Anthropological Rants

Back in Rome
It has been a few busy days!

First of all, I didn°t make it to Capri. It was kind of an annoying day. I spent a fair chunk of the morning online, trying to work out where to stay in Rome for the rest of my trip. Everything was fairly booked up and had mixed reviews, so it was somewhat challenging.

I was also running out of money and needed to find an ATM. Now, the ATM°s in Italy hate me. They generally refuse to give me any money for no readily apparent reason. But after I spent two hours walking to eight different banks and got nothing in return, I was starting to get pissed off. It was already getting late and I really wanted to go to Capri. But buying the ticket would leave me with less than 5 euro and I didn°t want to risk being that low in cash, possibly needing it for things such as eating. I was worried that maybe my bank at home had something to do with it, so I spent awhile figuring out how to make an international phone call from a pay phone, finally got a hold of my bank, finally got to a real person....and there was nothing wrong. Defintely on this end. So I kept searching. I had to pretty much give up on Capri at this point. Even if I did catch the nect ferry, I would only have a couple of hours on the island before the last ferry back and that just wasn°t enough. So I just kept looking. Finally, I found a damn bank machine that would give me money. By then, it was fairly late so I just declared the day a write off, went to the supermarket, bought a bunch of food and then hung out on the roof terrace of my hostel, reading my book. Not bad, even though it wasn°t Capri.

The next morning, I checked out and hopped on a train back to Naples. I bought a ticket to Rome for 5 hours later, then I stashed my luggage and hopped on the metro and went to the archaeoloy museum, which I had missed the first time around. And, to my surprise, it was free! Some sort of arts celebration thingy. Sweet. So I spent a few hours wandering around. Some really amazing stuff. Tons of frescoes and mosaics and such from Pompeii and Herculaneum. And a gazillion statues and heads of statues. I got through the entire museum and headed back to the train station, where I had a two hour wait for my train. Boo. But I just got some food and hung out, reading my book. Eventually, the train arrived and I headed back to Rome.

I had chosen a hostel that is really close to the main train station. It was really easy to find and I checked in easily enough. In order to stay for 6 nights, I had to make two seperate bookings. Consequently, I had to check out the next morning, only to check back in again in the afternoon. And I went from a fairly expensive room to a much cheaper one. Except that the much cheaper one is WAY nicer. Go figure. Anyways, the hostel is clean and convenient and I am happy with it.

The following day, after I checked out and stashed my stuff in storage, I decided to go to the Vatican. It was Sunday and, importantly, the last Sunday of the month, when it is free! So I was double happy. One, for saving money and two, for not giving money to the Vatican! The bad thing about it being a free weekend is that it was so utterly crammed with tourist that I could hardly breathe. It was an hour wait just to get in and the three hours I spent in the museum were very squishy. But it was interesting. I admit, I don°t really like the Vatican museums. The thing is, it is not really a museum. It is an art collection. There is no history, no context to anything. Just a collection of pretty things, to show off wealth. Their idea of provenience was to name the rich pillager they bought the things from originally. SO I started getting a bit depressed with the whole thing. Eventually, I saw everything that I wanted to see and leisurely headed back to my hostel (of course, managing to eat some gelato along the way). I got into my new room and decided to take a night off and just chilled out in my room, sitting on the windowsill, watching the street below and reading my book. Evwentually, my roommates arrived and we had fun chatting away a few hours.

Today, I got up early and headed out to the Parco Attica Antica. Basically, it is a stretch of preserved Roman road (an important road, a main artery into Rome, the same one where all the thousands of slaves during Sparticus° revoltm were cruficied and displayed). It goes on for kilometres and has tons of stuff preserved along the edges. Mostly remains of old tombs or watchtowers and checkpoints. Sometimes, they were insanely well preserved and I could wander around at my leisure. Others were only suspicious mounds. I would love to jump in with my trowel and poke around a bit! I had no map and no clue how long the road went. I was happily walking along, looking at everything and suddenly realized that I had been walking to two hours. There was no sign of an end of the road, so I decided to turn around and start heading back. I kept walking in the opposite direction and eventually found the catacombs, my original reason for being there! Basically, they are deep subterranean crypts where thousands and thousands of early Christians were buried. It was cool! Most of them were just placed in grooves along the wall. I went to two different catacombs - one had over 100,000 bodies, the other had over 500,000. All the bodies are gone now (removed by archaeologists and plunderers) but the grooves are still there and it is a veritable labarynth of cool things to look at. Unfortunately, I had to go on guided tours to get down into them, so my desire to poke around in corners was not particularly satiated.

Opps, running out of Internet time, gotta go!

Volcanoes, ancient cities and epic hikes!
So, I climbed a volcano.

Ok, I just like saying that. I did though. I climbed up a volcano. Although, by "climb up", I actually mean that I took a coach bus most of the way up and then walked the last kilometre. It was really the only way. I could have walked up most of it but it would have involved walking up a tiny insanely busy road full of Italian drivers and no sidewalks. I decided against it. Plus, I was lazy.

Anyways, volcanoes are cool! I took the train out to Ercolano, the town that includes both the volcano itself and the ancient town of Herculaneum. I bought a ticket for both the bus trip up and the entrance to the volcano itself, right outside of the station. I researched it ahead of time. It was slightly more expensive yet way more convenient than trying to figure out public transit. After a suitable number of people showed up wanting the same thing, 10 people got piled illegally into an eight person bus. Then we started up the mountain, in particular Italian style - fast and with little regard for things like the right side of the road or gravity. But we managed to make it to the top alive and hopped out, with an hour and a half to get to the crater and back again.

The last km up the volcano isn°t particularly easy. It involves a long uphill climb on somewhat loose gravel. Footing is somewhat precarious yet it is easy enough to manage if handled carefully. But I could see the crater up ahead most of the way and I could power past the elderly Scots surrounding me. Once you get to the top, you can walk about three quarters around the crater itself, peering inside. The crater is not bubbling with lava or anything (I would have been somewhat concerned if it was) but it is deep, rounded and somewhat steamy. You just just sense that it is not just some lame mountain.

All around me, way below, I could see tons of tiny little towns. They would all be so doomed if Vesuvius erupted tomorrow! The views were gorgeous though. It was a bit of a cloudy day so I couldn°t see too far but what I could see was very pretty. I love being on top of mountains, especially ones that explode. Nature is cool.

Anyways, I had fun wandering around the crater, experimenting with different pictures. The crater was too big to actually get in a single shot. It looked really cool though!

After my time was up, I headed down the mountain, still taking tons of photos. I got back on the bus and we managed to survive the trip back to Ercolano. I then got directions and headed down the street to the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum!

In short, it was awesome. I think that I actually prefer it to Pompeii. It was destroyed in the same volcanic eruption was Pomepei but with a key difference. It is much closer to the volcano, basically at the foot, and was covered in volcanic mud as opposed to simply being buried in ash. So, after a little while, it was like it was buried under 10m of rock. Needless to say, tons of cool stuff was preserved, including things made out of wood and fabric. How cool is that? It is also a lot smaller than Pomepei and therefore more manageable. You literally can see it all in only a few hours, as opposed to the weeks that Pompeii would require. And the stuff is simple amazing. Entire villas, with all the rooms still intact. Ceilings and beautiful examples of ceiling art. Entire baths, with all the rooms and decorations and even things like wooden shelves where they put their clothes before hopping in the pools. There were also multiple stories of buildings, with wooden floors and walls still intact. After almost 2000 years, that is pretty awesome. So my archaeological brain almost melted whilst walking though this town. And the kicker is, only a bit of it has been exposed. 10m of rock is rather discouraging and there is also the small matter of a modern town existing on top of the ancient one. But just think of what is still out there! I would absolutely love to dig there. Just give me a pickax!

I eventually met up with Dana and Ben at Herculaneum and we basically spent the afternoon geeking out. At the end of the day, we headed back to the trains and back to our hostel and had another great meal at the restaurant here. It was great.

Then, today, we did a massive hike along the Amalfi Coast! We read about this awesome scenic hike along the coast and we decided that we wanted to do it. We took the train into central Sorrento and managed to figure out which bus would get us to Positano. We got our tickets and hopped on board, only to discover that it was already full to the brim. I got crammed in the aisle, in the back, attempting to hold on to the bar above me and the seat next to me. For an hour. Of absolutely crazy death defying Italian driving. Looking out one window, I could see nothing but water and coastline as far as the eye can see. Below me was a cliff, very steep. To my other side, other cars, ridiculously close to me. So it was a bit of a harrowing drive and my muscles were aching by the time we got there due to the pressure of trying to keep to my feet with all the sharp twists and turns. But we made it there. We hopped off the bus at Positano and promptly realized that we had not only no clue where we were but also that we had no clue where we had to be. We wandered into town, down the streets, where tons of tiny shops were everything, selling many things completely beyond my conceivable price range. The town itself is just starnge. Mostly on one giant hill, the average street is actually a staircase. We eventually made our way to an info desk, where the helpful desk clerk told us to go across the street and buy a walking map. We did so, and it turned out to be utterly useless. We went back to the info guy and he told us that we had to catch a bus, because the spot we were headed to was 8km way. This confused us, because we were pretty damned sure that it wasn°t. We headed back to the top of the town, where we got off the bus originally. There, we talked to a friendly Italian who was running a corner store and, through broken Italian and charades, we managed (or Dana did) to convey what we were looking for and he told us that yes, the entrance to the trail was just up the road, about a kilometre away. So we started up the road. Again, it was a somewhat death defying walk, with inconsistent sidewalks, hairpin turns and too many vehicles coming too closely for my comfort. But we managed it and even managed to find the entrance to the hike. Yay!

