Oh my god. I don't know where to begin. It's has been a crazy crazy past days. I'm so behind. We'll have to go in order from the last thing notable, which was the hiking trip to the Negev that Paul and I did.
The Negev and Jerusalem:
Everyone got about 4 days off because a small part on the drill rig broke and they had to wait for it to be shipped from the states, but it was a weekend, and it's international and they actually still haven't started drilling again. So last Friday was our last shift and Paul and I went on the night shift because they needed two scientists just in case they cored, but it took 3 hours to get 30 cm with the broken part so they decided to close operations. The next day was supposed to start my days off before leaving on Tuesday, but we had a field trip with all the students, my dad and Moti to look at the local geology and formations around the Dead Sea that we are drilling. So instead of beginning our hiking trip and having two nights in the Negev, we ended up staying in Ein Gedi that night. The next morning my dad drove us to Mitzpe Ramon where we began our overnight hike. We hiked down the big crater (maktesh ramon), across some cool old volcanoes, sandstone and carbonates, an awesome fold and fault and into some other dry streams. We ended up camping in a spot that isn't officially accepted and unofficially had a fire, but it was totally worth it. It was a clear and beautiful night.
Then the next morning it was surprisingly wet everywhere. My sleeping bag was totally covered with drops of water. We hiked out in a couple of hours and then hitchhiked from the road up to Mitzpe Ramon. We were picked up by an Army guy and his dog in a pick up truck. He ended up taking us all the way to Be'er Sheva, where we caught a bus to Jerusalem. He was great, he told us all about the Bedouin culture, local cool valleys, the desert and his time in the army. We arrived in Jerusalem in the afternoon and walked into the downtown. We were a site. We were covered in desert dust and dirt, probably stinky, with our huge backpacks. We had three goals: 1. Get some falafel, 2. Paul wanted to buy a poyke (a cast iron pot/goblet, what I'd call a dutch oven), 3. find a phone somewhere to call Moti and tell him we were coming. We were successful on all fronts and even got to finish off the night with a walk around the Old City of Jerusalem with Jason.
Flight Adventure:
The next morning I went to the Tel Aviv airport to fly back to New York via Kiev. First of all, I almost missed my shuttle because I set my alarm for an 4:30am rather than 3:30 am like an idiot. Moti rushed into the room yelling "Emily! You will miss your shuttle! You must get up!" and I made it but my driver wasn't happy. Then in the airport I went through a lot of security, and extra security, and checked in, more security and finally got to the flight and on the plane.
I should have noticed things were weird because originally my flight to New York was supposed to leave Kiev at 12:55pm, but our boarding passes now sad at 3:30pm. Then when I arrived to the tiny, horrible airport in Kiev, the flight wasn't listed because they only had listings going up to 2:30pm. Then over the intercom they said all New York passengers should come to the information desk, they herded us to a lounge with couches upstairs and told us that our flight would be leaving at 1am and they would give us food in an hour. This was all in Russian though, and they didn't explain anything in English, once all the other passengers (who were Russian, Kazakhstan and Georgian) calmed down some of them told me in English what was going on. It was horrible. There was no information, no reason, no internet and no way to get information. They gave us a cell phone to take turns to call our families and whoever to let them know.
At around 4pm they told us that we wouldn't be leaving until 7pm the next day. This is when big unrest began. The passengers united and all went down to the information desk and started yelling at the young girls working there. They demanded information, a reason, a flight, whatever. At this point I started to make friends with these Kazakhstan guys who spoke English pretty well. I asked them to keep me updated with whatever was being said since no one was speaking English, only Russian. Then they started to book everyone on flights to Istanbul and Stockholm for the next morning, but still with no prospect of making it to New York within the next day, it would be a day or two it seemed, possibly three. I was totally miserable at the prospect, although I was ready to go to Istanbul, where it was at least a bigger airport and had more flights back eventually. The problem really was that Aerosvit has no sway in flights. They have almost no ability to make anything work or better for the passenger if something goes wrong.
So I decided it would probably be better if I just fly back to Tel Aviv (they had a lot of flights for that) than to go to Istanbul or New York. I was missing my connecting flight to Texas the next day regardless, and who knew when I'd get to New York. My Kazakhstan friend helped me ask the women working on the flights to get me back to Tel Aviv and I managed to fly out on the last flight at 10:35pm. I arrived in Tel Aviv at 2:00am, had my luggage lost and ended up getting a place to sleep with a guy I met on the plane. I started talking to him when we were boarding and sat next to him. He was really nice and he offered that I have a bed to sleep in because he lived with his parents and they had extra rooms, plus he was half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and would drop me off at a bus the next morning. It worked out great, I have been very lucky this entire trip with the people that I meet. I have a lot of built up generosity to share based on what I have received. I think that is important and one of the best things about traveling and life. This trip has definitely been marked by these interactions.
Jerusalem again:
The next day I managed to make it to Moti's house, where Paul was still hanging out because drilling has still not resumed in Ein Gedi. So Paul and I went to the Hebrew Museum and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls, the archaeological section and the fine arts section. Then we bought a bunch of ingredients to make Moti's family dinner that night, to say thanks for letting us stay and taking care of us. We made sweet potato gnocchi from scratch, with two different sauces. Obviously it was mainly by Paul's guidance since I've never made gnocchi before, but it was quite easy and I would be able to do it again (and I plan to). It was a nice dinner, then we rented a movie and fell asleep watching it and went to bed.
