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Published: June 16th 2007
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 with all the mortuary girls: Christine, Nicole and Jamie as well as three staff members. The entire field school is split up into houses around the village and some are better then others and luckily I have aparently gotten one of the better ones. (Yeah)
So the village of tragana is great, only about 700 people and they are patient with us and very welcoming. I have also picked up a few more words of greek and can now say a few sentences and am attempting to have short conversations with people...but they also involve lots of gestures (thank you cranium!).
This week, like I thought was all about clearing our site of back dirt. Unlike last summer in belize we are digging in trenches that were started last year. Because this is a continually occupied site there is just level upon level of history so we will be continuing last years work. It is very exciting. There is already possibly three graves very close to the surface in a trench that they didn't have time for last summer....so we might just jump right in.
Our days begin at 5:30 and then we're out at site by 6:30. we work until 2:30 and then have a siesta until 6:00 when the field school students meet for our lectures and then we have dinner at 8:00. After dinner we have free evenings where most of us head to a local bar and relax. Most of the time we try to be in bed by 12:00 but some nights are later then others.
It's lots of fun to be in a setting like this were you get to live with your professors, because it is just so different from the university atmosphere. We eat, drink and work with these people.
Monday we will be placed in trenches and then will rotate for the first bit of the season until we (and the trench supervisors) figure out who we work well with. And for the mortuary students we will be floating until a grave comes up. We will also be rotation with the different specialists: pottery, flotation, lithics, GIS/ survey etc...
Kerril, our site director took us on a tour of the island where we are digging and it's amazing how much there is too see. Along the coast there are cist graves and stone sockles. sockles are the stone walls of mud brick buildings. there is a ton of pottery scattered all over the beaches from all different time periods. We had one lecture there Kerril showed us all the small finds from previous years, there were pottery figurines, lithic (stone) tools, bronze and iron tools, obsidean blades and gold leaf along with lots of other stuff...It's incredible.
We have adopted a local dog that we've named hercules who follows us around every where. at first he was very scared of us but on friday our field school director John carried him accross to the island and he spent the day with us. And he slept outside my house for a few nights. He's very cute, so we'll see if he becomes a permanent friend at the site!
We are now in a city called Volos north of where we're staying. We visited a neolithic museum today and tomorrow we are travelling to two neolithic sites. This evening we are going to meet near the harbour to have a Greek lesson from John. It should be quite nice, we're having wine and learning greek. we've already covered bronze age chronology and greek history in lecutres, and the porfessors here are just so smart and can provide lots of insight.
I really enjoy the girls I'm working with, Christine is from minnesota, Jamie goes to the university of tenessee and nicole is from canada. Very cool ladies! also we're a bit older then the other students so we're hanging out with the staff a bit more. They're great. In all there are about 6 canadians so far...and it's very interesting being with so many americans. Good times! They are making fun of me for saying Eh all the time, which is something i never realized that I did, or that Canadians did that much.
Oh and there is a student from orange county! HA! it's great. just thought you'd all appreciate that!
And lastly.....My luggage finally arrived. The airline called on thursday in the afternoon saying that they had found it. So friday as we drove to volos we drove into atalantidi where they sent my bag on the bus. We finally found the bus station which was nothing more then a convience store with a big enough parking lot for buses. so I was not hopeful when we saw it...but we walked in and sitting in the middle of the floor was my bag! It was like Christmas. 6 days with out clothes is a long time. BUt i'm am good to go, and ready for the next two months.
I am going to attempt to upload some photos, but we'll see how that goes.
Hillary
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Kayleigh
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Thank goodness for luggage
Thank goodness you found your luggage! As much fun as shopping for all new clothes would have been, I'm pretty sure having your own clothes back is even better. Can't wait to see pictures!