And then we started to walk up. And up. And up. And up. Stairs after stairs after stairs. But as the coast got farther and farther below us, the view got better and better. It reminded me a lot of Cinque Terre - vast amounts of beautiful coast line as far as the eye could see. It was really quite stunning. The walk was not an easy one. I am sure my legs are going to be tired tomorroww! But it was a lot of fun. We kept walking past abandoned stone buildings, inhabited convents and neat looking terraced vineyards. There was always something interesting to look at! Oh, and also, it was pouring rain the entire time. Yep. After about 4 and a half hours of rather gruelling walking, we made it to the other town. We warmed up with a cappuccino in a cafe and asked directions to the bus heading to Sorrento. It turned out that it was basically right outside the cafe and we could even buy our tickets there. So we bought our tickets and went outside and within a minute, the bus showed up. And it was even busier than last time. We barely made it on board, crammed in where ever we could. But we only had to squeeze for a short time. After 8 minutes (somewhat depressingly, considering the 4 painful hours it took walking the other way), we ended up where we began and a lot of people got off there. We finally got seats and could enjoy the scenic death defying bus ride sitting down. It was about an hour back and we ended up back in our hostel, safe and sound.

I just spent the last hour trying to upload some photos, to no avail. Looks like that might have to wait until I get home. Meanwhile, I will keep taking them! I am having a few issues with space but I am working on it.

Tomorrow, I will go to the island of Capri. After that, I think I am going to head back to Rome. I am not done with Rome yet! I think I will stay there for the rest of the time, see what I want to see in the city itself and do tons of iteresting day trips to places like Tivoli and Tarquinia. I think it will be good!

So, the dig is over. For better or for worse. We were actually doing quite well for awhile. Everyone was working hard, the work was getting done, the paperwork looked good. We still had too much to do but at least it looked manageable for awhile. But there was way too much to do and not enough time to do it. I did the best I could.

Almost all the students and most of the specialists left on the 18th. Teary good byes, promises of facebook connections. It does go to show how close you can really get to people when you live together in a campground for a month! I was sad to see some of them go. After they all left, the camp seemed so muted. Kelly and I were still here though, determined to get the site finished to professional standards. Yeah.

I had two sections in my palaestra to do. The north east corner, with all my wonderful phasing evidence and the temple area with (obviously), the temple. I had two weeks to survey, excavate and record the two areas. I needed at least a month. So I had to start cutting corners a bit, taking a few shortcuts to at least get the work down to a manageable size. I started to specialize the students (good at drawing, good at digging, good at contexting, etc). But even with that, there just wasn°t enough time. I needed more field techs, people I could just put in a corner and who could fend for themselves. But I had inexperienced diggers and spent all my time teaching them, not digging the site. Not their fault, obviously, they were a fantastic bunch of people. But it was frustrating. Sometimes I just wanted to push people aside and just dig the site. Just draw the section or write the damn context sheet. But I didn°t. I figured, if the dig itself wasn°t great, at least I could give the kids a decent digging education and I did my best.

We experienced a major setback a few days ago when it was discovered that there was a major flaw with the plans of the site. No one°s fault, really, just a combination of misunderstandings and job crossovers. But it meant that I could not use the plans that had been three days in the making and I absolutely needed them to work. My director did not seem to understand why I was so frustrated. Aside from the fact that they are essential for archaeology and all that. So I just thought, screw this, and did the plans myself. Fast, not up to my usual standard, but fine for contexting and they will make post-ex infinitely easier. But it took me away from everything else for almost two days. But I decided that it was more important than other things and just got it done.

But I ran out of time to get all the paperwork finished. I borrowed an experienced digger from Kelly°s team and got him to context the temple. I got others to plan that area as well, but they didn°t have a heck of a lot of experience and it was slow going. Then my director, in an attempt to get a pretty picture, pulled out critical grid pegs, thereby making it impossible for us to work. At that point, I was so frustrated that I basically disowned the temple area and focused on the north east section, which was at least possible to finish. I finished up my plans and did as much of the paperwork as was humanely possible. I was up until 3.30am finishing up the damn paperwork, to make sure that it would make sense to other people. I handed it all to my director and promptly hopped on a train to Naples.

I feel a lot better now. I was getting really stressed out over the last couple of weeks and it was definitely starting to show. I really don°t like feeling constantly angry, it is not a good way to be! But I am done and I did the best job I could and I don°t regret a thing.

In other news, I am travelling again! It is awesome. I headed out of camp with Dana, a student from the fieldschool, and her husband. I found a neat looking hostel online and we booked a few beds. We got a nice cheap train down to Naples. It was a two and a half hour train ride and a lot of it was quite pretty. We got to Naples at around 1.30pm and decided to spend a few hours wandering around. I dumped my bags at the luggage place and we headed off. Pretty soon, we realized that it probably wasn°t a good idea to just wander around. I know some of it has to do with my preconceptions based on all the horror stories people were telling us about Naples, but damn, it was sketchy. Smelled weird, very dirty and I had a constant feeling that everyone was watching us, judging us. It was really strange. We decided to head back to the train station and hop on the metro and go to the archaeology museum. We figured out how to get there easily enough but by the time we got there, we found out that it cost 10 euros to get in and it was only open for another hour. We decided that it wasn°t worth it and hopped on another train down to Sorrento.

The hostel was about a 15 minute walk from the train station and we found it with no problems. And it is a sweet hostel! Clearly designed for backpackers, it has everything - nice clean rooms, free breakfast, free Internet. I like it. And a kitchen, with dinner served every night for very reasonable prices. Seriously, I had a steak dinner last night for 7 euros and it was absolutely delicious. So I am already feeling way better about Italy and life in general.

The next day, we headed out to Pomepeii, which was about half an hour away. And then spent the day exploring! I really love that city. The scale of it continues to amaze me. Even though I had been there before, it still blew me away. It was a better visit this time too. Way way fewer people and about 20 degrees cooler. It was raining on and off all day, which drove even more people away and added a neat creepy atmosphere at times. We spent most of the day wandering mostly where other tourists weren"t and saw loads of neat things. Dana and Ben left to go to another town at around 2pm and I stayed for a few more hours, just wandering. It is a lot of fun to just turn down random streets to see where they lead. I found a pathway in the middle of the city that was raised way above everything else and gave me an awesome view of mountains and volcanoes and ancient ruins. It was awesome. As the site was closing, I headed back and hopped on the train back to the hostel. I had a nice dinner here and went to bed. I was still pretty tired all day, recovering from late nights and stress and I needed the sleep.

The next day, I got up and couldn"t decide what to do. Should I climb Mt. Vesuvius? Should I go back to Naples and go to the museum? Should I go to the island of Capri and hang out there? It is an amazingly awesome dilemma to have. In the end, I decided that I didn"t really feel like going anywhere and spent the day wandering around Sorrento. My hostel is not quite in Sorrento itslelf, it is about a 40 min walk away. But hey, it"s not like I am on a strict timeline. I wandered around and loved it. It is a strange city. It is very colourful and very medieval. Everything is pink or orange or yellow or massive stones. The sidewalk is just slightly wider than I am. To my right, medieval walls. To my left, mere centimetres away, crazy Italian drivers. It was an interesting walk, to say the least. Sorrento itself seems to be made of tiny alleyways full of tiny shops. It felt like the Italy that you see in films. Most of the shops couldn"t fit into my living room at home, yet they were bustling. They were very specialized too, no supermarkets or chain stores anywhere! I walked past a butcher, a bakery, a carved wooden toy shop, a spice store. There was a fish market full of old Italian women yelling at the shopkeepers and buying things with way too many tentacles. I wandered into the spice store and had fun just looking at everything. (Yes Dad, I picked you up a couple of interesting things!) Eventually, the road turned into a bit of a tourist gauntlet of competing shops. Yet, it wasn"t tacky, merely hectic. Tons of little stores, most of them selling lemoncello.

Eventually, I wandered down to the water and was blow away by the view. Sorrento is on the cliffside of the bay of Naples. And by cliff, they meant cliff. We are talking instant massive drop off straight down to the water. So when you are on top and looking diagonally across to the rest of town, you just see tons of buildings literally carved into the rock and seemingly purchased precariously. It was awesome.

I took a long way back home and hugged the coast line as much as I could, so I could keep watching it. I got back to my hostel in the early afternoon and just declared a day off. I"ve spent the rest of the day simply reading my book and looking up neat things I want to do over the next 10 days.

Tomorrow, up Mt. Vesuvius and Herculaneum!