Today we toured the old city of Jerusalem again, this time in the daytime. Paul had already done it the day I was stuck in Kiev, but he did it again anyway. We started from Mt. Olive, walked down through churches and cemeteries and into the old city where we walked through some underground aqueduct systems and then into the Austrian Hostel where we could go to the roof and see a view over the old city. Then we went to the western wall, past temple mound where the line was too long to get in, and then through the Jewish Quarter and out. We walked to this market that we found on the first day through Jerusalem where there is all the food you could want and just bought whatever looked good. Fresh breads with cheese and spinach, chocolate croissants and cookies, dried fruits and finally a falafel sandwich. I was stuffed. I still am stuffed. Now we are waiting for a couple of hours to go to Ein Gedi, where we should be on the day shift tomorrow (hopefully there are the parts necessary to make everything work again). I do hope to get in some shifts before I leave.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
8th January, 2010
We had visited the small maktesh, (maktesh being the name for the craters here that I couldn't remember before). It was awesome. Jason, Paul and I joined a field mapping course that was being led by one of the principal scientists on the drilling project. He is a geologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and overall a super awesome guy. He has his mapping course with this best friend (also a geologist of the same age and equally badass) at a primitive campsite in the desert, going over some intense terrain. The students really enjoy it, but it's not traditional.
We received the most amazing treatment and time there. We arrived haphazardly, without food, with only our packs and our clothes. The faculty on the trip very graciously gave us food, wine, coffee, and sleeping bags. It was incredible. Then they set us up on some great hikes around the area that they said we couldn't leave without seeing, so we didn't even do the mapping course with them in the end. We also were lucky enough to meet this guy named Micky who does all the trail maintenance work in the natural reserves across Israel, so he knew all of the trails by heart and told us of good places to go.
It was wonderful to be back in the desert, sleeping outside under the stars, waking up to sunrise and so forth. Now the Negev and the Mojave are two of my favorite barren deserts, although the Sonoran and Colorado deserts are also beautiful, they just have more plants.
We received the most amazing treatment and time there. We arrived haphazardly, without food, with only our packs and our clothes. The faculty on the trip very graciously gave us food, wine, coffee, and sleeping bags. It was incredible. Then they set us up on some great hikes around the area that they said we couldn't leave without seeing, so we didn't even do the mapping course with them in the end. We also were lucky enough to meet this guy named Micky who does all the trail maintenance work in the natural reserves across Israel, so he knew all of the trails by heart and told us of good places to go.
It was wonderful to be back in the desert, sleeping outside under the stars, waking up to sunrise and so forth. Now the Negev and the Mojave are two of my favorite barren deserts, although the Sonoran and Colorado deserts are also beautiful, they just have more plants.
Monday, January 3, 2011
4-Jan-2010, Ein Gedi to the small crater
I haven't figured out the name of the small crater that we are going to, but I have it written down on a piece of paper in my coat in my room.
Today Jason, Paul and I are going to join a field mapping course that is going on in the south of Israel, in the Negev Desert, at the small crater (there are big craters too). Amotz is a geologist at the university in Tel Aviv and he leads a week long field mapping course for 2nd year geology students, and we will join them for a day or two to check out the geology.
Otherwise, they are moving the drilling platform from the middle of the Dead Sea to offshore by the kibbutz. There have simply been a lot of weather problems preventing the team from drilling at an efficient capacity, so they hope to bring it closer to the shore in order to bypass bad winds and waves as much as possible.
Originally the team wanted to get the deepest core possible at the deepest part of the Sea, then when they were unable to penetrate deeper than 450m, they wanted to start a new hole to try to fill in the gaps missing from the first hole (you don't recover 100% of the sediment when you drill), and potentially go deeper. This is where they hit problems and we moved from Hole A to B to C...until we finally ended with Hole H and it started working again. We've drilled 40m or so in Hole H and now they want to move to onshore in order to correlate the layers they find in the middle of the Sea with their stratigraphic counterparts close to shore. Today they are moving the platform and setting up, so we are not missing any work as we go for our field trip.
The big bad news is that my roommate, Elitsa, had her computer bag stolen from out front of our room. She has had a string of bad luck. She was using my dad's camera in the lab to take photos of the core and document everything. That camera went missing last week and it seems that it must have been stolen. Then my dad asked that I give her my camera so she could continue to work, so I did two days ago and yesterday she had her camera, my camera and her computer in her briefcase when it was stolen. She set it outside our room on our front table, was in the room for 10 minutes and when she came out it was gone. She's been really torn up about it. At the hotel they have very little that they can do. So I won't have a camera to take photos for the rest of the time I think, but I will be with people with cameras, so no problem. I just feel really bad for her.
The past couple days I have gone out on the day shift. It would have been nice if we could core, but somehow the weather decided to change and get windy during the day as well. Steve the driller didn't drill while the winds were very strong because they are on to their last drilling tools and can't afford to break anything. So two days ago all we did all day was watch movies, waiting for the wind to go down. There were three drillers, me and Jason, all stuffed in the drillers cabin around a laptop--needless to say, a cozy situation. Cozy, stuffy and dark. But it was fine, just lazy and kind of a bummer because the winds never let up so we didn't get anything accomplished. Then yesterday the morning was pretty windy, but by the afternoon it was nice and we were able to core a little bit. Mainly salt, but some mud. It's very slow to core through the salt because the tools have a hard time cutting through and retaining it all.
