The End…

Today marked the end of the 2011 Astypalaia Bioarchaeology Field School.  We cleaned up the labs, stacked the chairs, inventoried the equipment, stored all of the finished boxes and locked up – quota for the year met – and now everyone is starting to leave.

The lab.... empty :-( My desk was the one on the lower right.

Goodbye, Workshop 1!

I finished my last box on Saturday afternoon, so spent all of Monday and Tuesday helping other students and the supervisors by screening other peoples’ fill, then cleaning bones, and then with photography. It was really sad packing my last baby into its box. Even though we met our quota for the year (I met 150% of my personal quota) I feel terrible knowing we are leaving with hundreds of babies sitting in soggy cardboard boxes waiting to be cleaned and catalogued.

Monday morning Em and I got up at 5 am to get pastries and watch the sun rise again. I filmed nearly the whole thing – I wish I could bottle up the sunrise here and take it home with me. Same with the stars at night. They are so bright here!

Last Morning Pastry Run

Breakfast Outside the Lab

Last night we had the dig party for the field school. Virginia’s restaurant delivered some souvlaki via boat to a very quiet beach 15 minutes from here, and we all swam, ate, and then played some flip-cup. Even the supervisors played which was really fun. My team won nearly every game, except for the round that the supervisors cheated and I laughed so hard that beer shot out of my nose (very painful!)

Flip Cup Spectators!

Gen, Mel, Em and I playing "Mouth-Off" on the beach

Afterwards a bunch of us watched some funny tv episodes back in our studio (yes: our rooms are called studios here which ALWAYS makes me think of Spongetta on America’s Got Talent; if you don’t know what I am talking about go google it!) and had some more beers and had a mini party. Hooray!

And now it’s the end. Some folks have already left, most leave on the ferry tomorrow morning at 4 am. I don’t leave until Friday, so I am planning on vegging out tomorrow at the beach and wishing it were day one all over again. Tonight we have our final farewell fancy dinner up at the restaurant in town.

I also received my final feedback today from Simon and Anna. They were thrilled with my work here, and gave me an A+ for my course work. I am so happy with their feedback. Pretty awesome that the "Teeth Dude" is happy with everything I have done!

Bye Bye, Lab. Thanks for an AMAZING field season.

I am excited for going on an epic adventure with Fern starting on Friday, but right now I am just plain sad that field school is over. Some of the people I have met here are really, really awesome, and it will be a shame not to see them for a while (although we are planning a field school reunion at one of the major conferences in the USA that most are planning on attending.)

I am sure tomorrow I will be excited to explore Athens – and then Rome, and then Paris!