Almost done
The dig is gradually coming to a close. Actually, by gradually, I mean we are rapidly running out of time and have absolutely no chance of finishing what we want to finish. Which any of the supervisors could have said (and did say) weeks ago and have been trying valiantly to avoid, to no avail.

Most of the students are leaving on Friday. Some people are staying a few days longer, to finish things up. Most of the actual digging is done on my site, just a few corners to clean up, a couple pits to section. But everything needs to be recorded. And recording takes a long time. And I have very few people who are trained to do it. So I spend most of my days trying to rapidly train people up to be competant when I just want to sit down and record the damn site. I honestly have no clue how I am going to finish it all. I had two weeks less than I was supposed to have on this site yet I have to provide the same results. Blarg.

And the archaeology is interesting, dammit. I want to be able to record it properly. We found a probable late Roman temple (which I cannot possibly have time to record) and several distinct phasing in terms of building structures and palaestra use (which I can see but don"t have enough time to record all the evidence in order to prove it). I"m also struggling with working with other people"s paperwork, something I have never really had to do before. I"m used to doing my own work, gettng my own results and then handing them in. Now, I am receiving paperwork from half trained people about contexts I may only have glanced at and I have to use them to explain a complicated phasing period from a time period I have very little experience with. So, yeah, I am stressed out. And I hate it, because it is so unnecessary. If certain people had just listened to us at the very beginning, we wouldn"t have this problem. Yet I am sure it will look like our fault or at least be perceived as such.

In some ways, I am really happy this dig is almost over. I am tired. I"m sick of some of the people I have to deal with. I"m tired of being in charge. I just want to curl up and do nothing but sleep for a few days.

But in other ways, I am sad it is almost over. Most of the time, I actually really enjoy it here. I mean, I fully recognize how truly awesome it is that I am a supervisor on a site in an ancient Roman city. The results that I have come up with will end up, eventually, in articles and books. And that is really cool. I have really enjoyed teaching too. I like having control over how people are trained and get them started out on the right track, before they can develop bad habits. And I think I have been a pretty good teacher.

I like most of the people I have met here. It really is a good bunch of people - people who are volunteering to take time away from their families and lives to dig up a bunch of old stuff. And that is cool. I will miss a lot of people here.

So I don"t want to sound entirely negative. I don"t regret coming here for a second and I know that once I am home and have a few sleeps and a few good pasta free meals inside me, that all the bad stuff will start to fade from my memories and I will be left thinking about all the good things.

I just need to survive the next week first.

Sigh
Life is getting complicated.

Things have been both great and horrible over the past few days. Great, in the sense that my crew is awesome and we are finding kick-ass archaeology. We have finished our test pits (all 46 of them). All have been surveyed in, photographed and almost all of them have been drawn. We have started large scale clearing of two different spots - one by the corner, near a mosaic floor, a bunch of shops and a row of columns. The other is by a weird temple/fountain. Both sections are turning out to be quite interesting, showing several different occupations and reconstructions. The matrix will be interesting to do. There are tons of finds, neat things coming out of the ground. Everything from worked bone to painted plaster. So that is awesome.

But it"s hard. My director is incredibly difficult to work with most of the time and it is wrecking my brain. Nothing is ever good and what is good, he doesn"t recognize. That is hard to deal with. So I spend my time balancing my crew, the work, the paperwork and a grumpy director who constantly changes his mind. I got fed up with it all yesterday after a few final clinching stupidities and told him, rather more clearly than I had perhaps intended, what I thought about several things.

I rarely get angry. I even more rarely vocally express my anger. But he was entirely unreasonable and simply could not see how he was so negatively affecting my crew. It is wearing everyone down. But I feel responsible for my crew and we just can"t keep going the way we have been. I had to talk to him. I probably should have done it a bit less publicly and I should probably not have said a couple of the things that I said but I don"t really regret it either. He is mostly just blind to our experiences and I had to tell him what everyone was thinking. All of the supervisors are incredibly overworked and stressed out and he is not helping.

But I think we will be ok. We were very polite to each other today to an almost hilarious degree. He has visibly made a few concessions, even though he still doesn"t really understand what he is doing wrong. The rest of the supervisors and I are totally on the same page and we are going to make this a good site.

So it"s going to be a bit of an insane week. 7 days of digging left. A billions bits of paperwork to fill out. Maps to draw. Stratigraphy to figure out. Crew to train. It"s going to be insane. But hopefully awesome.

In other news, I had a great day off on Wednesday. A few friends and I spent the day in Rome. We did the big three - the Coliseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill. We also saw Circus Maximus and the Mouth of Truth. It was relaxing in the way that walking constantly all day in the sun can be! I had been to most of the places before but I was really happy to go again, especially with a bunch of archaeologists who could appreciate it on the same level that I do. We actually walked past a couple of excavations and I wished that I could speak better Italian so I could ask them about the dig. It looked awesome.

I finally convinced a bank machine to give me money. We had lunch in a restaurant down a couple of side streets away from the Coliseum. I had gnocchi and it was quite good. We rounded it off with a giant gelato (fragola e limone) and I was happy. It was a great day.

I haven"t made any plans for my two weeks of travels after the dig. I don"t think I will. I"m leaning towards just staying in Italy. I have 4 days planned - one for Pompeii, one for Herculaneum, one for climbing Mount Vesuvius and one for going to the museums in Naples. Beyond that, I haven"t got a clue. I want to spend a few days in Rome. I made a friend on site who lives in Rome and I hope we can hang out together for a couple of days. I want to go to a bunch of museums, see a bunch more sites. Maybe I will head down the coast for a few days, find a nice place somewhere. Nothing too elaborate. I need a vacation.

Also, I am hooked on cappuccinos.

Settling In
Things are starting to come together now.

I finally have my own site. I had been temping in Kelly"s site, until she got here and until we got permission to open up the palestra. That finally happened this week and the site is mine!

It is a bit strange to be handed a large area of land within an ancient city and be told to just go dig it. The test pitting begins! I am getting my guys to dig 1X1 metre squares every 5m across the site. The top soil is very shallow, often only a few centimetres and my workers are getting faster so we are making up for some lost time. I am using the test pits as mini archaeological sites to fully train up my crew. By getting them to triangulated, excavate and then record their little section of the site, they are working on the basic skills they need to be gaining. And they really are. It is great to look across a field of working students and suddenly realizing that none of them need me right at this moment. That hasn"t happened much yet! Since they are getting increasingly independent, I can finally crack into the insane backlog of paperwork that I have to do. I finally drew a map of the site with all the numbered test pits and grid numbers and that makes everything easier.

The palaestra is neat. I am actually really enjoying it so far. It is much more my style. Less complicated stratigraphy and more test pits! I feel quite at home there. Also, my director only comes around once or twice a day, so I have a lot more freedom and everyone is a lot more relaxed because of it. So it is nice.

The archaeology itself is interesting. The palaestra is basically an ancient excerise yard. We are surrounded by a whole bunch of buildings, mostly to do with bathing. Actual baths, pools and tons of shops catering to happy bathing Romans. The site is therefore basically a large open field surrounded by buildings. There are two small structures are well. One is clearly a temple. The other one we were investigating today and it looks like it is also a temple but a reused temple! Probably turned into a large fountain at some point. It is cool! The rest of the test pits are basically showing up as either solid mortar layers or nice mosaic floors. We might not find any more structures but there are a few suspicious stones poking out of the ground on our south end that I am going to investigate tomorrow.

So I am pretty happy. My crew is getting good, everything is a bit more relaxed and the archaeology is awesome.

I got to actually take a day off last Wednesday. I ended up going to the Vatican with a bunch of my students. It was part of their curriculum and there was an extra spot due to a drop out, so I went along. We got a guided tour of the kick ass archaeology underneath the Vatican itself. Basically, when they wanted to build their ginormous church, they buried a bunch of tombs and such to do so. And entire necropolis, in fact, an actual city of the dead, created in a time where the dead were visited frequently but not too closely, so a street of dead people was made for them. The tombs were discovered only a few decades ago and a few select people, such as crazy visiting archaeologists, are allowed to pop undergound and see them. Oh, and they also found St. Peter"s bones there too and built their alter over it. I think our tour guide was rather annoyed at us. He kept offering to give us time to reflect and pray and all that, especially within the presence of Peter"s bones and all we would do it think "ooh, cool bricks!" Such heathans we are. Then we paraded past a whole bunch of dead popes, wandered around St. Peter"s cathedral and then headed back to camp. I felt more relaxed than I have in a long time.

There is still an insane amount of work to do and not nearly enough time to do it in. There are still personality conflicts to deal with, problems to solve, people to get to know. But I do feel better about everything now.

I even got my towel back. It appeared miraculously on my clothesline again.

Now, if only I can convince the damn bank machine to give me money...

A Day in the Life of a Field Archaeologist
My watch alarm goes off at 6.30am. Or, more accurately, the alarm clock of the person sleeping next to me goes off at 5.50am, jolting me out of sleep. It continues to go off every 10 minutes until I grumpily decide that I am awake and that it is not worth pretending otherwise.