On another note, I'd say that emotionally and socially I've been doing well. I'm overall being quite outgoing and keeping in a good mood. When I got here everyone was pretty burnt out and within my first week I'd say it only got worse. Things weren't working well, everyone had differing opinions and plans were changed all the time. It was a stressed out and negative atmosphere a lot of the time. I was still fresh and happy and just glad to be here so I did my best to just go around an be happy and smile a lot and talk to people. That's what I've managed to keep up for the most part and I like to think it helps a little. More recently I've gotten frustrated at times and I'm tired of hearing people complain and be negative. But when that happens it is usually short lived.
It's crazy to think that I've been here for 2 weeks already. I only have one week left. The project is continuing later than originally expected, so I might end up leaving the project early in order to travel a bit, but a part of me feels like I should stay and help as much as possible. I definitely plan to come back to Israel, so if I don't get to see everything I want to see then I will have opportunities later. It's great. I'm a fan.
Today Jason, Paul and I are going to join a field mapping course that is going on in the south of Israel, in the Negev Desert, at the small crater (there are big craters too). Amotz is a geologist at the university in Tel Aviv and he leads a week long field mapping course for 2nd year geology students, and we will join them for a day or two to check out the geology.
Otherwise, they are moving the drilling platform from the middle of the Dead Sea to offshore by the kibbutz. There have simply been a lot of weather problems preventing the team from drilling at an efficient capacity, so they hope to bring it closer to the shore in order to bypass bad winds and waves as much as possible.
Originally the team wanted to get the deepest core possible at the deepest part of the Sea, then when they were unable to penetrate deeper than 450m, they wanted to start a new hole to try to fill in the gaps missing from the first hole (you don't recover 100% of the sediment when you drill), and potentially go deeper. This is where they hit problems and we moved from Hole A to B to C...until we finally ended with Hole H and it started working again. We've drilled 40m or so in Hole H and now they want to move to onshore in order to correlate the layers they find in the middle of the Sea with their stratigraphic counterparts close to shore. Today they are moving the platform and setting up, so we are not missing any work as we go for our field trip.
The big bad news is that my roommate, Elitsa, had her computer bag stolen from out front of our room. She has had a string of bad luck. She was using my dad's camera in the lab to take photos of the core and document everything. That camera went missing last week and it seems that it must have been stolen. Then my dad asked that I give her my camera so she could continue to work, so I did two days ago and yesterday she had her camera, my camera and her computer in her briefcase when it was stolen. She set it outside our room on our front table, was in the room for 10 minutes and when she came out it was gone. She's been really torn up about it. At the hotel they have very little that they can do. So I won't have a camera to take photos for the rest of the time I think, but I will be with people with cameras, so no problem. I just feel really bad for her.
The past couple days I have gone out on the day shift. It would have been nice if we could core, but somehow the weather decided to change and get windy during the day as well. Steve the driller didn't drill while the winds were very strong because they are on to their last drilling tools and can't afford to break anything. So two days ago all we did all day was watch movies, waiting for the wind to go down. There were three drillers, me and Jason, all stuffed in the drillers cabin around a laptop--needless to say, a cozy situation. Cozy, stuffy and dark. But it was fine, just lazy and kind of a bummer because the winds never let up so we didn't get anything accomplished. Then yesterday the morning was pretty windy, but by the afternoon it was nice and we were able to core a little bit. Mainly salt, but some mud. It's very slow to core through the salt because the tools have a hard time cutting through and retaining it all.
On another note, I'd say that emotionally and socially I've been doing well. I'm overall being quite outgoing and keeping in a good mood. When I got here everyone was pretty burnt out and within my first week I'd say it only got worse. Things weren't working well, everyone had differing opinions and plans were changed all the time. It was a stressed out and negative atmosphere a lot of the time. I was still fresh and happy and just glad to be here so I did my best to just go around an be happy and smile a lot and talk to people. That's what I've managed to keep up for the most part and I like to think it helps a little. More recently I've gotten frustrated at times and I'm tired of hearing people complain and be negative. But when that happens it is usually short lived.
It's crazy to think that I've been here for 2 weeks already. I only have one week left. The project is continuing later than originally expected, so I might end up leaving the project early in order to travel a bit, but a part of me feels like I should stay and help as much as possible. I definitely plan to come back to Israel, so if I don't get to see everything I want to see then I will have opportunities later. It's great. I'm a fan.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
1 Jan, 2010
Happy New Year! Everyone has been telling me about the superstition that your new year is decided by how well New Year's Eve and New Year's day go. I think that's a load, but even if it were true, I'd say I have a good feeling about 2011. I think mainly because I've been thinking about it for the past 4 years, but I no matter what, I think it will be a good year.
It's been a few days since I've updated. I honestly have no recollection of the 29th of December. I'm pretty sure that I got off the rig at 5pm after being stuck out there for 24 hours. So the 29th ended with a beer and sleep. I know that on the 30th I had a night shift with Jason and the night drill team. We actually got core! It was unclear when we arrived whether it would be a successful night or if we'd just continue to track how the rig was moving via GPS. But for whatever reason everything finally just went totally to plan and we had a successful, busy and no-sleep night. The best kind. We felt so great, everyone was in such a good mood, joking around and working hard. I also got semi-addicted to hearts solitaire on the computer in the down time. Overall, great night. We didn't retrieve much core, but it was the first bit since I've been here.
During the day on the 30th I went swimming in the Dead Sea for the first time. It was great. I was really careful to not get anything in my eyes, but some splashed on my face and burnt my chapped lips pretty badly. I was talking with some of the drillers and they were saying that to set up the rig they had to spend the better part of a day in the water to put things together. That would be miserable. My 20 minute dip was well worth it though.
