Not too much has transpired between this Friday and last besides work. I did want to post some more pictures from the site and from last Friday's carpet shopping. A exciting thing for me (but maybe not as much for most of my audience on here) was that I got the opportunity to learn to excavate an infant burial out of one section of our trench this past week. It was fun but difficult since it was so small and would fall apart as you would lift parts out. This is my first time working on burials, and though it may [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday night we got another nice evening of turkish culture with a performance of the whirling dervishes on our terrace. The whirling dervishes are actually the mevlevi order, and this religious order was founded in konya during the 13 century. The whirling is a form of dhikr (remembrance of God). Dervish is a common term for an initiate of the Sufi (the order's) path; the whirling itself is known as the Sema and the participants are known as semazens. It takes a lot of practice to do this, though it looks fairly simple try thinking about staying in one spot [View Full Entry]

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Monday being our first full day at Çatalhöyük, they let us sleep in until breakfast was served at 9:30am to adjust to being here and getting in so late the night before. We were shown the West Mound site where we would be working that morning, and then went over some of the procedural things for how things work around the site and camp. At the West Mound we were also joined by Ian Hodder who is the head guy at Çatalhöyük, and he went over some things with our site and another trench that was opened on another side of [View Full Entry]

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I am currently at the hotel in Konya where we take a day trip to on Fridays to do things around town. Anyway, here is a backlog on what I did my last day in Istanbul. Due to being out so late the night before, I got up sometime in the early afternoon on Saturday. I met up again with Patrick who is also going to the site with me and some other people from the hostel. There was a bbq that night that we all went to after we had gone out for some turkish coffee. We were hanging out [View Full Entry]

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I made it to the site very late last night. I have very limited internet access here and will be doing updates and stuff on Fridays. We start work tomorrow! [View Full Entry]

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Today I got up a lıttle later than I had planned. One because the air condıtıonıng was on and two I forgot to put my alarm on. I got up at 9:20! I ate really quıckly and headed out for the day. My fırst stop was to the Grand Bazaar. The street sıgns are not exactly where you would look for them all the tıme... so ıt took a lıttle trıal and error to get there. Once ın there, it was very overwhelming. The market is a huge building organized into sections of whatever they are selling. İ bought some headscarfs [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday before my break of picture posting, I had woken up around 7am due to the heat and movement from others in the room (I am in a 8 girl dorm). İ ate real quick and headed out to the Aya Sofia first. İ bought a guided tour of this place and it was very good. As I had found in Italy, the building had gone through three dıfferent stages of renovatıon and conversatıon (pagan, muslim, and christıan). The dome inside unfortunately was being renovated, as next year is cultural celebration year for the city and many culturally sıgnıfıcant places are [View Full Entry]

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İ am back at lunch time to change foot attire after half a day of touring around. İt is 35 C here - or 95 F! Hence my little break at the hottest part of the day. Anyway... İ will write more later - as İ am heading out now to see more. Enjoy some pictures for now. [View Full Entry]

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I have arrıved! I got to my hostel around 12:30 thıs afternoon (5:30AM EST). I promptly crashed on arrıval, as I was unable to get any sleep nor was I tired on the 10 hour flıght here. A few notes from my travel so far are that those sılly neck pillows are amazıng! Many US citizens did not realize they needed visas and looked like a bunch of dumb butts wastıng the Passport workers time trying to understand that they needed a visa and had to wait in line agaın. İ surprısıngly had no trouble transportiıng the Total Station İ ha [View Full Entry]

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Well, it's been one whole year since I've been able to enjoy international travel once again. Even if my last trip didn't end as well as I had hoped , I'm very much looking forward to this trip to Turkey for a few reasons. *I will have officially been to Asia, since Turkey is technically mostly in Asia and partly in Europe. *I will be starting what I entered graduate school to do... my dissertation project for my degree. *I will be getting to do some amazing things, meet interesting people, and hopefully have a great time while I am working. [View Full Entry]

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