I get up, pull on my increasingly wrinkled field clothes. My pants are getting increasingly dusty, coated with a rather thick layer of dust and dirt. But it>s no use washing them all the time, they will just get dusty again. After leaving my tent, I head to the front of the campsite where the table is already set with breakfast. Cornflakes with raisins in them, an apple, a cup of tea. I watch as, one by one, my crew arrives in various states of awakeness. I gather my increasingly large amount of stuff - the paperwork, the field notebooks, the plans - and fill up my water bottle from the sink near the bathrooms and I am ready to go. Around 7am, the first 8 people get loaded onto the bus and we head off to site.

Our campsite is a 10 minute drive to Ostia Antica. Our lovely driver, Bill, expertly maneuvers us through the increasingly insane traffic and drops us off at the entrance.

My crew stumbles off to the site as I head up to the security office to grab the keys that open the storeroom that contains our field equipment and our finds. Using my broken Italian, I request the keys to the baracka di diana. No, not the Casa di Diana. That is across the street. Baracka. Quattro chiavi. Numero quaranta sette. Si, Io ho permissio. After an epic verbal battle, I convince them once again that I do indeed have the right to be there and they finally give me the keys and I sign for them.

I head off into the city. Turning down to side streets, past a bakery and a row of shops, I arrive at our tool shed. It is actually a reused room in the city, an old baracks, with a not so ancient new door with a padlock. I open the padlock, wrestle the door open and then open the metal tool shed hidden inside. Inside, it is full of wheelbarrows, buckets, pencils, shovels, mattocks, everything that an archaeologist needs to poke around in the dirt. My crew comes in and we start moving everything to our site, one block away. The barrows full of equipment take a roundabout way, down several site streets but a short cut down a flight of stairs can be quicker if we are only carrying things in our hands. All the finds from the dig so far are brought back to site and order is reestablished in our finds room on site.

After everything is brought to site, we start taking tarps off the areas we are working on. The tarps are essential every day - the sun is strong and instantly starts to fade everything we expose, turning everything into dust. We continually wet things down with water in an attempt to both keep the dust down and to see the details we need to see.

By then. the second bus load of crew members have arrived and we go to work. I send off a couple of them to work in finds - learning how the cataloging system works, how to wash pottery, how to write in tiny lettres on tiny pieces of pottery. Others, I send to continue cleaning the areas we have open - using trowels and brushes to clear back the subsoil, exposing the archaeological layer beneath without actually digging into it. It is hard work, often under the hot sun, but it needs to be done. Others, I teach how to triangulate perfect metre by metre squares and set them up digging test pits. They set up the squares, use a mattock to get rid of the layer of grass and dig into it, going down until they hit the archaeological layer. Sometimes, it is right below the surface. Sometimes it is much deeper. Sometimes it is all roots. You never know what you will find next!

At 10.30am, I call a break and get everyone to sit in the shade for awhile. People are generally still quite happy and energetic, but they need a bit of time to recharge. We hang around the tree, basking in the shade until it is time to go back to work.

More digging. I float around all of them, answering questions, demonstrating effective trowel techniques, establish context numbers, observing the archaeology. Sometimes, a group of tourists walk past the site and peer in, clearly interested in what all the crazy people are doing in the hot sun. I let them inside and give them a tour, explaining a bit of the history of the city, our site in particular and what we are trying to accomplish. I always end the tour at the base of our site mascot, the heroic statue and point towards the food bucket, entreating them to donate some money to feed our hard workers. Sometimes they give a lot. Sometimes it is only a couple of euro, leaving me frustrated by the waste of time when I could have been teaching or doing some decent archaeology.

At 12.30pm, we stop for lunch. Lunch is on site - fresh buns, ham, some peaches and bananas. Within seconds of opening the cooler, the wasps descend. Lunch becomes a battle of wits between us and the insects. Eat quickly and avoid getting stung. I really need to figure out where the nest it, it has to be nearby. One wasp grasps a bit of ham and can be seem flying lopsidely away, weighed down by the meat. We let him have it.

Lunch is long. The sun is too instense to work in, the diggers are tired. Some head off to the cafe for a cold drink, others lie down in the shade and nap. Some sit around reading a book or quietly chatting to each other. At 2.30pm, we go back to work.

More digging. More questions. More tours. The archaeology is starting to come together. More things are exposed, more questions being raised, some questions being answered. The diggers are getting tired again, working so long in the sun. I try to rotate people into the shade - there is a lot of shade due to the big trees, I try to keep as many of them as possible within it. At 4.30, we have another break. This time, we get drinks and cookies and sit around getting a sugar rush to push us until the end of the dig. Somewhat refreshed and recharged, we head back to work.

More digging. More tours. More recording.

At 6:00pm, we start packing up. All tools need to be cleaned and put away properly. Everything needs to be put back into the tool shed. All the finds need to be labelled, put into bags and put away carefully. The tarps need to be put back on. Everything must look neat and tidy, everything in their place. Everyone stumbles back to the bus. I trudge back up the security office and return the key. The first bus has already taken the first group of diggers back to camp. It will be about half an hour before it can return. We walk down the long driveway, past the entrance, into town. We go to our regular cafe - a cute little place with espresso, beer and gelato - everything you could possibly need! We are regulars by now. The owner, a nice older man, greets us personally, sets up a table in the shade for us and sometimes gives us free treats. It is a welcome change from the constant derision we face from most Italians and we love him for it. After 20 minutes of enjoying a cold beer or a gelato, the bus arrives and picks up up. We wave goodbye to our host and jump back on and head back to camp. Dinner is usually nearly ready by the time we get there, prepared in turn by people who have a day off. The food is generally decent - spaghetti or bangers and mash or whatever else someone feels like preparing. We sit arond three tables, eating together, talking about our day and telling the others what we found. Some people fade away to go to the bar, to use the Internet to have a shower. A few of us always end up at the tables, drinking a glass of wine and chatting away. Soon enough, we are tired and one by one head off to bed.

Sleep is not always easy. The campsite is crowded, full of people with varying opinions of what time bedtime should be. Earplugs or headphones are essential. But digging all day in the dirt helps and there is more digging tomorrow, so sleep is essential. I usually drift off to sleep, a bit hot under my sleeping bag, my muscles aching a bit, listening to the Beatles or to a new audiobook.

More digging awaits.

I found a different computer in this computer lab that doesn"t have nearly as many strange symbols. You"d think that the keyboard symbols would match the thing that actually appears on screen but no, that would be too simple. Most of the lettres are good but the punctuation is all over the place and seems to change at random. But this one looks mostly all right.

Life is..interesting. I am enjoying a lot of it, to be honest. It"s just so damn cool to wander about in an ancient city. I"m just itching to explore further but I haven"t been able to leave the site at our break times yet, since I am in charge and didn"t think it was appropriate. But when my friend arrives, I may be able to take off an explore. Every time I look up, I see something new - a cool reconstructed wall, a mosaic floor, an ancient toilet, a nicely decorated marble column. It"s never boring. There are deep cisterns around that I keep having the desire to jump into an explore.

I like most of the people here. I"ve mostly settled into a group of the older English folk and I am rapidly sinking back into my comfort zone. I miss England. One man always gets a bottle of wine and we hang out around the picnic tables, chatting away. I really should go to bed and get more sleep but it"s the friends that make this place a lot more livable.

There is a lot of work to do. I am basically constantly moving from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. Right now, both crews are working so I am in charge of over 20 people. It"s crazy! I have to sort through the paper work, establish context numbers, figure out who is digging where, with whom and what for. I have to train over a dozen completely new diggers in everything from proper tool use to triangulation using measuring tapes and the grid system.

I find that I like teaching. I wish I could just focus on that. I understand being a digger and I think I am helping a few of them on their way to being decent archaeologists. Some of them are definitely suited for the job, others, not so much. Some of them just haven"t got a clue and don"t particularly care about it. So it can be frustrating at times.

In some ways, I like the way I was just thrown into this. I thought that I was coming in to train new workers, not run the entire site. But it has shown me that I am capable of doing so. Not perfectly. I"ve definitely make some mistakes and I am bound to make a few more. And some of the archy may be beyond my frame of knowledge. But I think I will be ok. I think most of my diggers like me alright anyways and we are getting a lot of decent work done.

Still, nothing ever works out to my director"s satisfaction. His standard of acceptable speeds seems to be based off a lifetime professional on crack, watched in fast forward. It"s just not doable with a bunch of newbies. But they are learning and they are doing really well and I hope he relaxes and realizes that at some point.

I"ve been giving tours of the site. We are dead centre of the city and pretty visible, so people pop up once and a while, curious about what a bunch of dirty looking people are doing poking around the earth. We offer to give them a guided tour of our site, a tour which normally lasts around 20 minutes or so. We explain what we are up to, who we are, what sort of things we find, etc.

I like giving the tours. The first one was a bit scary, since it was my second day on site and I knew next to nothing and it was in french. But I soon realized that, no, I know a lot, especially compare to Bob off the street. I focused on the archy process itself, rather than too much of Roman history and I was alright. At the end of the tour, I artfully point to our poor little bucket, plaintively labelled and entreat people to give a donation to support our hungry crew. It usually works. I average about 10 euro a tour. I got 27.25 euros from one couple once. I"m getting better at figuring out who will give a lot and who won:t and I tailor my tour accordingly. We all love Americans. Especially Texans. The first few times, I think I over emphasized the food budget and came away with two croissants and a bag of chips. Awesome.

