#2 - Done

Today I finished the soil ball excavation I’ve been working on before breakfast (it should have been done yesterday but we had a one hour GIMP & Inkscape tutorial so cataloguing got pushed back again). My next excavation came in a giant vodka box (the TA keeps giving me booze boxes; the first one was whiskey, the one I just finished was Tequila) and when I opened it…. MUSH. I guess the pot was excavated during the one rainy day of the year here, and the poor baby has been sitting in a box filled with soggy clay since 2003. It made me really, really cross. Anyway, I took the overall photos and then removed the soil and let it air dry the rest of the day. It looks like it will be a giant sieve job with a small excavation to complete (which will probably need mapping, so this burial will likely take me AGES!) While I was waiting for the burial to dry out, I helped Anna & Emmy work on the adult cemetery remains that were found one hill over from the baby cemetery. All of the remains are extremely fragmented, so it was a challenge identifying all the small pieces. Having spent two and a bit weeks just focusing on neonatal remains, I was shocked to remember exactly how big we are – as Ive spent all week cleaning bones the size of my pinkie fingernail it was a big step going back up to the fragments the size of my fist.

I thought for a change I should write about how Asty compares with home. Astypalaia is so different from home in so many ways. Not just the obvious ones (like how hot it gets here, or the fact that tiny one room houses are the norm) but also in terms of how people conduct their every day life.

Everyone gets up very late here. When we leave for work at 6:30, the only critters that are awake are the blasted roosters and the stray cats of the island (there are so many of them!) Most people seem to get up around 9-ish, and the cafes open at 10 at the earliest. They don’t serve breakfast until after 10:30; many only serve toast until 11:30 when eggs are available.

Then the greeks work until around 1 to 2-ish, and then all the shops and stores close for a few hours while everyone goes home and has a nap during the hottest part of the day. This, I think, is awesome. I’ve always been an avid fan of naptime! I think I am going to adopt this aspect of greek lifestyle permanently when I get home, because then I get so much more done in the evening!

Then the shops and cafes open again, usually around 5ish. The bars open at 10 or 11, but live entertainment never starts before about 2am. Since we get up so early, there’s no way I will ever see any of the local bands playing!

This lifestyle doesn’t cause any problems for us, except occasionally breakfast or lunch is late since the Greeks are never in any particular hurry to get anywhere at any particular time.

I quite like the arrangement except that all of the shops are closed when field school lets out for the day, which means if you want anything from town you have to climb demon hill a second time in the evening.

That’s all for now; I am presenting in the seminar tomorrow so need to go finish my readings and write out my summary. We are also having a "pub quiz" night tonight, so I'm sure there will be some entertaining stories to post tomorrow!