Day Four in Greece

The past few days have been crazy! We did finally get an internet connection in the house, so I am able to write on this blog at last.

My flight from Amsterdam to Athens was all right. There was a lot of turbulence. The Greek couple next to me tried very hard to talk to me despite the fact that they knew no English and I know no modern Greek. The sky was beautiful.

We even got to see a beautiful sunset not long before landing.

On the 7th we started fieldwork, which I can't say much about. Really, it's not that complicated. It's just a surface collection. We have a lot of artifacts, though, and the work is going pretty quickly. We are between 1/2 and 1/3 of the way through the area we have to survey. We should be finished in another couple of days.

It is hard work but I am doing better than I expected to. My legs were killing me the first few days, and I've been taking painkillers. But today I felt great. I am a bit sore now but generally I think I am getting stronger.

I've learned how to do flotation, which is a method of gathering the contents of a soil sample, such as stones, shell, and seeds. We got to see another amazing sunset out at a farm doing flotation.

I don't really have any photos to share of the work - we don't want people to know where we are and try to loot the place. I can't imagine anything they'd find would be very valuable, but you never know what people are thinking, I guess.

Even though I am enjoying myself, I will be happy to get home, sleep in my own bed without my face feeding mosquitoes all night, and take a bath without flooding the bathroom. Oh, and do laundry. I miss clean clothes. I miss being clean in general. It's impossible to do fieldwork and stay clean. Even if I was able to bathe properly and do laundry every night, I'd just get filthy again the next day.

But mostly, I'd really like the mosquitoes to leave me alone. I mean, look what they've already done to my face:

And I have to wear earplugs at night so that they don't wake me up in the process of doing this to me. At least most of it doesn't itch.

Oh well. It is a very exciting project and I really am happy to be here. But I will also be happy to return to the comforts of home.

Amsterdam

My flight from Newark to Amsterdam went smoothly. Actually it was a much better experience than I've ever had at Newark before. Terminal B was pretty empty. Security took all of ten minutes and I got to get dinner and relax at the gate for just the right amount of time before boarding. It didn't take forever to get off the ground. We landed right on time. Got to see a beautiful sunrise.

I got really confused in the Amsterdam airport and it was frustrating at first. But I've been here six hours now and it's a pretty nice airport, though it could use more seating! I've finally gotten my boarding pass and I am sitting here at the gate looking at the airplane that will take me to Athens. They have just started loading it up with luggage. I discovered that in Amsterdam they occasionally put hats on smoothies as part of a fundraiser:

Also most everyone is strangely nice for airport employees. They ask me where I'm going, how long I've been waiting, are surprised and sympathetic to hear "six hours," and give me advice on where to find comfy chairs. 

I had a six-hour layover in Rome once that was the absolute worst experience. I was seriously sleep deprived and couldn't buy anything to eat or read because all the stores were through passport control. The problem there is that I couldn't go through without a boarding pass and I couldn't check in to my flight until an hour before it left. So sixteen-year-old me got to sprawl out alone on a dirty airport floor and wait five hours for them to let me check into my flight and go through security. It was awful.

This was much MUCH better. It didn't feel endless at all. I can't wait to get out of here, of course, but it was a pretty enjoyable layover, as layovers go. I should be in Athens in about 3-4 hours, if I'm doing my math right. I hope this flight goes as smoothly as the first and the rest of this trip follows that example!

AROURA

I have been interested in the AROURA project for quite a while now. At UMBC I listened to Michael Lane plan this project and then heard about the results from the first season last year. I considered joining him out there this fall but opted to enroll in graduate school instead. Due to some complications, it has turned out that he needs another person out there for the last couple of weeks and he asked me if I was available.

It took a little juggling but as I am only in one class right now, it was easier than I expected to find the time. My class is on Thursdays so I will be leaving on a Saturday (arriving in Athens on Sunday) and coming back two Thursdays later. I will miss only one day of class unless jet lag keeps me from going on the night of November 17.

I don't know how much internet access I will have in Greece, but I wanted to open up this blog while at home so that if I can use it, I don't have to set it up from there.

I hope everything goes well. I'm not certain yet what exactly I will be doing out there but I am excited to go. It's all so sudden - I bought my plane ticket less than two weeks before my departure date! Now it's time to pack like mad and hope I can find everything I need to bring with me!!