Sometimes, the tours annoy me though. I have so much to do, it"s hard to keep my diggers going, to answer questions, to allocate work , to set up the recording system, when I am hopping around every 5 minutes talking to new people. We have several different languages on site, so sometimes I can get away. I have done several tours in french now. I stammered a bit for the first one but quickly picked up the flow of the language again and the couple I was talking to knew enough English to fill in the gaps. I"ve picked up a lot of key words and my french improves every time I speak. I kind of like it.

I am tired though. I haven"t had a day off yet and I"m not sure when I will. That"s a bit hard to take sometimes. I"ve also been frustrated by not having my own food source. I"m used to eating what I want, when I want. I have the treats I always eat in the field, like bananas and granola bars, and I miss that availability. I also come down with the typical camp cold and that"s wearing me down.

Also, someone stole my towel off the drying line. I have no way of purchasing one until this mythical day off. This could get complicated.

So, I could use a few days sleep, a few good meals and a chance to not think about archaeology for awhile. But, I am enjoying myself. I have been thrust several levels above my professional comfort zone and I find that I can cope with it. That feels pretty damn good.

Still have over three weeks to go! Bring on the bricks.

The Story so far....
Apparently, I only write on this blog when I am in a foreign country. Lucky for you fine folk, that is exactly where I am right now!

The city is Ostia. The country is Italian. The weather is bloody hot. And the archaeology is cool.

My arrival was somewhat more interesting than I prefer for my travels. Like a good Canadian, I arrived in the airport a full three hours before my departure, to ensure plenty of time to get through all the tedious mucking about. So, the check in, baggage check, full security check took a grand total of....6 minutes. Yeah. I flopped down and read my book. About half an hour before boarding time, we got an announcement. The insane storms the night before that delayed every plane in Canada. So the flight was delayed by three hours. It was past midnight when I finally got on board. We finally took off. I was squished in with two other people but I did manage to get a window seat. I settled back to watch some movies for the next few hours, only to disover that not only did I not have a tv screen on the back of my chair but I also could not really see any of the other ones hanging about. Which was probably a good thing, since all the chosen movies were horrible. I only lasted about 10 minutes into °Mall Cop° before I wanted to jump out of the airplane. I gave it up along with the deploable other movies and spent the 9 hour flight reading my book and my notes on Ostia.

Since my plane was insanely late leaving , I knew that I would be insanely late arriving. But I had no way to contact the folks picking me up. Sure enough, when I arrived, after being awake for almost 30 hours at this point, there was no one there. I wandered about for awhile, with my heavy backpack, hoping that maybe I got the wrong cafe. But no. Then I spent half an hour attempting to text from an Italian phone. Fail. But just as I was looking up the transit info to find the damn place on my own, I saw someone with an Ostia sign. It was one of the students and all was well. He texted our ride that I was there and we were off.

I arrived at camp soon after. It was hot. Really muggy. I was introduced to a billion people and then collapsed onto a bench to listen to one of their lectures, on the site in Ostia. It would have been more interesting if I had been more sentient.

But I finally got set up into my tent, a huge 8 person tent, shared between three people. We all went down to the cafe to eat a meal together and I started to get to know people. The camp is huge, with a bar, two pools, Internet, a supermarket, etc. I haven°t had time to really explore yet but I am gradually getting to know the place.

The next day, we headed off to Ostia Antica itself for a guided tour by our director. It was awesome. It°s really a mind blowing site. The site in several km and is sometimes preserved up to several floors. Walls and mosaic floors and pubs and bakeries and roads, as far as the eye could see! I was gleefully mentally pointing out the brick coursings that I recognized. Yes, archaeology nerd here. I really want to go off and explore the site on my own. We walked past the section we will actually be digging and it looked pretty sweet, with tons of large trees providing a very welcome amount of shade.

Then, we started digging. I got thrown right into it. I have more responsibilities, and therefore stress, than I have ever had in my life. Our students are broken up into two groups of about 10 and I am in charge of their training. Not only that but I have the keys to get our tools for the site, I have all the paperwork, I decide who works where, I call the breaks, I teach them everything from holding a trowel to contexting complex features. I am constantly running around, answering questions, checking work while at the same time attempting to construct a entire recording system which is completely lacking at this point. It°s a bit of an expotential change from working with my fully competant small work crew in Canada.

My director is a bit hard to work with as he keeps giving me more and more tasks to do. I gave up my two days off this week because there was simply too much work to do and I didn°t think that they could manage the site without me. So I have worked constantly since I have arrived and I am already exhausted. The equiment is not nearly up to my professional standards, which is frustrating. I am constantly having to come up with alternatives to things I have always taken for granted. I°ve been really frustrated for several days.

But I have also found that I am capable of doing this. I like to teach archaeology. And I think that I am effectively managing my team and we are getting a lot of good work done, despite what my director may think.

It°s interesting to be working with academics after my professional experience. I always thought that the CRM industry was considered to be slack and lacking in archaeological ethics. But no. This site is worse. Nothing is up to professional standards and it is up to me to fill in some of the gaps.

But I have met some really cool people and I am making some friends. I am settling down a bit now, getting into a rhythm.

And the archaeology is cool, dammit! I°m diggin up a public space, in the middle of a large city, off one of the major roads. I walk past Roman buildings and turn down Roman streets to get to work. Everyday, I find tons of Roman pottery, bricks, glass and one guy even got a badass coin with an evil looking dude with a goatee. So, intellectually, it°s amazing, regardless of how frustrating it is at times.

I am looking forward to the arrival of a friend in a couple of days, another professional, so we can band together and make this site and field school awesome.

Eventually, I will get a day off and get some sleep. And explore more of the crazy country.

Ciao.

I'm back. Again.
Well, so much for my intention of keeping up with my blog!

Am I allowed to have an Easter resolution? I'm not generally too big on fertility festivals or zombies, but I'm in a blogging mood and I hereby resolve to be a lot more active in my blogging.

I'm not going to attempt to describe everything that has happened to me over the past few months. But I can write about a few things:

I have a new blog. It is not a replacement of this one, which is a personal blog, mainly intended for my friends and family and whoever randomly happens to find this whilst googling madly. But after much urging from several people, I have launched my own atheist blog. It's small now, but it will grow. So feel free to check it out and leave a comment if you can! The blog is at: www.cheerfulatheist.ca

In other news, I have been weirdly employed for several months now. Archaeology ended at the end of November and hasn't started up again yet. That's a long time to not have a regular paycheque, especially since I only had 4 months to save any money at all. Since archaeology ended for the winter, I briefly held a job as a street fundraiser. It was a fantastic company but also the most soul destroying job I have ever attempted. And that includes tree planting. I left after three weeks to save my sanity and love for humanity.

After a nice relaxing Christmas and New Years, I wandered into a temp agency, expecting to get a job more or less instantly. The people that I have known who have used temp agencies have never had a problem and have had the same qualifications as I do. But no luck. I walked into the first one. They told me to email them. I emailed the second one, they didn't respond. I phoned and emailed the third one, they did not respond. I walked into the fourth one, they told me to email them. And so on. No jobs. Nothing.

Getting a bit frustrated, I resorted to Craigslist again. After checking obsessively for several days, I somewhat spontaneously landed a job as a data entry assistant for a U of T grad student. Basically, I was just imputing the field journals into a database. It was an easy enough job, I actually almost enjoyed it. Brainless work, but I could work from home, play music while I worked and work whenever I felt like putting in the hours. It was part time though, at minimum wage, so my pride took a bit of a blow. Still, it has helped pay my bills for the past couple of months! I finished the job a couple of weeks ago, having completed all the data entry.

I also posted an ad on Kijiji and suddenly became a tutor. I'm helping a 2nd year anthropology student with her end of the year essays. It's been interesting. I've edited other peoples essays for years but I have never gotten paid for it. But I think I am pretty good at it and I mostly enjoy it. It's just a few hours once in awhile, but it does help.

In the midst of this, I moved into a really awesome basement bachelor apartment in the west end. I love the apartment, I love the neighborhood. It's a total win.

After a couple of months of trying to live in Toronto while working part time, at minimum wage, after paying for first/last month rent along with moving expenses, I quickly realized that this was not sustainable. After watching my bank account dwindle rather more rapidly than I liked, I started desperately looking around for more work. But since I couldn't find a temp job and I couldn't in good conscience apply for a long term full time job knowing that I was going to leave in a couple months, I started looking at part time evening and weekend jobs. I figured that if the job was decent, I could keep doing it after going back to archaeology. So I got a job as an usher, working for the Blue Jays. I've worked 10 games now and I like the job. I hope I can keep it up when archaeology starts up again.

