longest blog ever

alrighty.
You may be wondering what I've been up to considering it's been so long since I last updated anything. Really, I wish I had more to say or to at least write that things have been going the way I'd hoped. But they aren't. It's kind of unfortunate to find out that you are apparently unemployable in a line of work closely related to what you want to pursue. For those of you who don't know, I've been applying for jobs with commercial archaeology companies to get more field work experience. It's been over a month and not a single company I've applied for has even given me a call. So I have decided that I had best get a part time job that is allowed under the student visa that I have and that I should find myself a place so that I am not imposing myself onto my friends any more. The trick is that it has to be a job that I could leave should one of the archaeological companies actually choose to hire me.
In the grand scheme of things it's really not that bad. It's just disappointing. If I can't get a job before Christmas I'll see if I can't go back to Greece and do what I was supposed to be doing right now since the opportunity is still there. This, of course, just depends on me getting a visa or something so that I don't jeopardize my excavations this summer, which is definitly something I am not looking forward to having to do.

Enough of that though. The better news is that I was able to spend some time with my mom and oma who came out to my Graduation ceremony a few weeks ago. The ceremony was surprisingly short and efficient. All in Latin too. King's was the first college to go because it was the first of the Royal charter colleges. (oooh, awwe).


After the cermony we spent some time in London seeing the sight. We saw some fantastic musicals as well. First, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I had been trying to get tickets for this show but it was sold out until 2008 or something stupid like that, but I found some upper balcony style tickets from an unofficial booth that turned out to be better than we thought. The show was also a nice surprise, it turned out to be a lot of fun. But we were still baffled as to why it was so sold out, and, more strangely, why people cheered like mad when Lee Mead, the Guy playing Joseph, stepped onto the stage. I mean, he was good, no doubt about that, but still. Turns out they had done a reality tv show to fill the Joseph role - an amazing marketing ploy that seems to have worked.



Show number two, another Andrew Lloyd, the Phantom of the Opera. I had actually never seen this show, though of course, it is a classic and was very beautifully done. I suppose I had higher hopes for this one than for Joseph so I was left a little bit disappointed. I felt they were holding back just a little from making the big moments as big as they could have been. But still, how could you not enjoy it?
Show number three... Chicago, now starring none other than Kelly Osborne as Mama Morton (those of you who know the musical may be cringing at this moment, and rightfully so). I had heard that the reviews were saying that she was doing a good job. She did not do a good job. This was a marketing ploy that did not work. Thankfully she wasn't on stage all that much to drag down the fantastic job the rest of the cast was doing.
So between the 3 musicals and catching 'dirty dancing' on the tv, and my singing constantly, my mom and oma had an amazingly musical time.

And after London, we made our way up to Edinburgh for a few days. Absolutely beautiful. Some very nice museums and interesting old buildings with tiny little alleyways.



One of the highlights of Edinburgh was Rosslyn Chapel. Started in 1446 (or somewhere around then) the entire chapel is covered in elaborate, and mysterious, carvings. It was mentioned in the DaVinci Code, so it has gained in popularity over the years as a tourist attraction but is still extremely intriguing as a place that has Templar and Masonic connections, heart lines, and an unopened massive vault rumoured to hold things like the grail or the ark of the covenant or a piece of the true cross. (Instead of trying to tell you all of the strange rumours that surround this place, I'll just link you to the wikipedia article...). One of the things I found most interesting, however, was that in their attempts to preserve the sandstone carvings, they covered them in a monochromatic cement mixture. This not only removed the natural colouring of the sandstone and the paint that was applied, but it cause the sandstone to retain water and therefore moss to cover huge amounts of the surfaces. So they had to build an awning to put over top of it to keep it dry. It is interesting that sometimes the acts that we make to preserve our material culture can sometimes do just as much damage.


So. In summation. Had a great time with my mom and oma, and not a bad time just getting things in order. I just wish I had the job I want.

bureaucracy 1, me 0

so I lose. I definitley have to go back to england. It's complicated and weird and bureaucratic and I'm not so mad at the fact that I have to go back, it's that no one could have told me the information I needed to know sooner. I mean come on now. All it takes is someone to actually listen to what your situation is and what you want to do instead of being to busy to care. I mean, when the canadian embassy in greece and the greek embassy in canada tell you two different things, you know the system is confused.
and I'm also mad at the fact that even the little things are not going right for me today... like trying to call a bunch of embassies and then trying to call airway people. for example... trying to call british airways to change my ticket... first, i just happen to run out of money on my cell. second, the first payphone i can find is decapitated, i.e. no reciever. the second inexplicably non-functioning, the third working, but it is now 5 minutes past five. the office closed at five. i try to call long distance to the one in england and for some reason cannot get through.
any ways. I'm just going to have to suck it up and pay the massive amount they are charging me to change my ticket, but first I have to walk back to lefkandi and get the bank card that is sitting in my room instead of being in my bag only to walk back (30 min. both ways). can't say i'm not getting my exercise.

anyways, enough complaining. I'm bitter, yes, but still. things aren't that bad, just expensive and time consuming. Maybe it's better that I go back to england to sort some stuff out, and on the bright side i have some friends there who have already offered up their couches and floors.

that's it for now, i have to get walking if I'm going to make dinner...

