House of the Purple Worms: Goodbye, Kfar Szold

So the time had inevitable come when we had to close up the site and bid adieu to our beloved Kibbutz Kfar Szold. Of course there are traditions with the program like a big party before we leave and then we still had field trips south to Masada and Jerusalem. I bought my party food and packed and was pretty much ready.

The kibbutz prepares a grilled dinner and we invite all the people who have made our stay comfortable and successful. This puts a new spin on smoked meat:

Here's who was behind the grill.

The food was good and we concentrated on it with relish!

This is David joining Jason for the meal. David was one of the early members of the kibbutz in Kfar Szold.

Here is most of my team that worked on square K-22 (Our supervisor seems to be missing in this picture.)

After the meal we take part i a soccer game against the kibbutz "kids". Of course they are far beeter than we are at soccer.

We counted it as a success that we got the first goal, although I wouldn't be surprised if that was a goodbye gift from the kibbutz.

The students told me that the way to look at the sculpture garden was to go there at night, so since I still hadn't had a chance to visit it, I made that a priority.

You could see the lights of other villages across the valley and some of the sculptures did indeed look petty spooky at night.

I think the image below best captures the mood.

But of course I ddin't feel that I had really had a good view of the place at night, so the next morning I got up early and went to see the place in the day light. It started off as a yard for old equipment until the kibbutz artist started to play

and then things got much more interesting.

I particularly like this figure staring down this multi-headed cobra.

What follows in no particular order are a few nostalgic pictures from my time at the kibbutz. This is the niche outside the door of our program leaders. They are cleaning coins using a home made electrolysis apparatus.

This is the white board inside the lab . Lots of useful informations and threats there!

Here is our ceramics expert in the crate that would be used for large ceramic finds:

I guess the students thought so too:

These are a type of bird that I saw a lot of and had a hard time getting a good image of.

There was a very interesting Islamic sect that also stayed on the kibbutz while we were there. They were called Druze. Wikipedia says, "The Druze beliefs incorporate elements of Ismailism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and other philosophies." It says they don't believe in conversation, but this group sat together and talked, so I have some doubts about their description.

These were the kibbutz cows. Clearly the dogs have foud some breakfast there too. These cows smell different than cows in the US.

This is a vie woff into the hills.

Somebody came to the kibbutz to celebrate their wedding. Here is the car that was decorated for them.

I really enjoyed seeing this coffee pot sculpture outside the breakfast dining hall. It stood about a meter tall, maybe more.

This si the info sign that we would see upon entering the kibbutz. This to me is very special and appropriate as a memory of the kibbutz.

Our last meal was breakfast, before we climbed in the bus to head off to Masada. Here is one of our students in the buffet line which was full of many different types of foods and salads, olives, tomato pepper, and cucumber dishes and relishes, cereal and usually eggs of some kind along with rolls and jelly. (I only ever saw blueberry and strawberry jelly at inns the whole time I was in Israel except for Beet jelly at Ein Geddi. I forgot to look in the grocery, but am sure there were other flavors, but never at the hotels and inns.)

The drawings on the wall depict the history of the kibbutz.

Here are some of our group members at our last breakfast together.

This was our hostess, Gretta Danish woman who had come to the kibbutz in the 60s and who told us about her experiences at the kibbutz during the 6 day war. I am sure it was a terrifying experience.