So jumping back, we got back to the kibbutz the morning of the 31st. I spent most of my day in a daze because I hadn't slept in close to 24 hours. I took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, but I woke up to not miss lunch. I decided to go for the boat ride out to the rig with the night shift, but I had the night off so I didn't stay. We said hi to everyone, and I rode back with the day shift. My roommate and I have been on pretty opposite schedules and it's been a bummer because I really like her. So last night we hung out, got a beer at the bar and eventually other people joined us as we approached midnight. Then there was free champagne, strawberries and a few fireworks by the lobby. I crashed pretty close to 1am though, I was still running on very little sleep.
Then today Jason and I planned to do a hike since we weren't working. Moti showed us a good half-day loop. We were able to climb half way to the top of the mountains and then go up a canyon a bit and back down by several waterfalls. It was fantastic. The weather has cooled a bit so it's not too hot, just right for shorts and a tshirt while hiking. We saw tons of animals, it's all the same three-- capras, hyraxes and foxes. Then we stopped at the ancient synagogue, which dates back to the 1st century A.D. Unfortunately everything was in Hebrew so I don't really have a story to go with it, but photos are up on facebook.
It's been a few days since I've updated. I honestly have no recollection of the 29th of December. I'm pretty sure that I got off the rig at 5pm after being stuck out there for 24 hours. So the 29th ended with a beer and sleep. I know that on the 30th I had a night shift with Jason and the night drill team. We actually got core! It was unclear when we arrived whether it would be a successful night or if we'd just continue to track how the rig was moving via GPS. But for whatever reason everything finally just went totally to plan and we had a successful, busy and no-sleep night. The best kind. We felt so great, everyone was in such a good mood, joking around and working hard. I also got semi-addicted to hearts solitaire on the computer in the down time. Overall, great night. We didn't retrieve much core, but it was the first bit since I've been here.
During the day on the 30th I went swimming in the Dead Sea for the first time. It was great. I was really careful to not get anything in my eyes, but some splashed on my face and burnt my chapped lips pretty badly. I was talking with some of the drillers and they were saying that to set up the rig they had to spend the better part of a day in the water to put things together. That would be miserable. My 20 minute dip was well worth it though.
So jumping back, we got back to the kibbutz the morning of the 31st. I spent most of my day in a daze because I hadn't slept in close to 24 hours. I took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, but I woke up to not miss lunch. I decided to go for the boat ride out to the rig with the night shift, but I had the night off so I didn't stay. We said hi to everyone, and I rode back with the day shift. My roommate and I have been on pretty opposite schedules and it's been a bummer because I really like her. So last night we hung out, got a beer at the bar and eventually other people joined us as we approached midnight. Then there was free champagne, strawberries and a few fireworks by the lobby. I crashed pretty close to 1am though, I was still running on very little sleep.
Then today Jason and I planned to do a hike since we weren't working. Moti showed us a good half-day loop. We were able to climb half way to the top of the mountains and then go up a canyon a bit and back down by several waterfalls. It was fantastic. The weather has cooled a bit so it's not too hot, just right for shorts and a tshirt while hiking. We saw tons of animals, it's all the same three-- capras, hyraxes and foxes. Then we stopped at the ancient synagogue, which dates back to the 1st century A.D. Unfortunately everything was in Hebrew so I don't really have a story to go with it, but photos are up on facebook.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
24 hours-28 Dec, 2010
There is not much to tell because I went out for my shift on the 28th at night and ended up staying for 24 hours on the rig. We are still having difficulties drilling through the salt, so we still have no cores since I arrived. Instead the scientists are mainly trying to keep tabs on how much the platform is moving around because we suspect that this is having a huge impact on how effective the drill is working. If the platform moves and the pipes are bent, then the drill cannot apply the effective force to push through the salt layers. Since the weather has been so bad (several storms have come through and the wind is high), the rig seems to be blowing around despite being anchored.
Since it doesn't take much to watch a GPS for how much we are moving, they decided to leave me as the only scientist on the night shift that night. This was fine with me, I got the room to myself, I had a booklet of DVDs that I borrowed from one of the drillers on the day shift and my computer. Plus I know the drillers on the night shift well enough that I feel comfortable talking to them and hanging out when there is down time. So when the wind and waves were too much at 5am when we are supposed to be picked up, it wasn't so bad being stuck for another 12 hours. The drillers are not supposed to work during those 12 hours because they need to rest. There are 4 cots on the rig, and luckily there were 4 people (3 drillers + me), rather than 5-6 (usually there are 2-3 scientists), so we all got a cot and were able to sleep through most of the day. Then we watched movies, talked, sat around, listened to music until the boat came to relieve me and bring them more food for their night shift.
Today so far I've been hanging out with two students, one Israeli who has left now to go back to school, and one German who will be here for as long as I am here too. The good news is that he likes to hike so I will have someone to do those things with (no one else here is too much into it).
I'm trying to figure out a way to go to Jerusalem for New Year's Eve tomorrow night, but I still don't know what my schedule is for working.
It has been raining off and on for the past two days. There are possibilities of flash floods down these canyons. I'm hoping to be able to see one!
Also, my English is deteriorating a bit. It's funny, I always forget that this happens when you are in a foreign country, but it consistently does. Even though everyone is communicating in English, you are always trying to speak very simply so that others can understand when English is not their first language, or you are always hearing English that is slightly incorrect. So I feel like I can't express myself well recently, whether it's funky language issues or lack of good sleep.
