Hello all!

Hello all!
Well, the Crete portion of my trip has ended and Liss and Jenn arrived in Athens last Tuesday. We were there for a few days, and have since moved on to Rome. Unfortunately, the internet is not as readily available here, and we have been quite busy. There's not much time to sit around and lots to do, so I shall have to relate the details when I return. Loves to all!

Almost done!

Hello all! So I made it before a whole week went past! Mostly because we're just about done and I am about to start traveling in earnest. I can't believe it's been six weeks already! But I am definitely looking forward to Liss and Jenn getting here! The week has gone by pretty much as usual. Work has been fun, and I got to put together my big pot! Which was slightly terrifying and all sortsa awesome ^^ I shall have to show people pictures when I get home! Other than that, we've been poking around Pacheia Ammos, being lazy and loungy!

Blinky! Who loves being pet, and will stand cuddles! (Yes... it's a cat. Yes I picked him up anyways!)

I still walk up the hill at sunrise, which is usually a pretty sight ^^

Ella, chilling in our room. She's been adopted and is going home to America at the end of the trip.

Last night we had a conservation dinner, and the head conservator who has been supervising us, Kathy, took us all to Mochlos to have drinks and dinner. It was quite fun and very tasty!

We stopped at this little bar for a beer. It was very cute and right on the beach with this fabulous view!

And to the other side you could see Mochlos, an island that used to be an isthmus that has a Bronze age (and later) settlement on it.

Me! With my beer! Look how dark it is! Almost... well, all... the beer in Greece is very light for the most part, so it was nice to run into a place with a more expansive beer list!

The moon rose over the mountains as we were having dinner, and it was beautiful and orange, and I wish my camera could have caught it better!

 So tomorrow will be our last day of work, which is sad cause I shall miss it, but fun because it means on to new things! Originally I was thinking the dig would end on Monday, but it kind of ends tomorrow as far as most people are concerned, so my roommate Brett and I are going to go skip around Crete a bit before we leave the island on Tuesday. I promise we'll be safe, mothy! We're just going to go poke around a bunch of ruins like the adventurous archaeology sorts we are. Hope all is well back home, loves to all!

It was nice and clear today, and you could see the mountains quite well!

Oh! And I almost forgot. This is Pretty Kitty, enjoying a box lid. Even in Greece cats are ecstatic over empty box pieces. (>> She's not dead, just napping!)

The Weekly Report

Hello all! It looks like I have fallen into weekly reports, but not to worry, you haven't missed too much! The last Sunday was spent lounging about, which was quite nice. The week went along pretty much as normal. Work in the lab has finally gotten a little busier now that items have filtered through all the paperwork in registration and made their way over to us. The highlight of this week was learning how to use the x-ray machine and then develop the x-rays old fashioned style in a dark room. ^^ It was quite fun. Outside of that it was a pretty quite week as far as doing things. Our afternoons were mostly spent lounging somewhere and enjoying some down time. One afternoon, though, Brett and I attempted to walk to Vasiliki, which is a Bronze Age site only about 40 minutes away from Pachia Ammos by foot. We had some bad directions, so we never made it, but it was a pretty walk all the same!

This gorge is in the midst of the mountains on the far side of the valley we sit in

Our walk took us through some nice little olive groves.

And along some paved roads.

The view looking back was fabulous, too, even if we didn't find the site!

 The other best part of this week was the kitties. There are kittens eeeeeverywhere. Most of them are very skittish, but they are absolutely adorable all the same.

There's three of these little guys who live outside of Marco's, one of the hotels some people are staying in.

They're so tiny and fluffy! But they don't like to be pet. Oh well...

 Walking up to work this week was really pretty, too, because we had some clouds wander through. It brought a few cool days, and really pretty sunrises.

 On Saturday Brett and I went to Ierapetra to get money at the ATM and to do a bit of wandering and shopping. We went to see the Venetian fortress, Kales, there too, which was pretty cool

The outside...

And the inside!

And more inside! It's not terribly big, but it would have done the job of defending the harbor.

Me! ^^

On an awesome Venetian wall.

We wandered past this little street in Ierapetra. The towns can be so pretty here!

 And... more kitties. Because they were adorable, and I had to have more pictures of them being adorable!

This kitten actually lives in the alley way that runs alongside our hotel. We named him Blinky, because one of his eyes had a bit of trouble earlier, and he's my favorite kitten because he's the only one that lets us pet him! He's most adorable.

Last night, too, there was a beach party here, which was a lot of fun. They set up a DJ and a little bar out on the sand and there was music and dancing and lots of fun to be had. And since parties rarely end before 5 or so... today was spent sleeping in and being lazy. One more week to go! Hope all is well back home, loves!

Still alive!

Hello all!

I've been terribly remiss in keeping things updated, and can only say that exceptional laziness has claimed my week. But I see that I left you all on last Friday, so let's see if I can catch up to today! The Saturday after that, I headed over to Heraklion with Brett and Brian, and we stayed there overnight so that we could go see Knossos the next day.

Grafitti - Heraklion had some pretty interesting ones, this was drawn large scale on a wall we passed in the city.

Our harbor view from the restaurant where we had dinner.

Knossos! Much of the site here was reconstructed early on by Sir Arthur Evans, the first excavator at the beginning of the 20th century. He's faced a good bit of academic censure for that, but it is rather interesting to see his impressions of what the site ought to have looked like.

The famous throne room. This was either a political or (more likely) religiously significant place in the very center of the Knossos palace complex. This room is rather well done, as it was found, for the most part, in situ. The stone throne, in fact, was only a couple inches below topsoil. It managed to survive all the centuries by that tiny little margin!

