Day 16

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Day 16

Our prof delayed our meeting time this morning because a lot of them stayed at the bar for a while longer than my group did. So I had time to skype with my boyfriend and sister at 8am, have a leisurely breakfast and meet at the docks for 9:30am. It started to rain as we walked down to the bus, but it was still a nice and casual day; we stopped by at the hardware store to pick up more handpicks, hand brushes, gloves, knee pads and other site tools/necessities. By the time we got to our site, the rain had stopped. We unpacked the storage shed, set up the chairs and got our sites ready for the day’s dig. Everyone was a little slower and mellow today since we had all gone out and stayed out pretty late the night before; our prof even suggested we work less hard and burry anything we find today until tomorrow when we all have the energy to catalogue it. But this didn’t deter my group from finding more pottery; they have a case of ‘my-site-itis’ (which is, according to my prof, once you’re assigned a trench, then you get obsessed with the fact that your site is the best and most important) so everything’s a reason to call to our prof to come and investigate the new find. I think it’s a little overboard, but me and Sarah just keep working, looking every now and then at the findings and continuing with the work. These past few days my main job has been shoveling the site and emptying the baskets once they’re full; it’s one of the more grueling jobs, since one of the girls just sits there and digs to find pottery without helping with the manual labor. She says it’s because she has back problems and has headaches, but I think it’s because she wants to be the one to unearth all the findings herself and get the spotlight. She’s also the one who asks us to take pictures of her digging in the trench. A little conceded, but we’re one big family so we get along.

At about 12:30pm, the 3 of us, not including the fragile pottery girl, cleaned up and packed up our trench, headed down to the chairs and had lunch. We were starving since we usually have break at 10:30, but this time we worked straight through since we got a 2hr-late start day. Everyone else followed suit and eventually we all were ready to leave at 1pm on the dot. Vasilis even helped out at the trenches and while it rained again at the dig site, we brought out our rain jackets, while Vasilis wore the wheelbarrow as protection.

Nearing our apartments, Vasilis did a stop at the post office; where I got off to buy a water bottle holder and a spanikopita for dinner. I got the water bottle holder at this store that everyone’s just discovered and is offering 30% off everything. So I bought some souvenirs and the holder for $4 EU. So cheap!! I also heard tonight that they have citronella candles there, so I might have to go back and get me some; the mosquitoes are still ruthless!

I made my way back to the apartments and got ready for the beach. I met with Isabelle and the other Sara. We spent a good 2 hours at the beach, then headed back. We had a meet and greet meeting with our Greek tutor, hired by our prof, Stella who will be starting to do conversational lessons on Tuesday nights with us from 5-7pm. After the 30min casual meeting, we walked back to our apartments and got ready for a run. About 6 of us went out, and split up in 2 groups (Isabelle and I stayed back with Sara, while the other 3 did more long-distance running). We all cooled down together along the beach, did some stretching, visited our TA at the Hercules building (just above our classroom) on our way back home. We all went back to our own places, I put my spanikopita on the stove to heat (steaming it with plates and hot water on the element), took a shower and got some laundry started. It was my first time doing laundry so far this trip, which is pretty good (3 weeks in sweltering heat), truthfully it was only because I was running out of clean underwear and my whites were turning yellow from the sunscreen (which still hasn’t washed out for some reason). I spent the rest of my night in, just hanging up my laundry, making my lunch for tomorrow and doing dishes from dinner. Tomorrow’s a regular 7:30am meeting at the docks day, so I think I’ll go to bed.

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