Since it doesn't take much to watch a GPS for how much we are moving, they decided to leave me as the only scientist on the night shift that night. This was fine with me, I got the room to myself, I had a booklet of DVDs that I borrowed from one of the drillers on the day shift and my computer. Plus I know the drillers on the night shift well enough that I feel comfortable talking to them and hanging out when there is down time. So when the wind and waves were too much at 5am when we are supposed to be picked up, it wasn't so bad being stuck for another 12 hours. The drillers are not supposed to work during those 12 hours because they need to rest. There are 4 cots on the rig, and luckily there were 4 people (3 drillers + me), rather than 5-6 (usually there are 2-3 scientists), so we all got a cot and were able to sleep through most of the day. Then we watched movies, talked, sat around, listened to music until the boat came to relieve me and bring them more food for their night shift.
Today so far I've been hanging out with two students, one Israeli who has left now to go back to school, and one German who will be here for as long as I am here too. The good news is that he likes to hike so I will have someone to do those things with (no one else here is too much into it).
I'm trying to figure out a way to go to Jerusalem for New Year's Eve tomorrow night, but I still don't know what my schedule is for working.
It has been raining off and on for the past two days. There are possibilities of flash floods down these canyons. I'm hoping to be able to see one!
Also, my English is deteriorating a bit. It's funny, I always forget that this happens when you are in a foreign country, but it consistently does. Even though everyone is communicating in English, you are always trying to speak very simply so that others can understand when English is not their first language, or you are always hearing English that is slightly incorrect. So I feel like I can't express myself well recently, whether it's funky language issues or lack of good sleep.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Drilling ? Dec 27, 2010
I am running on very little sleep so I will try to sound coherent, but no promises.
Two nights ago I was up for my night duty. It was supposed to be me, dad and another scientist here who lives in Jerusalem, Elisa. The drillers had to start drilling a new hole for a new core, and they were still in the process of getting to the depth that we want to start to recover sediments. So the night sounded like another case where there is nothing for the scientists to really do except keep an eye on the GPS for any extreme movement of the rig. I spent the night before on the rig like that and if it made no difference, I figured I'd rather sleep back at the kibbutz then on that top cot. Dad said he would be staying to matter what, just in case something happened. Elisa decided she may as well stay since she wasn't going to drive back to Jerusalem that night.
Well... let me tell you... I made the right decision in this case! Unfortunately for them the winds picked up over night and there were huge swells. Apparently waves were splashing over the scientist shed. These rough seas kept the boat from coming out to relieve them of duty until 4pm the next day, so they were out there for 24 hours.
I came in on the boat at 4pm yesterday to replace them with another scientist. Unfortunately for the drillers, their night and day shifts are set in stone so if they get stuck out for 24 hours, then the night shift remains on duty and works throughout the night, having to stay for 36 hours. This apparently happened once before when there was a huge storm. It's really unfortunate but fairly unavoidable with the way things are set up.
I felt good because I came bearing gifts from the day shift drillers-- i.e. the three staples that they need to survive: food, coca-cola and cigarettes. Everyone was in pretty good spirits considering being stuck on a small platform in a storm for so long. Dad had a huge smile on his face and was overall in a good mood.
I spent the night shift with Nicolas, an Argentinian who did his degrees in Israel and right now is working as a post doc in Norway. He was pretty entertaining so the night went by pretty well. I also just spent time talking with the drillers. It's nice to be able to chat because it seems like there is a unspoken divide between the scientists and the drillers, even though a lot of us are similar ages (except I guess I'm the youngest person really participating on the project), and similar backgrounds, etc. So I hear from the scientists complaints about how the project is going, how it could be organized better, why they think some things might not be working, then I hear about all those things from the drillers side. It turns out they are mostly all the same ideas, but I get the impression that they are not communicating that to each other very well.
So, yes, so far so good. I spend most of my time wandering around seeing cool landscapes, plants or animals, talking to people, or helping out with some science (although that has been pretty slow recently). It's just good to be more socially open than I was when I was younger. It makes these experience so much better.
Finally I'll give my little daily geology lesson: something new I learned yesterday about sink holes around the Dead Sea.
So the Dead Sea has dropped significantly in the past 10 years because water began being seriously diverted in the 1960's. By significantly, it must be at least 50 feet, if not more. In the areas that were underwater in the 60's and are shore today, a lot of sink holes are forming. Geologists noticed that they were forming along lines, so there seemed to be a pattern to where they show up. The questions were, why are they forming and where will the next one form?
So the why are they forming has to do with two things: 1. the sediments underground in this area and 2. fresh and salt water interface. So as you can imagine, the layers of sediments and rocks under our feet here at the Dead Sea are a mix of mud and salt. Mud is deposited by water carrying sediment to the sea floor and salt is deposited by evaporation. There are layers where mud and salt are stacked on top of each other, and we are seeing this in our cores, but it was already well known. What is important for the sink holes is that not too far below the surface (20 meters?) there is a thick salt layer.
The other component is water. The Dead Sea is extremely salty and so the salty water dominates the water system depending on how high the Dead Sea is. So back in the 1960's the Dead Sea was much higher and salt water penetrated the ground much higher on shore. The other water in the mix is the fresh water that is coming in from springs and precipitation off of the mountains that border the sea. As you might imagine, there is a place where the salt water from the Dead Sea level meets the fresh water rushing down to the sea. This interface drops as the Dead Sea level drops, so it is much lower now than it was before the 1960's. So freshwater is traveling through more sediments in order to reach the sea, including this thick salt layer. So they think that as freshwater passes through the salt layer it is dissolving it and carrying it to the Sea. Therefore caverns are forming where the salt once was, and it collapses eventually to make a sink hole.