This is the view from my balcony. Lefkandi can't be beat for seaside views: what it lacks in creature comforts, it makes up for in seascapes. it's basically a place where athenians come and beach it up for the weekend so the weekends are overrun with vacationing greeks, but there are vary vary few people from elsewhere and we are a bit of an anomally as english speakers. lefkandi has a ton of tavernas, but nothing along the lines of a bank (or atm), post office, supermarket, internet cafe, etc etc. so to get anything you have to walk to the next town 1/2 an hour away. That outcropping of land is where the site is located.

these are the workem i'm with and the trench that i'm in. basically, looking for a big wall. the photo heare is just starting to see it come up, but by this point we've uncovered approximately 9 meters of what is now a 19 meter long wall (you can see it running back in the distance of the trench uncovered last year). I don't mind saying that my wheel barrow and shovel boy are probably the cutest ones, thereby making our trench the hottest one by far (not temperature wise either).

we have along weekend which is great because it will allow me to go into athens and attempt to deal with the greek bueaucracy which will either extend my visa so i can stay until christmas or not. I'm looking forward to a day of waiting and incomprehensible organisation. keep your fingers crossed.

i had grand plans to upload some photos and have this great blog to make up for the length of time that has past since the previous posting... but I can't use my jump drive at this internet cafe. dangit.

well, here's the scoop anyways.

we are now entering our 4th week of digging here at Lefkandi. This last week was nice becasue the first two we were basically digging rectangular trenches of nothing but topsoil. this week we actually reached archaeological levels, just beneath the surface really, but it's all about being north or south of this big wall. (north there is nothing until very deep, south you dig 30 cm and you hit mycenaen beuildings). my trench is all about outlining what the extent of this boundary wall is and how the area connects to what was founf to the south last year. so now I have a part of the large wall and a couple of other, unexpected, smaller walls.
it's exciting. i promise.

I am a trench supervisor, which means that I tell the pickman and the other two workers where to dig, etc. so far I;ve had a greek speaking assistant to communicate through, but things are getting swapped around this week and i will have someone who doesn't speak greek assisting. This should be interesting. It'll be alright, i think, becasue i have picked up enough to generally get the main point across, it's just the details that I worry about. at any rate, my greek should improve by force, which is a bright side.

i'm going to leave it there for now... i promise though that I will flesh it out soon, i think the other internet cafe i go to should be able to upload a few photos which will make all the difference.

love you all and miss you

So. I'm digging. It's going well: I am slowly gaining confidence and not thinking that I'm going to destroy everything, the heat wave has subsided and is now in the 30's rather than 40's, i have an amazing 'T' shaped tan on my back and am working on the shoe tan nicely, and I am meeting people, slowly but surely.
This weekend is a long weekend, meaning that we have monday off. Most people are heading out to the islands. I might have, but I didn't know about this weekend until recently, and I just don't feel like have the energy to go through all the trouble. Plus, I really need to get some work done on my funding proposals this weekend. But, I also figure that I should at least do Something on Sunday for my birthday. but all the really nice beaches are really far. Though I suppose I could head to one of the closer ones and just suck it up, I mean, a beach is a beach. I can't believe I'm whining about not knowing what I should do when I'm in greece, i mean, really now. I'm just to lazy to plan to relax.
love you all, miss you all.

one day of digging and just look at the tan lines.

They let us go home early today because of the heat. I was more thankful than you can possibly imagine. Apparently sitting in rainy england writing your thesis is not good peparation for digging in the greek sun. Who knew?

well. I'm Greece. And it's excessively warm already. Someone said 48 degrees. crazy.
I'm being waited on fo rthe ocmputer, so I'll write more when I have more to say other than am extrememly tired form sleeping on planes and in airports.

blog karma

I figure I'm on the negative side for blogging karma. So it'll be a long one.

I guess I have to go back to Tuesday, when I handed in my thesis. Had a day to relax and run errands and whatnot, then it was off to Holland to visit my Oma and Opa who are there visiting relatives right now.
It was very interesting to see all of the 'aunts' and 'uncles' and 'cousins' (all second or third I think) that I hadn't really seen since I was 11. Most of the trip involved sitting around listening to conversations in dutch (no, i don't understand dutch), but we also went to a couple of really beautiful, very old, little towns nearby and on the saturday my cousins took me out clubbing dutch style. The legal drinking age there is 16 and the club was huge (4 different dance floors, each the size of one of ours) with full fog, light, tv, and laser effects. oh, and a pool. but I was told if you went in the pool, you got kicked out of the club, which made me wonder why they had it there in the first place.

so after listening a whole lot of dutch, and picking all the cherries a person could humanly eat from the cherry tree in the yard, I returned home sunday night to a Viva Voce exam monday morning. The viva didn't go fantastically well. I think I held my own and babbled a minimum amount, but I did get the distinct impression that one marker in particular thought my topic extremely pointless. So I think I may be looking at an alright, but not great mark coming up (I won't know at least for a couple of weeks). Hopefully it will be enough to get me some funding...

