Safety Glasses = Friend

Today kind of stank. I didn't get anywhere near enough work done on with the babies' burial, mostly because I spent a while in the local hospital.

To cut a long story short, I woke up on the wrong side of bed today and was generally grumpy. I try to avoid the negative thinking / bad karma side of life, and today I got what I deserved I guess... while running the soil from the burial through the sieves the wind picked up and I got something stuck in my eye. Now, usually I wear glasses when screening (always wear them at forensic scenes due to potential hazards) but it just completely slipped my mind here as no one wears glasses to screen. Big mistake.

Anyway, the lovely Greek archaeologist who is working with the school and overseeing the work took me to the doctor right away. The doctors, which is also the hospital (think Doc Martin....) was a waiting room and then one other room with a bed for the patient, the doctors equipment, and the doctor's desk. It was tiny! I suppose you don't need a big facility for a town of less than 800. Now I see why breaking a bone is a big deal out here... you have to travel all the way to Athens just for an x-ray.

Anyway, the doctor said she couldn't see anything in my eye, and flushed it. After flushing it the first time, I could still feel the particle stuck up there so she flushed it again. That helped immensely and I felt better straight away. She gave me eye drops and antibiotics to prevent infection, and then warned me not to go swimming or go near dust for 24 hours.

Then I walked back to the lab, and started cleaning and cataloguing the bones from our burial, which is a tedious and tiring job. It is very frustrating, as many of the bones are held together by dirt. We clean them with acetone and cotton swabs, which sometimes removes so much dirt that the bones break. Then you have to glue them back together. I get a little bit upset when the bones break, so the eye ordeal + breaking and glueing just added to my crankiness. Then I realized I couldn't swim, so I got very upset and whined a good deal to Em and Gen, who are good sports and listened well and then bought me a bottle of wine to pay me back from the whine (haha.)

After dinner, I went into Chora with another girl from field school who attends the downtown U of T campus. Her name is Victoria, and she is a total sweetheart. She let me drag her all over Chora searching for souvenirs for my family, and after a 2 hour long mission, I felt much much MUCH better.

Now I am back in Levadi for the evening. Lesson of the day: always wear your safety glasses, even when you think you don't need them!