The best news of all is that I got an offer to work on a site in Rome. It will be for a month, from the end of August to the end of September. They want me as a field supervisor, responsible for training the kids who are doing field work for the first time. The site is Ostia, a World Heritage class site. It is basically Rome's port city and is quite unique within archaeology because it wasn't lived in all that long and it was eventually abandoned and never settled again. So the preservation is pretty good and there is bound to be loads of neat stuff! So, I am excited. I'm spending a lot of my spare time reading about Ostia and learning about Roman construction techniques. I've also been studying Italian and I am really enjoying the experience.

So, in summary, I am currently employed part time, I am dangerously low on money, I am happily living in my own apartment and looking forward to starting work again.

Opps. I guess it has been awhile. Ah well, better late than never eh?

Life is relatively normal. It's kind of hard to believe that I have been back in Canada for almost 4 months now. In some ways, it feels like I just got back, in other ways, it feels like I never left. I miss London. I find myself wishing for random things, like drinking Ribena or jumping onto a double decker red bus. I miss the friends I made there. I miss the occasionally cool archaeology I did there. I even miss doing those damn Harris Matrix's.

It's kind of weird, in some ways, I keep forgetting that the last year happened. People will comment on something that happened "last summer" and my mind instantly goes to the summer of 2007. It's as if history in Canada does not exist unless I was here. I keep catching myself thinking like that, it's a bit strange! But I also sometimes find it hard to believe that I visited 11 countries last year.

But I am also happy to be back here. In some ways, it has been nice doing Ontario archaeology again. We got a decent prehistoric Iroquoian cabin site and some cool stuff has come out of there. The work has been relative easy, the company has been enjoyable as always. So I've been happy. Thursday was our last day in the field, just got laid off for the winter. I haven't really decided what to do in the meantime. I've been somewhat obsessively checking job sites but not much has jumped out at me yet. I'm leaning towards taking December off and signing up with a temp agency in January. I could use some time to relax, do some of my own research, practice my magic. Still, the OSAP payments and my stupid wisdom teeth (which have been successfully removed, without much drama) have really eaten into my savings and I don't have much to spare at the moment. So I might end up working soon. I do have a few days worth of artifact washing to do, I'll decide what to do after I finish that up.

I've greatly enjoyed living in the apartment I am currently in. Made some new friends, been having a good time. But I do need to find a new place for January, so I've started looking. It's a bit early now, most places will really start advertising in a couple of weeks. I'm sure I will find something cool!

I've been practicing a lot lately. Mainly sponge ball stuff and also contact juggling. Especially contact juggling. I almost have a decent butterfly. Damn the freakishly hard to learn basic move. Soon....

Also, James Bond is cool.

Back in Canada!
Ok, so apparently I get lazy about blogging when I am in my own country.

I have been back in Canada for a few weeks now and it has been hectic, but nice. I stressed out about finding a place for awhile but eventually found a decent one and I moved in yesterday. It is not exactly what I wanted but it is only temporary and the roommates seem great. Definitely a geek house. I'm not fully moved in yet though, crashing in the living room until the person in my room moves out this weekend. I am looking forward to having my own room again.

I started work two weeks ago and it has been good. Tom left after a week and Alan is leaving in a week, so it will definitely be different soon but for awhile, it was just like old times. Within about three seconds, it was as if I had never left.

It has been...strange....adapting to Canadian archaeology again. Everything seems so familiar, yet so alien at the same time. I keep getting reminded of how I have changed when I say an acronym that my co-workers don't understand or I mess up the bloody grid numbers because I had finally converted to the English way of doing things. I feel conflicted about my trowel. At first, I have been using my English trowel, believing it to be superior in all manners of archaeology, but I have begun to see it's limitations. It just doesn't do the job for some things and I may have to switch back. Maybe I will use both. I don't know. It probably seems like a silly conflict for most of you, but hey, it's my trowel! Definitely important.

In general terms, Canada seems almost odd. I keep forgetting to add tax to all my purchases. Buildings seem so tall, roads are so wide. People are noticably friendly. I find that I convert all my purchases into British pounds (which, admittedly, usually makes me giggle at how cheap everything is here).

So yeah, it's just been a bit weird getting back to normal.

Also, I've been having problems with my teeth. I went to the dentist today and I need to have all four wisdom teeth removed. And since I have zilch insurance, it is going to cost me $1700.

Boo.

London!
I am back in London now and it feels kind of strange. Strange that my trip is almost over, strange that I am staying in a hostel in the city that I called home for 8 months!

I am finished with Busabout now. If anyone is reading this and thinking about doing it, do it! Busabout is a fantastic company. It was a perfect way to travel around Europe, especially as a solo first time traveler. I am going to miss that bus and the people I met on it!

I ended up taking a bus from Paris to London. It takes longer but hey, it is so much cheaper and I have had so many bus rides by this point, one more won't hurt! I eventually got into London. Interestingly, the bus takes almost the identical route that my bus took from my house into central London, so it was a very nostalgic bus trip! I am staying in a hostel near London Bridge, which puts me way more central than I was when I was living here.

I went over to Kelly's place a couple of hours after I arrived, to chat and pick up my stuff that I have stored in her attic. We went to her local and had a couple of pints and a great meal. I managed to lug all my stuff back to my hostel, up the 4 flights of stairs, only to find that my key suddenly didn't work in the door. Reception is a couple of blocks away, so I had to abandon my stuff in the hallway and walk over to get my key fixed. I was really tired by then, it had been a long day. But I made it in eventually and crashed.

I spent most of the day yesterday sorting through my stuff. It is really expensive to ship things from here so I am been attempting to fit everything into my two bags. After much trial and error, I think I may have managed it. I bet they are both overweight though. But it is probably cheaper to just pay excess baggage fees then to mail them back, so I might just do that.

I met up with a bunch of people from work at the Horseshoe Pub, which was great. I am going to miss all my friends here.

I also managed to close my bank account, so I am mostly ready to come home now. I may even have time to do some touristy things today.

I just got a text from Alicia saying that there is a partial eclipse on right now. I have to go check that out.

San Sebastian! Tours!
Sorry for the delay, Tours did not have convienient Internet access. I am in Paris again, just for the night, before heading back to London tomorrow morning.

Ok, San Sebastian, cont!

After exploring every possible corner of the castle and accidently stumbling into a wedding (getting married in a castle = awesome), I headed back down the hill. I took my time, going down in a completely different direction than I had climbed. Found some more castle walls and coastline defensive forts, very cool. I eventually hit ground level and just kept wandering. I decided that since I had already climbed one mountain bordering the city, I might as well climb the other mountain bordering the other side of the city. Ok, I cheated, and took the funicular.

The walk from the first mountain to the other side took about 40 minutes. I was about 5 minutes into it, following the path that hugs the coastline, before it occured to me that I could actually walk the coastline instead. So I jumped onto the beach, took off my sandles, and did the rest of the walk in the water. Perfect temperature for a leisurely stroll!

The top of the mountain, which is higher than the first one, allows for some fantastic coastline views. And since it was bright and sunny by then, it was nice to just sit and look at everything. Oddly enough, there is a slightly spooky amusement park on the top of the mountain. It seems moderately haunted and mostly empty. Possbily because it is on top of the mountain. It did have a neat boat ride that hugged the edge of the clift, overlooking the awesome views, which is pretty cool, I guess.

By the time I got down the mountain, it was getting pretty late. I tried a couple more tapas but was rather unlucky in my choices and was not particularly impressed with the scrambled fish paste. But hey, that;s what you get for randomly pointing at unlabelled food products!

The next day, I got on the bus and got off at Tours. I was quite happy to get back in France. Not be able to speak the local language gets very tiring after awhile. You would not believe how conforting it is to be able to look at a sign, a menu, anything, and actually understand it.

Tours is pretty cool. We got here around 4pm and since there are only a few of us that got off, we got to know each other. There aren;t very many hostels in Tours, so the recommended place is actually a hotel. I got a single room! With a bathroom! Pure luxury. All of us are longtimers by this point and when we went for dinner, we spent more time gushing over the luxury of actually having privacy, then any other topic of conversation. A few of us spent a couple of hours exploring the city and ended up sharing a litre of wine at an outdoor cafe bar. There was a band and a dance floor set up and we sat under a tree and just watched France around us. We ended up having a rather mediocre dinner at a cafe, then going to bed.

The next day, we did a massive castle tour! Tours is all about the chateaux. There are a gazillion around here, spread all across the area, from all different time periods. We did four. We did a guided coach tour, which was rather expensive, but worth it because we jam packed our day and it was really nice to not have to think for awhile and just enjoy the day. All the castles were completely different from each other, which was cool. I will describe them more when I post the pictures. But one was the castle where Leonardo da Vinci is buried, inside Amboise, a really neat medieval town. The second one was actually built entirely on water. The third was a giant palace home that has been (and still in) in the same family for over 400 years). The fourth was a massive complex, the exterior of which was actually designed by Da Vinci himself, although he did not actually construct it.

It was a full day, about 9am to 7pm and a lot of fun. We bought our dinner cheaply at the supermarket, splurged on a 2 euro bottle of wine, and hung out at the hotel the rest of the night.

