The Dig House!

The Dig House is my home for the next two months. It is both extremely luxurious and strangely backwards at the same time, which produces a decidedly foreign (I hesitate to say Egyptian, because I don't know what that actually means) but comfortable feel. Above is a photo of the entrance, which has a stone label above the door - it says "welcome!"

The house itself houses between 40 and 50 people, mainly in double rooms that each feature a bed, a table (no, not a desk - none of the rooms have even a single drawer...), a chair and a bedside table per person. There is also a closet in ours, which is rather dirty. My room, number 234, has a tile floor, but some of the bedrooms have dirt floors, as do all of the courtyard areas. (See my half of the room? The picture on the right!) Because the house is set up to enable you to spend the maximum amount of time under the open sky. On the second floor, which is mostly bedrooms but also has rows of showers and bathrooms, groups of four rooms are clustered around courtyard areas, (See the picture below.) some of which have tables and chairs. This is convenient, because the mud-brick construction makes the house very sturdy and relatively well-insulated, but it doesn't make it act like a house with actual heating and cooling systems. At night, when temperatures fall to 40 or 45 degrees fahrenheit, our rooms retain the heat of the day and are a delight to return to. Similarly, while it is between 70 and 80 during the day, our rooms stay cool bordering on cold. This can be a nice respite, but in the morning when I wake up barely willing to drag myself from my warm bed, it is nice to know that I will be able to warm myself in sunlight just outside my bedroom door. The house is pretty empty right now, as just we students and our teachers have arrived, but in late January when all of the archaeologists arrive, we have been warned that it will be full to bursting. This is a bit hard for me to believe, because there is so much space here, but I will tell you how I feel after everyone has arrived.

The first floor of the house, which is just as sprawling as the top floor, is where the kitchen and dining room (or, "Restront, as the sign above the dining room door announces) are. (The picture to the right is of the three doors that open onto the "Restront," which is divided into three sections, Restront 1, and then 2 and three.) There are also several workshop rooms for the archaeologists, including a pottery room, a computer room, a general workroom, and our lovely library. As students, we use the library the most, not only because it has books but because it is one of the few places in the house where you can access the internet. After 10pm, when we are allowed to skype, the room is filled with chatter in several different languages as all of the students contact their friends and families. The downstairs courtyard is also the location of morning and afternoon tea, although evening tea is served in the tea room, a cozy room on the second floor with a skylight and a balcony. A photo of the library, filled with students as always, is on the left. (Can you find me?? Trick question. I'm behind the camera, of course...)

The bathrooms are the one part of this house that don't make me feel as though I'm staying in a pretty nice hotel. They, like most places, are full of flies. But these flies remain into the night, unlike the irritating daytime flies that follow us around. These nighttime flies cluster around the lights in the bathroom and shower stalls. And yes, I really do have to take three minute showers. They are not as bad as you might expect, although I'm still struggling with the unexpected difficulty of getting the water to cool down enough for me to get into it. The water heats up to scalding temperatures extremely quickly, and only cools down in a few minutes, which is obviously difficult when you're trying to keep your whole shower under three. At least the water pressure is pretty great. From the roof, it is easy to understand why - each tank of water sits literally above the shower, with a single tube running down to connect it to the shower head. The water, no matter what its unreasonable temperature, falls straight down the pipe onto my head.

That picture of the roof brings me to one of the best parts of the dig house - the roof. Because there is no rain to worry about, roofs are all flat, so they are easy to climb around on, and to turn into nice lounging spaces. The picture on the right is of a porch right above the entrance to the house, where there seem to be fewer flies buzzing about in the afternoon. I spent a lovely few hours reading there this afternoon, and it was very peaceful. (One interesting thing about the oasis is that there are very few animal noises. Apart from the buzzing of the flies and the occasional - very occasional - bray of a donkey passing on the road, both night and day are pretty quiet. The picture on the left, obviously of a sunset, is a view from the highest roof in the building, above a few second floor bedrooms. Because one of my tripmates is a certified yoga instructor, we do yoga on this rooftop several times a week. We did it twice at around sundown, between 5 and 6 pm, which was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes have encouraged us to change our scheduled time. I guess we're not living in any sort of mythological Eden, then, but it's still a pretty beautiful place to stay in. Stay tuned for a photographic tour of our delicious Egyptian meals inside the Restront!