Rescuing Rolys

We had a pretty exciting Thursday at the site. In the morning, I did some more scanning and artifact rehousing with Katie. Then, Jon decided that someone needed to do some investigation as to why the stairs at our dig house seem to be the place where roly-polys go to die. Tired of seeing so many poor insects suffer for seemingly no reason, we decided to try and right this wrong. Tyler constructed a ramp for the rolys using electrical tape. Will report back with our findings at a later time.

Tyler's attempt to save the rolies

Later in the day, we got to learn how to draw pottery, which is less artistic and more scientific than I thought. It's a little bit tricky, but a very interesting process. I even got to play with calipers, making all the engineers in my life proud.

Jon teaching us how to draw pottery

Playing with calipers

In the evening, I did some catching up on the blog and enjoyed a delicious dinner. Tyler made us all oven fried chicken with cornflakes and Jon contributed some excellent cheesy pasta and veggies. Anastasia was pretty shocked that we crazy Americans were putting cereal on our chicken, but she must have liked it since she asked for the recipe later in the night...

Treats All Around

Wednesday was another relatively quiet day in Greeceland. At the site, I did some more work with the negatives and did some troubleshooting with the Tourguide program we're using to build the tour. Also, we have finally trained Canela, the site dog, to come barking and bring the guards when we pull up by feeding her copious amounts of treats. She even followed us to the dig house and chilled for a while today. 

Our new best friend Canela

In the afternoon, we all just kind of hung out and relaxed until Anastasia cooked us dinner again (surprise, surprise). It was the spaghetti-like dish she had made us about a week ago, but "much worse" according to her because Jon and Tyler got all the wrong ingredients for her. Apparently bargain brand is frowned upon here in Greece. We were of course joined by our handsome but slightly evil cat friend, whom Jon's children have named Roosevelt. He got a good chunk of Katie's leftover spaghetti and left content. Later that night, she baked us a chocolate cake for the morning and let us watch how she made it. I'm going to have so many delicious recipes for back in the States!

Eating the Kraken

Tuesday was another pretty quiet day. At the site, I continued scanning, but I also got to work on rehousing some of the artifacts. Although it may sound boring, I found it exciting to get to see and touch things that had been around for thousands of years, even if it was just to move them from box to box. Maybe that's just me being a nerd though. When our work day was over, there was a bit of excitement back at the hotel over a chicken who had quite literally flown the coop. Also, Anastasia gave me a pair of shoes that didn't fit her anymore, so now I have some shoes to remember her by, as well as the few extra pounds she's helped me put on in my time here. For dinner, we decided it was time to get a little adventurous and try some seafood. We went to a little fish taverna which was right on the sea. I'm talking RIGHT ON it. Our table was on the beach only a few feet from the water. We had so much delicious food: fried zucchinis, fried cheese cubes, greek salad, tzatziki and bread, and not to mention the sea critters...calamari, tiny fried fishes kind of like smelt, and grilled octopus. Despite looking a bit frightening, it was all incredibly tasty. 

Grilled octopus

Calamari (this one's a shoutout to the Schroeder family)

For dessert, our waiter brought us little dishes of greek yogurt and candied carrots. It was amazing, you could hardly even tell they were carrots because they were so sweet. We didn't even order it, the Greeks are just cool like that.

Greek yogurt and candied carrots for dessert

Just Beachy

Monday was a pretty chill day at the site. I fixed our scanner issues and did some serious work on the negatives. After work, we decided it was definitely a beach kinda day. We went to a new beach, which was nice and shady (nice for the pale folks), but a little bit wavy. We didn't snorkel, because the water was a kind of cloudy, but we still had a nice time relaxing and swimming. Brittany even found a nice collection of cool looking brick ware (half of which she had to put back because it was ancient and that's illegal) to take home. 

Little Greek beach where we spent the afternoon

In the evening, Jon and Robert watched an "epic" ant fight, and Brittany made fajitas for dinner and we all sat around the table and had a nice little meal. Anastasia even came out at the end and (being Anastasia) gave us some Nescafe ice cream which she had handmade. The woman is incredible. All in all, a pretty quiet day in Greeceland. Minus those crazy ants.

Jon getting up close and personal with the warring ants

Ancient Corinth in the Afternoon

Sunday afternoon, we headed over to the site of Ancient Corinth. Corinth is a pretty big deal, historically. Not only is it the second place Pegasus supposedly touched the earth, but it also has ties to Paul from the bible (like the book CORINTHians), and the myth of Jason and Medea (making Mr. Watson proud). There is a lot to see on the site, including numerous roman structures, the spring with ties to BOTH Pegasus and the Medea myth, an ancient fountain, and a temple supposedly to Apollo (no indisputable proof has been found). Unfortunately there were a surprising amount of tourists there (the site is a big deal for a lot of pilgrimage tours of the Mediterranean), and we did arrive a bit later, so we sort of got the short tour. 

Corinthian capitals IN CORINTH!