Today, the bus did not pick us up until 4:30pm, so we had most of the day to explore Tours. We found the Old part of town, and it was awesome! Perfectly preserved houses from the 17-18th century, made out of wood! Looks awesome and very cool to walk around. Apparently, most of the city used to look that like before being almost entirely destroyed during the war. But even having one of those still left is pretty amazing.

We saw what we wanted to see by around 1pm, so we grabbed some lunch and just had a picnic by the river, reading our books, until it was time to head for the bus. It was over half an hour late but eventually arrived. About 5 hours later, we hit Paris! It was kind of cool to actually drive through the city, seeing again all the things I have seen, only two and a half months ago! I really like Paris. I am staying in the same hostel as I started in, which seems fitting, full circle and all that. It is too late to see any more Paris and I am going to catch a 10am bus to London tomorrow.

I am staying in a hostel in London, right by London Bridge, which will be cool for a few days. I am looking forward to being back in London! And only 4 more sleeps until I am back in Canada!

San Sebastian!
San Sebastian is way better than Madrid. I am glad this is my last stop in Spain. I will be leaving the country on a high note instead of a low one!

It is a really cute town, much smaller than the others I have visited, but absolutely crammed with people. But, it doesnt make it feel crowded, just atmospheric! The people are definitely friendlier than they were in Madrid, which is awesome. I said good bye to a few friends who moved on to Paris and since my new roommates dont speak English, I have mainly been on my own here. Still, it has been relaxing.

I spent most of yesterday just wandering around. San Sebastian is a seafront city with tons of history. There are several large beaches, including one for surfers, and it seems like the entire city hangs out there. Way too crowded for my tastes but fun to look at. I walked most of the coast line, stopping whenever I saw a nice spot and spent most of the day just relaxing, reading my book. I randomly started walking up a large hill and found an absolutely awesome spot, in the shade, looking over the entire city. Very cool.

I found a gelato place that sold the most massively huge gelatos I have ever seen, delicious, and cheap. Best combination ever. I think I need to go back there today.

San Sebastian is famous for its food and I can certainly see why. Tapas bars are a fantastic idea, Canada needs to get some of these. Basically, you wander through the streets, where 90% of the stores are Tapas bars. You wander into one that appeals to you and ask for a plate. On the counter in front of you, there are trays and trays full of food, covering the entire bar. You pick and choose what you want, putting it on your plate. Then you find a bartender, show him your plate and he tells you how much to pay him. Then you eat! It is an interesting experience too because nothing is labelled or priced and no one speaks English. Since I was on my own, it took me a little while to get the courage to walk in one, but once I did, I was happy! My method is mainly to just pick a few things that look good and just try them out. So far, I have been mainly successful.

This morning, I decided to walk up this one mountain, where there was a giant statue of Jesus. Not that I particularly wanted to see a giant statue of Jesus, but it was a mini mountain overlooking the city, which is bound to have some awesome panoramic view of the city. And, instead of just a giant statue, there was a massive 11th century castle! I seem to find castles everywhere! It is neat that this one is completely invisible from the ground though. It is very well preserved and, best of all, completely free to wander around! There is even an exhibit throughout some of the rooms, with cannons and cannon balls everywhere. Very cool. Also, fantastic view, I got some amazing pictures.

Opps, someone wants this computer. More later.

Madrid!
I just got to San Sebastian, finally escaping Madrid. None of us really liked Madrid. It was sort of...hostile. Locals hated tourists, it was really hot and the crime rate was staggering high. Not violent crime or anything, it is very safe, but in terms of pickpocketing and such, it was brutal.

And that was the worst hostel I have stayed in so far. I have no idea why Busabout recommends it. I felt unsafe the entire time. It was basically within the Red Light District of Madrid, I had to walk by an entire street of hookers to get to my room. And the security was practically non existent. My door had been visibly opened by a crowbar at some point. Several people got their backpacks stolen from their rooms. I tried to find accommodation somewhere else, like almost everyone who got off the bus, but there was nothing within my price range. So yeah, not the greatest. If anyone is reading this and is busabouting, DO NOT STAY THERE!

As a city in general though, it is relatively nice. I did a free walking tour on the first day, which was fun and learned a lot about Spanish history. I hung out most of the time with a couple of Kiwi couples I have known since Switzerland or Nice. Ate some good tapas. That night, we all met up and went to a Flamenco show. It is a very Spanish thing to do, one that does not involve the extended torture and death of an animal, so it was a win. It started out kind of sketchy, almost like cheesy ballet to CD music. We were all looking at each other, wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. But then a live band came out and it was brilliant! Strange mix of music, involving a guitar, a flute and clapping. The dancers were awesome, very personable. So I am glad that I went.

The following day, it was so hot it felt dangerous to actually walk about, so I spent most of the day hanging out in the shade in a massive park. I met up with some friends later and we went to an awesome place called 100 Sandwiches. And it was a special 1 euro day. Everything in the place was one euro. So awesome. You basically get a list of sandwiches and check off how many you want of each and hand it in. Once they make them, they call you up and poof, a plate of little sandwiches! Very yummy, very cheap. Said goodbye to one set of friends, who are staying in Madrid a couple of more days and headed off this morning to San Sebastian. The hostel here is decent and the city looks great, I feel way more comfortable now.

Three more nights in Spain, then back to France! I am looking forward to being in Tours.

Madrid!
Quick note.

Internet is free here, but only in 30 minute segments. By the time I check my emails and such, I have very little time left for any decent blog entries.

In brief: I am in Madrid, moving on to San Sebastian tomorrow. Madrid is ok but suffocatingly hot. No one really feels like doing anything. And there is no air conditioning, my hostel is sketchy and my roommates suck. So I am looking forward to moving on tomorrow.

I have three minutes of time left!

Tapas are yummy. I am hooked on spanish omlettes with garlic sauce. Yum.

Valencia!
Ok, I like Spain. I really do. The food is yummy, everything is fairly cheap, the people are friendly. And siestas are strange but I could definitely get used to them.

First of all, the movie night during my last night in Barcelona was awesome! I took the subway to the funicular to the middle of the mountain which is now a ginormous park. I was going to take the gondola up to the castle but it was almost 6 euros, one way, which is ridiculous. Plus, I had time and I am not lazy, so I started climbing. And it was easy, less than a 20 minute walk to the top. The castle up there overlooks the city, fantastic views. I could not actually go inside the castle itself because it is now a military museum but I could wander around the grounds for free. Eventually, I met up with some friends from the previous night and we got in line, waiting to be allowed into where the movie would play. Eventually, we bought our tickets (a whole 4 euro), picked up a reed mat, and plopped down on the grass in front of a giant movie screen, right up against the castle wall! How often do you have the chance to watch a movie on a 9th century castle wall?? I had bought a bunch of food from the supermarket and we had a real picnic going. It was great. And, luckily, the movie was actually in English, with catalonian subtitles. (They play movies from all different countries and languages, always subtitled, we just lucked out). It was Rattatouille of all movies, which I happen to like. A jazz band played for about an hour before the movie started (it doesnt get dark until past 10pm here) and they were really good! Making a lot of jokes that none of us understood but we happily cheered when everyone else did! There were so many people there too, at least 3000, possibly even more. All Catalonian. After the movie finished, there was only one staircase as a exit (well, it is a castle!) and when several thousand people attempt to use the same staircase, it is inevitably slow. Then we found out that not only is the gondola not working but the funicular as well. None of us knew where we were but we walked in the right general direction, knowing we would hit a metro stop eventually. We walked past a creepy street party showing a bizzare movie and there were so many people wandering about, very unique atmosphere. We eventually found the exact subway station we were looking for and headed home. Still, it was a late night, didnt get back until almost 2:30am and I had to get up at 6am.

I also find it amusing that the lastest I have been out on my trip was due to a childrens cartoon.

Anyways, I got up shortly after going to bed, grabbed my stuff and headed back into town to make it to the bus in time. One of the disadvantages of not being at the Busabout hostel! But I made it allright and arrived in Valencia a few hours later. Again, I couldnt get into the busabout one but I got into one only a couple blocks away and it is fine. I was still quite sleepy from the night before and didnt feel like doing much. I wandered about for a couple of hours though. Valencia is very pretty, lots of wide open streets along with small alleyways. Again, very laid back and they definitely take their siestas seriously. I bought some food at the supermarket and came back to the hostel and had a kickass dinner, then just hung out here before going to sleep.

This morning, I got up decently early and headed off to the City of Arts and Sciences. It is basically a complex of museums-science centre type places. I did not have time to do all of them, so I ended up getting a ticket for the aquarium (apparently the largest in Europe) and an Imax film (why not?). I decided to have an aquatic day and chose the underwater film too. It was pretty good! The Imax theatre is not as big as the one in Toronto but in some ways was more effective because it covered my complete peripheral vision but was much closer to me. Very cool. Then I spent a couple of hours going through the aquarium. I have not visited an aquarium within my sentient memory, so it was neat! All the tanks are curved and perfectly clean in a way of making the fish appear to be literally in front of you. You could just reach out and grab one. They had giant sections involiving all different aquatic environments and thousands of species. I ended my trip with a dolphin show and it was cool! It is amazing what those things can do.

