http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Byrnesy/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Byrnesy en-us Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:14:49 +0000 Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:14:49 +0000 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 s http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Central-Anatolia/Konya/blog-429923.html 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 kn http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Central-Anatolia/Konya/blog-428124.html Monday being our first full day at atalhyk they let us sleep in until breakfast was served at 930am 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 th http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/blog-426119.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-426112.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Central-Anatolia/Konya/blog-424991.html Today I got up a l305ttle later than I had planned. One because the air cond305t305on305ng was on and two I forgot to put my alarm on. I got up at 920 I ate really qu305ckly and headed out for the day. My f305rst stop was to the Grand Bazaar. The street s305gns are not exactly where you would look for them all the t305me... so 305t took a l305ttle tr305al and err http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-424220.html 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. 304 ate real quick and headed out to the Aya Sofia first. 304 bought a guided tour of this place and it was very good. As I had found in Italy the building had gone through three d305fferent stages of renovat305on and conversat305on http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-423903.html 304 am back at lunch time to change foot attire after half a day of touring around. 304t is 35 C here or 95 F Hence my little break at the hottest part of the day. Anyway... 304 will write more later as 304 am heading out now to see more. Enjoy some pictures for now. http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-423774.html I have arr305ved I got to my hostel around 1230 th305s afternoon 530AM EST. I promptly crashed on arr305val as I was unable to get any sleep nor was I tired on the 10 hour fl305ght here. A few notes from my travel so far are that those s305lly neck pillows are amaz305ng Many US citizens did not realize they needed visas and looked like a bunch of dumb butts wast305ng th http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/Marmara/Istanbul/blog-423533.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Middle-East/Turkey/blog-419525.html This video was actually taken by another field school student Kirsten who was sitting in the front seat of the Fiat Punto that we were driving downhill in. Bob the driver in this video drives INSANELY slow making the video about 13 minutes long. I mean you should drive slow down this mountain but don't crawl down it. So thanks to my awesome little sister I have a 2 12 minute clip of t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/blog-299724.html I won't write much here this is mainly for the pictures that I think are worth posting but I didn't get to post earlier.There are two videos as well 1. A video of the sheep at our site WARNING rated PG13 for use of profanity and it wasn't me either. 2. A video of the view from the Greek wall. Apologizes for the audio I really just need to not talk and I hope that's not what my real voice http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/blog-298656.html After being gone for 45 days I made a number of observations and learned a few things along the way. A guide book is a very very good thing. Especially when it has a map of every town and city in the country more or less. My backpack...was amazing and apparently I'm pretty good at packing compared to many of the other women I met at both the hostels and some at the field school. In Rome http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/blog-297829.html The last week at the site was an exciting and also disappointing one. I haven't talked much about the site itself as the field school was a vast failure at best. We never ended up digging inside the castle. We were working at both a Greek site and an Early Bronze Age site down slope from the castle. I spent the majority of my time at the Greek site which was a semicollapsed Greek wall. The Earl http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/blog-297313.html June 21 Opting out of the last weekend trip to Lipari I wanted to go to the beach in town Since we didn't have access to a car to drive us down we walked. Cait and I were the only ones who went while the other ladies decided to stay at our apartment all day. It is actually quite the hike down and up the mountain to town. Roccalumera is the name of the town and we went to the beach first. http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/blog-295922.html So the place that I stayed at along with 16 other people as I mentioned earlier was called the Agriturismo. For all the bad things that happened I actually ended up with the best roommates out of everyone. Cait was my roommate Reese was in the other bedroom of our apartment sharing a room with Katherine. After staying here though I was glad to come back to the states and be able to keep the sho http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/blog-295735.html June 13th We got Friday off this week as the previous week we had worked 6 days in a row. This trip was taken by everyone as most of the weekend excursions are optional since it's extra money to go as we were told that this is not a place to miss. We visited the Siracuse museum where Pietro actually helped organize a number of the displays in the Sicilian archaeology collections they had t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/Siracusa/blog-295514.html June 15th After getting our free breakfast at the hotel bar cappuccino and a chocolate creme filled croissant...yeah I was being the fat kid that morning we headed back towards the east coast of the island with a few stops on our way back. Oh on the way there we stopped at a gas station to fill up gas is 10 US a gallon by the way and I saw a whole bunch of children surrounding this red http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/Piazza-Armerina/blog-295500.html June 14th After Caltagirone all of us loaded up into our Fiat Puntos and made the rest of the drive across the island to Agrigento to visit the Valley of the Temples. This is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world and a Unesco world heritage site. We got there fairly late in the day only 2 hours before closing time. There is also some drama associated with this visit betw http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/Agrigento/blog-295485.html June 14 This trip was an overnighter so we covered a lot of areas. Ultimate destination was Agrigento where the Valley of the Temples is. Our first stop was an archaeological site Morgantina. They actually excavate on Saturdays so we got to meet the director and see them at work...least to say that actually made me very sad and upset as they were doing things that I came there to learn...y http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Italy/Sicily/blog-294977.html