On the other hand we notice that these sink holes seem to be following a pattern on the surface. They are mostly showing up in lines rather than bunches or sporadically. It is thought that these lines are subsurface faults that the water is traveling through. This makes sense because the salt layer may be susceptible to water, but it is surrounded by mud layers that are pretty impermeable. So how is the water getting through the mud layers surrounding the salt layer? Well, if there were faults that cut through these layers then the water can take advantage of the cracks to reach the salt layer and then out to the Sea. Faults are linear features and definitely are all over this area. So that's the idea in principal as I understand it, of course it is always more complicated.
I hope that made some sense.
Two nights ago I was up for my night duty. It was supposed to be me, dad and another scientist here who lives in Jerusalem, Elisa. The drillers had to start drilling a new hole for a new core, and they were still in the process of getting to the depth that we want to start to recover sediments. So the night sounded like another case where there is nothing for the scientists to really do except keep an eye on the GPS for any extreme movement of the rig. I spent the night before on the rig like that and if it made no difference, I figured I'd rather sleep back at the kibbutz then on that top cot. Dad said he would be staying to matter what, just in case something happened. Elisa decided she may as well stay since she wasn't going to drive back to Jerusalem that night.
Well... let me tell you... I made the right decision in this case! Unfortunately for them the winds picked up over night and there were huge swells. Apparently waves were splashing over the scientist shed. These rough seas kept the boat from coming out to relieve them of duty until 4pm the next day, so they were out there for 24 hours.
I came in on the boat at 4pm yesterday to replace them with another scientist. Unfortunately for the drillers, their night and day shifts are set in stone so if they get stuck out for 24 hours, then the night shift remains on duty and works throughout the night, having to stay for 36 hours. This apparently happened once before when there was a huge storm. It's really unfortunate but fairly unavoidable with the way things are set up.
I felt good because I came bearing gifts from the day shift drillers-- i.e. the three staples that they need to survive: food, coca-cola and cigarettes. Everyone was in pretty good spirits considering being stuck on a small platform in a storm for so long. Dad had a huge smile on his face and was overall in a good mood.
I spent the night shift with Nicolas, an Argentinian who did his degrees in Israel and right now is working as a post doc in Norway. He was pretty entertaining so the night went by pretty well. I also just spent time talking with the drillers. It's nice to be able to chat because it seems like there is a unspoken divide between the scientists and the drillers, even though a lot of us are similar ages (except I guess I'm the youngest person really participating on the project), and similar backgrounds, etc. So I hear from the scientists complaints about how the project is going, how it could be organized better, why they think some things might not be working, then I hear about all those things from the drillers side. It turns out they are mostly all the same ideas, but I get the impression that they are not communicating that to each other very well.
So, yes, so far so good. I spend most of my time wandering around seeing cool landscapes, plants or animals, talking to people, or helping out with some science (although that has been pretty slow recently). It's just good to be more socially open than I was when I was younger. It makes these experience so much better.
Finally I'll give my little daily geology lesson: something new I learned yesterday about sink holes around the Dead Sea.
So the Dead Sea has dropped significantly in the past 10 years because water began being seriously diverted in the 1960's. By significantly, it must be at least 50 feet, if not more. In the areas that were underwater in the 60's and are shore today, a lot of sink holes are forming. Geologists noticed that they were forming along lines, so there seemed to be a pattern to where they show up. The questions were, why are they forming and where will the next one form?
So the why are they forming has to do with two things: 1. the sediments underground in this area and 2. fresh and salt water interface. So as you can imagine, the layers of sediments and rocks under our feet here at the Dead Sea are a mix of mud and salt. Mud is deposited by water carrying sediment to the sea floor and salt is deposited by evaporation. There are layers where mud and salt are stacked on top of each other, and we are seeing this in our cores, but it was already well known. What is important for the sink holes is that not too far below the surface (20 meters?) there is a thick salt layer.
The other component is water. The Dead Sea is extremely salty and so the salty water dominates the water system depending on how high the Dead Sea is. So back in the 1960's the Dead Sea was much higher and salt water penetrated the ground much higher on shore. The other water in the mix is the fresh water that is coming in from springs and precipitation off of the mountains that border the sea. As you might imagine, there is a place where the salt water from the Dead Sea level meets the fresh water rushing down to the sea. This interface drops as the Dead Sea level drops, so it is much lower now than it was before the 1960's. So freshwater is traveling through more sediments in order to reach the sea, including this thick salt layer. So they think that as freshwater passes through the salt layer it is dissolving it and carrying it to the Sea. Therefore caverns are forming where the salt once was, and it collapses eventually to make a sink hole.
On the other hand we notice that these sink holes seem to be following a pattern on the surface. They are mostly showing up in lines rather than bunches or sporadically. It is thought that these lines are subsurface faults that the water is traveling through. This makes sense because the salt layer may be susceptible to water, but it is surrounded by mud layers that are pretty impermeable. So how is the water getting through the mud layers surrounding the salt layer? Well, if there were faults that cut through these layers then the water can take advantage of the cracks to reach the salt layer and then out to the Sea. Faults are linear features and definitely are all over this area. So that's the idea in principal as I understand it, of course it is always more complicated.