Horns of Consecration. This was a prevalent symbol in Minoan society, generally taken to be religious in nature. Indeed, this example is huge (taller than I am) and if you stand between the horns and look through them, you will see a mountain where a Minoan shrine was located.

So, as it has been before, the site was awesome, if a little warm. After visiting out there we headed back into Heraklion to take a look at the museum. The archaeological museum there has been under construction for years, and they have a little basement room where they display all the most prominent and important pieces they have. But this year they managed to open up a couple things in the museum proper and now have a Roman sculpture room and a fresco room open, both of which were quite nice. I can't wait until they get the rest of the museum in working order!

Me, posing with a Roman Persephone, Hades, and Cerberus. You're not reeeeally supposed to do that in museums, but the guard was rather remiss and it was too good an opportunity to pass up!

 Before we left to come back to Pachia Ammos, we wandered around the city a bit, and stopped in for Chinese food, because as tasty as Greek food is, a little variety is necessary now and again!

The Golden Dragon. A Chinese owned Chinese restaurant, and quite tasty!

Heee... this amused me.

 So we made out way back to Pachia Ammos for work the next morning, and returned to this:

This chair is straight out of a horror movie. The wind is rather strong off the ocean sometimes, and blows the chair down the hallway. Of course, the first time Brett and I saw that, was when it decided to chase us. For some reason it never really makes it past our door, either... The best part was when Brett went to put it back where it belonged and it proceeded to chase her back around the corner. ^^

So that was Sunday! Most of this week went by pretty slowly. Work went along as usual, and we finally have a good bit of pottery to deal with in the lab, which means no more plaster for a while, yay! The plaster project is going pretty well, though, and Max has made some good progress on it.

Pretty Kitty, napping on the bench. She and Freddy are the two cats that live at the Center.

One afternoon I wandered over to Irapetra for a bit, and passed this statue, though I'm not entirely sure what it is supposed to be for, if anything.

Ta-da! The one good thing about starting our day so early is that the walk up the giiiiant hill to the center affords a nice view of the sunrise behind us. 

 Not much has gone on besides that! This weekend I have decided to be lazy and lounge about with a book on the beach, before we move into the last stretch of the dig. Hope all is well at home, loves to all!

Yay, almost weekend!

Hello all! I hope everyone had a happy 4th! Business has been chugging along as usual here in Crete since Tuesday. The lab has been a bit slow, oddly enough, because it has taken the trenches a while to get to anything that needs conserving, so we have spent a lot of time cleaning plaster, which can be a rather slow and tedious process. Luckily today we got some fun things in, so hopefully Monday will bring something new to do! Other than that my afternoons have mostly been spent lazing about. The boys, and a couple girls, got out and played rugby on the beach one afternoon, which was pretty entertaining.

Rugby!

More rugby!

 The highlight of our week in the lab was probably that we got an almost whole jar in. And this guy crawled out of the drain:

It's like a giant two inch long centipede. He was icky, but I saved him and threw him over where the smokers sit! I also saved a praying mantis from Freddy the Cat earlier this week. It's been a good week for bugs in the Center, I think!

 One of the beach-side restaurants threw a 4th of July Celebration for us Americans. There were fireworks, mostly of the noisy rather than sparkly kind, and besides the rather traditional Greek appetizers we got this:

Corn on the cob (which was super tasty) with sparklers!

A cheeseburger and french fries, Greek style.

And sparklers! No 4th would be complete without them.

So that was our 4th of July. We all went and hung out for a bit and one of the bars in town, but we had to work the next morning, so we couldn't celebrate too long. Today the town and their cultural council threw a welcome party for the archaeologists - those at Gournia, Azoria, and Mochlos, who are all working at INSTAP this summer, welcoming us, since we seem to be one of their biggest influxes of business all year. It was fun, there was food and music and dancing, and lots of people all about. Anyways, I must be off to bed so we can get up in the morning. Lover to all, hope all is well!

Hello again!

So evenings are always fun, there is food and lounging. Yummy, yummy food... mmm.

Mezedes from Arrieta's restaurant. She makes the most delicious food.

Pachia Ammos evening, yay ^^

So Sunday! On Sunday Brett and I hiked over to Gournia to poke around the site while we weren't working, and walked down to the harbor to see if we could spot the ship sheds there. Unfortunately the ship sheds are too far underwater to be visible without goggles, but the beach there was pretty all the same!

Hiking to Gournia

View from one of the hilltops

Olive groves

The view of the site from the top of the hill is pretty awesome, because you can see it all at once and better than when you're actually wandering around in it.

Gournia from above

Walking down the hill to the site

Brett on a Gournia street

A gournia. These are located outside of a lot of houses in the town, which is where it got its name from. They are generally called stone water troughs, but they aren't really big enough to hold a substantial amount of water. 

Cute little staircase. It's juuuust wide enough for a person.

Kernos stone. These things come in all shapes and sizes, but they are often round. They are thought to have been used for offerings or something of that sort, since they tend to be found in association with things like tombs and areas that are thought to have been important.

Hugging the baetyl stone! These stones are set upright in various areas (this one is  right in the main entrance into the  palace at Gournia) and are thought to have been religious objects.

After wandering around the palace and the town, we headed down to the harbor and though we didn't see our ship sheds, we did find this building. I'm not sure what it was, but it looked cool!

The harbor building.

The beach near Gournia.

On the beach!

The view from the top of the hill.

And that was our Sunday. We came back home and napped 'til dinner, after so much time in the sun. Monday and today were pretty normal, as far as work days go. We went into work, and hung out in the afternoon. Yesterday was Canada day, too, and as there are a whole buncha Canadians on the dig, they had their big party. It was cute, because they all had Canadian shirts to wear.