Hill House

Well 9 weeks have flown by it seems. I can't believe it's the last weekend here. I'm leaving tragana tomorrow for athens. and then from there I will be making my way to paris to visit Shy. it should be a good time. I haven't posted here in a long time and I"m sorry but things have been busy and the site was down for a while. We excavated a total of 20 graves this summer. It broke the record which is exciting..but that means that we spent many long 15 plus hour days on the island. It's pretty rediculous that I'm done. but at the same time I think we're all ready to go home. I've met some really amazing people here and it's sad that they're all going to be so far away. Last ... read more

Hello everyone, here's my address in Tragana. I love getting mail.....weee sorry this is such a short post, i miss you all but i have to run! Having packages/letters sent to you at Tragana: STUDENT NAME Mitrou Archaeological Project c/o Stavroula Kyriakou Plateia GR-35200 Tragana Phthiotidos Greece... read more

Hey everyone, It's now the end of week 6 and things are fantastic. we're back in another heat wave which makes working at site alot of fun. We have now excavated 10 penguins. The last one I did contained 3 intact vessels, a jug, cup and bowl. They were so pretty!!! there was also shell and glass beads which made up what we think were two necklaces. That was so exciting. the others have been empty or very fragmented. but i'm still so excited everytime we take off the cap stones, because you never know what will come up. Last weekend we were in tragana, we only had day trips around the region so we all went out to the beach bar again on saturday. And Kerril and I were "swing" dancing for a long period ... read more

So it's been a while since i've last posted. It's been busy here, sort of.... We're passed the half way mark right now which is crazy but we still have 4 weeks left! So much is going on. We've only opened up 2 penguins since i've last posted. And nothign was in either of them. I didn't get to work on any of those because it wasn't my turn...but next week looks like it will be a busy one again becasue there are some waiting to be opened. So i'm really looking forward for that. Since we haven't been doing any penguins i was put in a trench with Amber (a trench supervisor). She's really great and lots of fun to work with. I was with her for 2 days taking out the plow zone. She ... read more

It has been a crazy week. where to start! Well last weekend we toured around boetia (spelling? sorry), we saw where the theban sacred band was buried, and then visited a few museums and we also visited a site of an oracle. That was alot of fun because the site is up a cliff in a cave. and the story is that people would climb up and crawl into this cave and then fall into a pit, and while lying there they would be visited by the oracle and it would answer their questions. so John younger our director and a few other students climbed up. So then we took off to glah. A crazy site that is completely overgrown. While hiking through thistles and bushes Tyler got stung by a wasp...and john fixed him by ... read more

Hey everyone, So this is going to be a quick post because I was wiriting this and some little kids beside me knocked out the power, so i lost alot of time. but thankfully the heat wave feels as thought it has broken. Today we have a really nice breeze all day that even made it into the olive grove. Also I'm wearing jeans and not sweating, it's a very nice change and i'm really looking forward to sleeping in cooler temperatures, althought it's still probably 35. Anyways this week has been good. We excavated our first penguin yesterday, but i was not in on that one because there just isn't enought room for all 4 students around such a small area, so Christine and Nicole did it with Jodi. And they did a great job. ... read more

Hey everyone. So the heat wave continues. Yesterday we stoppeed working at 1:30 instead of 2:30 because the temperature was up to 45 in the shade. Yep it's brutally hot here. But we're all being careful, drinking lots, we have sun shades over our trenches and the sun screen is always out. Today we were working and again it was very hot, but not as hot. Probably only 39... Anyways after karpouzie (watermelon break) Aleydis our boss came up to me and told me to go put on a shirt because I have such fair skin and red hair. aparently she's told all the red heads/ ginger kids to do that. (Surprisingly there are 6 of us here, we're taking over!) I was angry. I'm probably one of the few people who haven't had a heat ... read more

Hello!!! So at the moment we are in a heat wave in Greece. Yikes! It has been well over 40 degrees for the last week or more. And it is rediculously hot. Athens was almost unberable. We were lucky though that our hotel had AC, except it just made stepping out into the heat that much worse. On sunday in athens we got up and headed our at 8:30 for the acropolis. So off we went, hiked up the huge hill only to find out that the guards were striking. and we heard that it was the first time in 20 years. We never got to see the acropolis..so sad. We did climb to the aerogopolis (sorry for spelling) but it's the big rock just below the acropolis where in ancient times old senate members would ... read more

Hello again, it looks like i'm only going to be able to update this on weekends when we go into larger cities because the internet access we have in tragana is very slow and gets expensive....so keep looking out for weekend updates! So week two has gone by rediculously fast. Monday we opened up the trenches, took off the tarps and began to sweep up the site and get it ready for begining of season photographs. So lots of sweeping with tiny brooms....pretty mindless. Our field dierctor had also been discussing with one of the land owners on the island if we could open up a few older trenches on her land. We finally got permissions for that and began more back fill removal in the "olive grove". We are digging in two spots on the ... read more

Hello everyone! Firstly, thank you for all your comments, it is so nice to hear from you guys. I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. Greece is amazingly beautiful and so far most of the people here seem very cool and like it will be a great summer. After my messy travel day to athens and then monday's adventure on the Greek bus to tragana I settled into our house that has 7 girls and one bathroom. It's a little tight but we're making it work. Three of us are living in the kitchen and there is a rumor that an 8th girl will be living with us in a few weeks, which will make it 4 in the kitchen. But it's very nice and modern which I was not expecting.... I'm living ... read more