly interrupted by the war. Many volunteers decided that it was dangerous to continue & left for home prematurely. The dig did continue to the planned completion date, but with a reduced work force. I have posted ~265 pictures that I took, with a number of contributions from others, during the 1st six weeks of the dig. If you're interested to look at them go to my Yahoo album called "Bethsaida" by clicking on the link - http://photos.yahoo.com/shai_14980
In addition we've had some exciting archaeological events here on Ginosar. Yuvi Lufon (Ginosar member who found the "Jesus boat") took us out to the fields across the road from the kibbutz & showed us a giant boulder that he recently found. It has primitive carving on it as you can see in the 2 lower pics. We took the pics when the light was not optimal, so we'll try again, but you can see in one of them a square with a 1/2 circle on top. Maybe a dwelling? The next one is a figure & you can clearly see the legs, body & "head". Maybe we'll be able to get an expert out here to ascertain what Yuvi found. Do any of you have any ideas who might this expert be? If so send him/her to us.
He then took us to our upper fields where we grow mangos, avocadoes & litchi fruits. At 1 place we planted a field of litchis a couple of years ago. It's believed that there had been Stone Age (~10,000 years ago) village there. As we wandered around we found many pieces of flint blades, stone weights (for fishing nets or weaving or??), 1/2 of a basalt bowl, a pounding rock etc. You can see these finds in the pic below right. When they planted the mangoes they dug trenches a meter (~3 feet) deep, filled them with volcanic rock, installed the water drippers & planted the trees. We're going to try to find out where they tossed the debris as it's probably loaded with wonderful "finds".
So, you see, nothing is dull here in kibbutz Ginosar, Israel & we're enjoying life to its fullest.