Overall view of the site

Spring in which Glauce tried to douse herself after Medea poisoned her

"Temple of Apollo"

One interesting feature of the site was the way they tried to integrate technology. They came up with these stand-like things with touch screens inside which just failed miserably. For one, nobody could tell what they were. We listened as a group of about three Americans decided it was probably a trash can and asked themselves why they were even bothering identifying it in the first place. I can't even really discuss whether the technology was adding to the experience or not because the units didn't work and looked like they hadn't in years. It was an interesting study in what not to do with technology on a site.

A sad sad attempt

After we went to the site museum, which had a lot of impressive artifacts which were displayed somewhat haphazardly in what appeared to be china cabinets...but they did have a sphinx I found to be especially rockin'

Sphinx, Oedipus style

We ate a delicious lunch in Corinth on the rooftop of a small restaurant, and then headed back to the hotel. It was then that I had my very first experience handwashing all of my clothes. As much fun as it was, I think I'll give Anastasia a few euro to use her machine next time...Speaking of Anastasia, she must think we're stupid Americans who can't cook, because she decided to teach us how to make a delicious cheese pie for dinner. Not that any of us were complaining; she is an incredible cook and we love learning from her.

The Lions and the Lamb

Saturday was quite the day. We started off relatively early to see Mycenae, which is probably the most famous Greek Bronze Age site. It's famous for it's "cyclopian" masonry, thus named because the stones in the walls are so large that classical Greeks believed only cyclopses could have put them there. There are a lot of impressive things at the site, including the lion gate which marks the entrance, and the grave circles where archaeologists have found tons of famous artifacts such as the (somewhat questionable) "Mask of Agamemnon."

The group in front of the famous lion gates

After stopping to see a few other structures such as the throne room, we went down a spooky (and extremely slippery) staircase which used to lead to an underground water supply. It was pitch black, and the flashlights on our phones served as the only light sources. When we finally reached the bottom, we saw....nothing. Except a little mouse friend who scared Brittany off pretty quickly.

Emerging from the dark tunnel

Next, we headed to the tholos tombs. There  were something like 30 of these tombs discovered around Mycenae, which is very impressive considering their massive size and the amount of resources and manpower which must have gone into making them. They also provided us a much-needed relief from the sun. It was beyond hot out.

Entrance to a Tholos tomb

In an attempt to escape the heat, we headed for the air-conditioned museum. It was a nice little museum, with a huge collection of finds from the site, although to see most of the really famous artifacts, you'd need to go to Athens...then we went on our last Mycenae stop: the Treasury of Artreus. Oooooohhhh fancy. To be fair, it is one of the biggest if not the biggest enclosed bronze-age spaces out there. And it was big. And enclosed. Honestly, it was a lot like all of the other tholos tombs, only on a larger scale. We were lucky enough to get a Greek mythology lesson from Jon while in the tomb, which I thought was interesting (and disturbing, as most Greek mythology is). 

Jon pointing in the Treasury of Atreus

After we had seen about all there was to see in Mycenae, we piled back into the van and headed to the coastal town of Nafplion. It was a beautiful town, with lots of 19th century architecture. They even had this ironic "trendy" grill. Apparently, I will never understand the Greeks' fascination with comic sans...Jon took us to eat at a place called Goody's, which is basically like a Greek McDonalds. It was quite an interesting experience. After lunch, Tyler and Robert decided they wanted to climb up the mountain in town and see the castle. However Brittany, Katie, and I had had enough mountain climbing for a hot second and decided to spent the afternoon enjoying the town, its shops, and its gelato. Eventually, we made our way down to the water, where we enjoyed the view of this beautiful little castle-island.

Castle in the Sea

Nafplion charm

We were all pretty exhausted by that time, so we headed back to Loutro Elenis to rest up before Jon's friend Aristides' birthday dinner that night. Due to some circumstances, the party actually got moved to our hotel, along with the entire lamb they had roasted. The party was full of good food and good wine, and we all had a great time. Except maybe the lamb...

Our poor (but delicious) lamb

Grillin' it Up Greek Style

Today we learned a new skill: taking elevations! It's all of the fun it sounds like and more. Actually though, it was pretty cool and involved playing with some fun and exciting tools. After we got it completely level, Tyler and I took turns looking through the viewfinder thing at the pole Jon was holding and we figured out the elevations of a few of the structures by the bath. 

Tyler and Jon take elevations (Brittany and Robert paint the gate in the distance)

After that, I began on my task of scanning and archiving a bunch of old negatives of coins into the computer. When it was time for us to skedaddle, we went to the store to pick up ingredients for our first-ever fully self-prepared meal. Quite a landmark achievement for us. We decided to repay Anastasia for all of the delicious foods she has cooked us in our time here by cooking for her as well. Katie and Brittany did most of the work preparing the kebobs. They were quite impressive

Brittany shows off the food

However, when it came time to grill, Anastasia saw the tiny grill-like thing we had bought at the supermarket and put her foot down. Instead, she pulled out her Greek-style grill and bag of charcoal, and we lit 'er up. 

Robert, Katie, and Brittany work on getting the grill going

The food was delicious, and we even managed to impress Anastasia (I think, at least...)