Field School

I have been at the field school for 4 weeks now. I am staying at an Agriturismo, which is just a term used around here for a redone old farm house used for vacationers. Overall a nice place to stay, minus a few factors. The view is fantastic, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. There are 17 people staying here, 3 apartments (two 4 person apartments, and one 9 person). This place is about a 1 hour walk from the beach town, Roccalumera. Did I mention that our apartment is half way up a mountain? With many switchbacks and a narrow winding road? Least to say, I have run out of Dramamine from all the driving up and down and crazy Italian driving. The site itself is about a 30 minute drive up the rest of the mountain, a Medieval castle (Castello Belvedere) that also has a Greek site and an Early Bronze Age site a little ways downhill from the castle. The ride up the mountain to the site is actually scarier than the ride up to our apartment, since it is a dirt road and if you don't do it right your car may slide down the side of the road...which is a steep drop off the side of the mountain. I opted to walk up a trail instead many times, since the car situation was sketchy. The other students here are for the most part cool people, minus a few who are just plain weird or complain all the time (given, I'm fairly weird myself, we're talking real creepy weird though). I won't go into it much here, but since I have been here for 4 weeks, I have been really disappointed and frustrated with the lack of organization and communication between the staff members to get things done and inform us. Many of the things that were promised to us have not happened, and I have not learned 90% of what I came here to learn. We didn't even start digging until the second week, and even then instruction in the field was minimal.

---

---