I continued to work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project. My colleague Hanswulf Bloedhorn came from Tübingen on December 10 and 11 to discuss progress with Klaus and me.
My forthcoming book with the University of Jordan press about Palestinian customs and practices has reached page-proof stage, and so I spent some time proofreading it and preparing an index.
I also continued to teach my course of the history and archaeology of Syria-Palestine in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods. By chance in December there were two public lectures about the archaeological excavations at the site of Rusafa in Syria, of prime interest for the course. I also attended a public lecture by Nicholas Jaspert on interfaith encounters in the Mediterranean; I had first met him in Jerusalem last March.
I continued to participate in the Volkshochschule (community college) courses: Greek dancing on Mondays, Conversational French on Tuesdays and Irish Step Dancing on Wednesdays; there was also an additional Irish dance session at a local pub on Sunday December 13.
The Irish Set Dance Group
I also attended a number of other cultural events, including two lectures sponsored by the local nature society, and a number of music concerts during the Advent season. I also attended a presentation about a charitable project in India. Once Advent started, the annual Christmas Market was set up in the main city square.
The Christmas Market in the Maxplatz Square
I also read the suspense novel by Frank Schätzing, Die Schwarm (The Swarm), the first thousand-page novel I have read in German. It was an easy read about a mysterious intelligence in the ocean attempting to get rid of the human species: whales start sinking ships, tube worms bore into the continental shelves, causing them to collapse and provoke tsunamis, while crabs spread a pandemic disease.
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