I hope that made some sense.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Ein Gedi and Drilling- Dec 26, 2010
So it crossed my mind that I didn't really describe Bethlehem well. Basically the only area we saw outside was the Manger Square, which is at the top of a big hill. It is a nice square surrounded by tourist shops, cafes and churches. The main church is built over the spot that Jesus was born, (apparently there is a star down in some catacomb underneath it all that marks the spot). Like I said, we didn't go into the church.
The square was full of people selling boiled corn on the cob, people walking around selling coffee and tea, and little kids trying to sell you gum. It was pretty dirty and decently crowded, but you could move around.
Of course one of the strangest things was the military presence. There were Palestinian army guards all over the place (on the roof, in trucks circling, on the ground at every street) with big ol' automatic weapons. So in case something happened and there was some attack in Bethlehem on Christmas they would be able to open fire on the square full of people. Sounds great. Felt really safe... And I don't want to be dramatic, but I definitely felt tension the entire time I was there (mainly because of the guns). And I mean, I grew up on Army bases, I'm used to bomb tests, guns, tanks, and jets flying over. This was different. The peak was probably when we were trying to leave back to Israel. There are a couple of checkpoints that you must pass through. The taxi let us off by the car checkpoint because the road to cross was blocked. We began to walk out and were turned around by the guards, gesturing to a side street that we should take. There were a couple of other groups of people trying to get out so the bunch of us start walking down this street, which leads to another, and another, and another. We kept going in the general direction of the gesture, but it was unclear where we were going and what was down there. Finally we got to a dead end road that led to the wall that we had to pass through. As we were walking down this street, a car zipped by us to the end (turned out to be people trying to sell you stuff) and we walked by 5, equi-spaced 5 gallon gasoline canisters in the street, wet on the outside. That was creepy. We were all tired (it was about 1am) and kind of lost, so that we each looked at them and didn't acknowledge anything out loud. Like I said, I don't want to be dramatic, but it was creepy at the time. Then the walk through checkpoint was at the end of the street and we passed through some extra stuff before getting to the cars to go home.
Anyway, let me try to place the past 24 hours into context. Not having a regular sleep pattern yet is screwing with my perception of days. Yesterday Jason and I helped Elitza log cores in the lab. That involves unpacking each core from boxes in the outdoor freezer, measuring their length and describing how they change (mud, salt, pebbles, etc).
So if you can imagine, there is one core hole (core A) that drilled down over 450 meters into the ground at the bottom of the Dead Sea. They collected sediments cores for this 450+ meters and they are all in tubes, marked so we know what order they go in. So we can describe them and what is in them and essentially describe a column of over 450 meters of what the sediment beneath the Dead Sea looks like. We can see salt indicating dry periods and mud indicating wet periods. We can see where layers are screwed up indicating earthquakes, and organic matter indicating a very different climate. There are even some layers of pebbles, indicating that the middle of the Dead Sea today was above water, meaning it once dried up. All this information is going back approximately 250,000 years at this point.
They've drilled several holes, (we are starting F today), but none have been as deep as hole A. They keep on getting tripped up on the salt, which is very difficult to drill through.
So last night, after helping in the afternoon with core descriptions, I had my first night shift. This involves meeting at the dining hall at 5pm to get dinner to go, then driving down to a dock and taking an hour long boat ride to the platform, which is about 8km out from shore. While the boat ride is very slow for the distance traveled, it was nice last night because I got to talk to the captain, an oceanographer from Haifa, and his helper, a guy who has traveled around and lived everywhere. They both are really nice and interesting people. I'll have a lot of time to interact with them I guess.
So last minute changes made Jason and I share the night shift last night. Jason should be working days, but the normal night shift people couldn't go so they asked him to do it and he (semi-reluctantly) agreed. It was unfortunate because we knew there would be no cores tonight and therefore little to nothing for us to do. The drillers were working all night to set up to begin coring the next hole, but they first needed to send pipes down the 300m of water depth, then another 45 m of sediment before getting to where we want to start bringing up sediment cores. This all takes a looong time. Jason and I had to go on just in case there was any science that needed to be done, but also to try to track whether the rig was moving by using a GPS.
There have been problems with parts breaking due to torque. It is assumed that the platform that we drill from is anchored down and isn't moving, but we're starting to get suspicious that this is a poor assumption. We were hoping that we'd be able to track changes in our position using the GPS, but the thing is over 10 years old... It wasn't clear whether the changes in position that we saw throughout the night are satellite error or actual movement. Basically I got 7 hours of sleep and watched parts of 3 movies with Jason. He brought National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the old Santa Clause movie and Love Actually...I mean, it was Christmas after all.
We were worried that we'd be stuck out on the rig for the day because the winds picked up over the night and the sea was pretty rough. In previous days when there were stormy seas, the boat that shuttles us to shore isn't able to dock up next to the platform without banging against it. There were times when people were out for 24-36 hours before. Luckily today wasn't one of those days and we were able to return at 6am, as expected.
I love the night shift for a couple reasons. I'm more of a night person in the sense that my body feels best to be active at night, but I prefer morning things like sunrise and breakfast versus sunset and dinner. I prefer sunrise over sunset because I don't like darkness, I prefer daytime. I like breakfast over dinner because nothing beats sitting down to a cup of coffee and any food you want when you are hungry and sleepy. So these two things are even better when I've been up all night and my body feels like it's at its peak. So I went and got breakfast as soon as I got back and then walked around the kibbutz this morning taking photos of the botanical garden. There are new photos on facebook, so check them out!