The walk from my hostel to the aquarium is also cool. It is mainly within a giant park. Actually, the park used to be a river flowing through the city. It dried up and people had planned on putting in a freeway but the green movement latched onto it and now it is a giant park, going through the entire city. Very pretty. About halfway back, I stumbled across an amusement park that wasnt there when I walked by in the morning and happily walked through that for awhile but didnt actually do anything.

I had tentative plans to meet up with people staying at the other hostel to go to a bull fight tonight but we never worked out the details and I have no way of contacting them. I might just do my own thing tonight, it is probably too late to get tickets now anways.

I managed to book the rest of my trip, everything except for my trip from Paris to London, which I need a printer in front of me before I book it. But it is nice to know that I have a home every night until I get home. Which is in a surprisingly short period of time. I have one more night in Valencia, three in Madrid, three in San Sebastian, two in Tours, one in Paris, then three in London and I am on a plane. Crazy.

Barcelona!
Spain has surprised me. I dont know why, but I somehow didnt think that I would like Spain. I have not been looking forward to it as much as I have the others, but so far, I love it! Barcelona has such a...vibe....to it. No matter what street you walk down, it is amazing. Tons of wide open spaces but also tiny little alleyways and medieval buildings. Beautiful city, very clean, very friendly, laid back people. I like it.

But I am getting ahead of myself! First of all, my French Riviera cruise. Sucked. Really disappointed in it. Not at all what I had been expecting. We didnt meet up until 1pm, so I had the morning to wander about some more. I finally ended up posting that poster I have been carting around for ages (mailed it to you guys, mom and dad! Hopefully you will get it in a couple of days or so). I spent about an hour trying to find an Internet place that does scanning but alas, I failed. You can never find something like that when you are looking for it. I will keep on trying. I helped one of my roommates mail a package home (she didnt speak french and the post office guys didnt speak English) and it was fun being a translator for awhile.

At 1pm, a bus came and picked us up and we drove to our boat....two hours away. Now, I have nothing against long bus rides, I just was not expecting it. We got dropped off at a little rich places called Grimwald and had an hour or so to wander about. Then we got back on the bus, drove about 20 minutes, then finally got on the boat. There were tons of people, it was really hot and the free drinks were pretty crap. Everyone was just trying to get drunk as quickly as possible. The host was almost funny for being completely not funny. His jokes were dated to maybe the 50s and I doubt they would have been funny even then. Some people started laughing at his punchlines simply because there were none. He just rarely made any sense, it was so strange. He gossiped a lot about a bunch of rich people I have either not heard of or dont care about. We got to St. Tripel about an hour later and got a couple of hours to wander about. I went off on my own. After laughing at the prices of the restaurants on the seafront (35 euro for a beer), I walked further inland until it got a bit closer to real life. It was a nice place, tons of rich people but tons of normal people too. I found a park and watched a whole bunch of locals play bocce ball. Eventually had to go back to get on the boat and it only took 15 minutes to get back to our port and back on the bus. Then a 2 hour bus ride back to the hostel. So yeah, I was bored and disappointed.

The next day was infinitely better! Got on the bus and headed to Barcelona! My first time in Spain and the last of my new countries to visit on this trip. It was a long bus ride, over 10 hours, but it was fine. This is also the first time that I was unable to get into the recommended hostel that the bus stops at, there was simply no room anywhere. I booked into a different place that ended up being way further outside of the central area than I thought but is actually one of the best hostels I have been at. I realized as soon as I got here that I have missed hostels. All of Italy was camping sites and hotels, not hostels. And it really changes the experience. As soon as I got here, I dropped my stuff off in my room, grabbed a drink, and plopped down on the couch with my book. Within 5 minutes, I was talking to three different people and we ended up going to a supermarket to pick up some ingredients and made an awesome dinner together. I was up till almost 2am just chatting and I have missed that.

The next morning, I spent a couple of hours wandering about the main central area, then did a 4 hour bike tour. A lot of people from Busabout were there and I have now latched onto a new group of people, most of whom are doing Spain within the same schedule that I am, which is awesome. The bike tour was great, not too strenuous, some great sites I would not have seen otherwise.

That night, we had all previous planned on doing a Spanish cooking class, which had been recommended to me by several others. And it was awesome!! We met up at a restaurant, walked to another one, then they took us to the back and we sat at a bunch of long tables with loads of ingredients in front of us. First, we learned how to make sangria! Then we had unlimited ingrdients for the rest of the evening to keep practicing, which is somewhat dangerous! Then we learned how to make a couple different tapas, which were yummy, then a main rice dish, which was also yummy. And easy to make too, I am definitely going to try it at home. But we did not do much actual cooking, most of it was just drinking sangria and happily chatting away. Eventually, we ate all the food and the class ended and we all just went across the hall and sat in the bar for a few more hours. One of my new friends found out that I do magic and begged me to do some. So, for the next hour or so, I did. I was so exhilerating. I have really slacked off ym magic lately and I have been missing it. And it went really well. They were all great audience members and loved my tricks. Then one guy, who was very drunk, came over and grabbed my cards and kept trying to do tricks, which invariably completely failed. I was getting really fed up with him but so were the others and eventually I go the cards back and did some good stuff. And now that everyone knows I do magic, I dont think I am going to have a peaceful bus ride again! :)

This morning, I met up with a couple of friends and we went to the Picasso museum, which has about 3000 of his paintings laid out in chronological order. Pretty cool stuff. Then we went to the city museum, which has Barcelonas history for about 2000 years. The basement floor is actually all Roman buildings, very cool!

We found an awesome food market that was actually very reasonably priced! All fresh food. I got a giant bowl of fresh fruit (strawberries, grapes, cantelope, passionfruit, figs - you name it, it was in there), a pinapple mint smoothie and a chicken shishkabob, all for 4 euro. Awesome.

It was siesta time, so I walked around for a bit but then I got tired, so I headed back to the hostel. The Internet was actually free, so I hopped on to update you lot, but I am about to head out again. There is an 8th century castle on the top of a mountain here and, somewhat strangely, yet awesomely, they show movies there every week, projected on the castle wall. So I am going to buy some stuff for a picnic dinner and head up there soon.

Adios!

Nice!
Happy Bastille Day!

It also just so happens that I am in France. Although according to quite a few people here, Nice barely counts as France. It is true, the streets are not shut down due to rampant partying but it is still a public holiday!

This key boa rd keeps adding spaces when I dont press the spacebar. Strange.

Anyways, I spent most of the day wande ring around. I havent really met a new group of friends yet. I am going on a boat trip tomorrow with tons of Busabout people so I hope to meet some people then but for no w, I am on my own.

In some wa ys, it has been quite nice. When I am not with a grou p of english speaking people, it is much easier to have nice conversati ons in French with locals. I am becoming more confident with my french, using it mu ch more often.

I wandered down to Veille Nice, the old part of town, where there just happened to be a flea market. Mos tly antiques and tons of really strange odds and ends. I found a bunch of old English pennies, w hich I had been searching for in the past and happily bought them. After that, I walked along the coast line for awhile, just looking around. Nice is on the seafront, the French Riveria! Very pretty.

I got bored after awhile, so I found the train station and hopped on the next train heading towards Monoco. It has got to be the first time I have bought a ticket to another country for under 10 dollars!

Monoco is....strange. It is tiny, only a couple km, but every single inhabitant is a millionaire. Seriously. You cannot own property if you are not a citizen and the application fee for becoming a citizen is a million euro, non refundable. The entire country is paid for by the Monte Carlo casino. I wandered around the city for awhile, just taking in the ridiculously expensive houses. It is so strange walking down the streets. Everyone you walk by is a) a gawking tourist or b) a gazillionaire. Every other car that drove past seemed to be a Ferrari. I went into the Monte Carlo casino lobby but then chickened out and didnt go in the whole way. It costs 10 euro just to enter and I would probably fail the dress code anyways. I went into the casino next door, which was free, and promptly lost the 20 euros I gave myself to lose. But it was fun to be sitting at a roulette table, making 2 euro b ets, while the guy next to me was betting 25 000. Crazy.

I got sick of Monoco quickly enough though. It has a creepy Disneyland type vibe to it. It was just so...fake. No one there has any idea what real life is like.

I hopped on the train back to Nice, grabbed some food, then hung out on the beach for awhile, reading my book. A french guy eventually sat next to me, chatting me up to an almost hilarious level, before I managed to convince him, in a friendly way, that I was not interested. He eventually left and crowds of people s tarted to gather. I figured that there was going to be a beach party to celebrate Bastille day and I was right! As it got dark, everyone was sitting on the beach, staring out into the water. E v entually, there was a massive fi reworks show, r ight off a boat in the middle of the water! Very cool.

After the fireworks, I slowly wandered back towards the hostel, stopping at several busker shows along the way. One musician was absolutely brilliant. I ac tu ally regret not buying his CD at this point. It was all instrumental, mostly a combination of pipes and ocarinas and such like . But it was utterly compelling.

I am going on a river cruise tomorrow, to St. Topez! It was surprisingly well priced and should be a good way to meet some new people. It is an all day cruise on the French Riviera, what more could I ask for?

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