Now I will sign off and hang out until 5pm and I'll start all over again. Hopefully tonight we will be drilling cores. It should be so, but you never know.
The square was full of people selling boiled corn on the cob, people walking around selling coffee and tea, and little kids trying to sell you gum. It was pretty dirty and decently crowded, but you could move around.
Of course one of the strangest things was the military presence. There were Palestinian army guards all over the place (on the roof, in trucks circling, on the ground at every street) with big ol' automatic weapons. So in case something happened and there was some attack in Bethlehem on Christmas they would be able to open fire on the square full of people. Sounds great. Felt really safe... And I don't want to be dramatic, but I definitely felt tension the entire time I was there (mainly because of the guns). And I mean, I grew up on Army bases, I'm used to bomb tests, guns, tanks, and jets flying over. This was different. The peak was probably when we were trying to leave back to Israel. There are a couple of checkpoints that you must pass through. The taxi let us off by the car checkpoint because the road to cross was blocked. We began to walk out and were turned around by the guards, gesturing to a side street that we should take. There were a couple of other groups of people trying to get out so the bunch of us start walking down this street, which leads to another, and another, and another. We kept going in the general direction of the gesture, but it was unclear where we were going and what was down there. Finally we got to a dead end road that led to the wall that we had to pass through. As we were walking down this street, a car zipped by us to the end (turned out to be people trying to sell you stuff) and we walked by 5, equi-spaced 5 gallon gasoline canisters in the street, wet on the outside. That was creepy. We were all tired (it was about 1am) and kind of lost, so that we each looked at them and didn't acknowledge anything out loud. Like I said, I don't want to be dramatic, but it was creepy at the time. Then the walk through checkpoint was at the end of the street and we passed through some extra stuff before getting to the cars to go home.
Anyway, let me try to place the past 24 hours into context. Not having a regular sleep pattern yet is screwing with my perception of days. Yesterday Jason and I helped Elitza log cores in the lab. That involves unpacking each core from boxes in the outdoor freezer, measuring their length and describing how they change (mud, salt, pebbles, etc).
So if you can imagine, there is one core hole (core A) that drilled down over 450 meters into the ground at the bottom of the Dead Sea. They collected sediments cores for this 450+ meters and they are all in tubes, marked so we know what order they go in. So we can describe them and what is in them and essentially describe a column of over 450 meters of what the sediment beneath the Dead Sea looks like. We can see salt indicating dry periods and mud indicating wet periods. We can see where layers are screwed up indicating earthquakes, and organic matter indicating a very different climate. There are even some layers of pebbles, indicating that the middle of the Dead Sea today was above water, meaning it once dried up. All this information is going back approximately 250,000 years at this point.
They've drilled several holes, (we are starting F today), but none have been as deep as hole A. They keep on getting tripped up on the salt, which is very difficult to drill through.
So last night, after helping in the afternoon with core descriptions, I had my first night shift. This involves meeting at the dining hall at 5pm to get dinner to go, then driving down to a dock and taking an hour long boat ride to the platform, which is about 8km out from shore. While the boat ride is very slow for the distance traveled, it was nice last night because I got to talk to the captain, an oceanographer from Haifa, and his helper, a guy who has traveled around and lived everywhere. They both are really nice and interesting people. I'll have a lot of time to interact with them I guess.
So last minute changes made Jason and I share the night shift last night. Jason should be working days, but the normal night shift people couldn't go so they asked him to do it and he (semi-reluctantly) agreed. It was unfortunate because we knew there would be no cores tonight and therefore little to nothing for us to do. The drillers were working all night to set up to begin coring the next hole, but they first needed to send pipes down the 300m of water depth, then another 45 m of sediment before getting to where we want to start bringing up sediment cores. This all takes a looong time. Jason and I had to go on just in case there was any science that needed to be done, but also to try to track whether the rig was moving by using a GPS.
There have been problems with parts breaking due to torque. It is assumed that the platform that we drill from is anchored down and isn't moving, but we're starting to get suspicious that this is a poor assumption. We were hoping that we'd be able to track changes in our position using the GPS, but the thing is over 10 years old... It wasn't clear whether the changes in position that we saw throughout the night are satellite error or actual movement. Basically I got 7 hours of sleep and watched parts of 3 movies with Jason. He brought National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the old Santa Clause movie and Love Actually...I mean, it was Christmas after all.
We were worried that we'd be stuck out on the rig for the day because the winds picked up over the night and the sea was pretty rough. In previous days when there were stormy seas, the boat that shuttles us to shore isn't able to dock up next to the platform without banging against it. There were times when people were out for 24-36 hours before. Luckily today wasn't one of those days and we were able to return at 6am, as expected.
I love the night shift for a couple reasons. I'm more of a night person in the sense that my body feels best to be active at night, but I prefer morning things like sunrise and breakfast versus sunset and dinner. I prefer sunrise over sunset because I don't like darkness, I prefer daytime. I like breakfast over dinner because nothing beats sitting down to a cup of coffee and any food you want when you are hungry and sleepy. So these two things are even better when I've been up all night and my body feels like it's at its peak. So I went and got breakfast as soon as I got back and then walked around the kibbutz this morning taking photos of the botanical garden. There are new photos on facebook, so check them out!
Now I will sign off and hang out until 5pm and I'll start all over again. Hopefully tonight we will be drilling cores. It should be so, but you never know.
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