But hey, it's now all over and I have nothing left for my masters but to wait. And I have nothing left to do here but run some errands and enjoy myself. This week holds two huge parties, the King's affair, and the king's graduate formal dinner. The affair is King's answer to a ball (which is what most of the other colleges have) and is instead just a massive party where we are allowed on the lawn (ooh!). I find it amusing that all the other colleges have themes like: 'the moon', 'through the looking glass', and other fancy things that I can't remember right now where they all dress up in formal gear... king's picks 'aftermath'. That's right folks, it's a post-apocalyptically themed affair. That means wearing ripped clothing and gas masks. Sounds like fun to me, and we'll be formal formal for the grad dinner anyways. gotta love king's.

And then I'm off on Saturday night. Weird. So weird. It's definitley coming up quicker than I expected. But I've got myself a 'learn greek' tape on my
(brand new!*) ipod and my trowel so I'm all set.

*my wonderful mother sent me an early birthday present with my grandparents... a fantabulous black 30 gig video ipod! I love it. My old ipod, though also fabulous, was having serious battery issues, so it had to be done. So exciting.

Oh! and the cows are back in the pasture. they're white and lovely.

The thesis is in folks. That's it. That's the program.
weird.
So, after being severely sleep deprived, and excessively sedentary, I spent the day lounging around with others and punting. I can look forward to my Viva Voce exam in about a week, but until then I will be heading off to Holland to see my Oma and Opa.
Sorry, it's so short, but I am excessively tired and can't think straight.

I will elaborate soon.

Well, I'm still alive though I know it doens't seem like it from the lack of bloggy-goodness. Just not a lot to say really.
Thesis due in two weeks
Recieved a good mark on that pot sherd project
Am in a new relationship (that is inherently doomed in a month and forced aside due to work but still)
Rainy and cold this week... but I suppose it's better that it get it over with now than when the paper is done

yup. That's it.

Miss you all.

Well, it's definitely spring. The period where you have to work the most and yet want to the very least. I'm looking back at all you fine folks who are done school and enjoying the thrills of staff training with envious eyes.
Missing the fort pops up at random times and places, like from the smell of my wool jacket in the rain. But at the same time, I'm contented and secure in the fact that I'm heading in a direction I want to go. (you'll hear the following in many posts to come I'm sure but...) I'm very much looking forward to after June 12th - the day my thesis is due. I then have a viva voce exam and some time to enjoy my new found friends and then it's off to Greece for 6 months. I have very little hope for continuing this upcoming year, but I think I should manage to be able to come back in 2008. My marks, though it depends on these last two, haven't been good enough as of yet to warrant admission into the classics faculty, but I could easily get into archaeology which is perfectly fine with me. It's really the funding (or lack of) that matters anyways.
So for now I am in a cycle of procrastination, reading, and writing. I'm not sure, but I _think_ procrastination is winning at the moment (seeing as I'm blogging rather than finishing the draft that needs to get done for tommorrow), but *meh*.

I guess I thought I'd best get you all caught up, and that's pretty much it.

i am an idiot

seriously. who comes to greece specifically to see an exhibition and doesn't check to see that it's still showing? An idiot. i.e. me.

joy.

Well, after a very long couple of days I have arrived in greece.

And I mean a very long couple of days.
So my third project, the sherd one I've been posting about for what seems like forever was due monday at 12. My supervisor had been away so I was already a bit behind on everything, but I felt that I was at least somewhat on track. I had worked most of Saturday and had about 5 hours of sleep, alright. That's fine. But then I go to layout all of my catalogue images that I drew and _oh my goodness_ did the technology just about kill me. No matter what I did I could not get my images printed out at the correct size (and keep in mind that the whole point is to be exactly correct in all aspects of everything). So I spent the entire day trying to get this right, and to no avail. Finally I gave up... which left the night to do everything else I needed to do ie. get some maps, and finish and redraft my essay part of the project, write my bibliography, and double check my catalogue. This means I slept, oh, about an hour, and woke up without knowing how in the world I would get my images to work out, and still needing to make some changes to my essay. So yup.
Thank goodness the fates gave me something... a friend who offered to layout my images in her much superior program, indesign, while I finished the essay part... and a slight extension. Even with this girl who has done professional catalogue layouts as a job, the images magically resized themselves the first time and she had to do it again. But it finally worked, and though I don't think it is bug free, I handed it in at 1:15, only an hour and a half late.
So then I run the errand that I had been meaning to run and do little things, like eat, that I hadn't had a chance to do. I just miss the 3:30 bus to the airport, almost miss the 4:15 bus because I hadn't realized they changes the location of the stop, but get the the airport in plenty of time.
I arrive in Greece at 2:30 their time (I managed to sleep a little, but was surprised I didn't sleep more since they were playing 'miss potter' as a movie... can you say boring? I should have been sleeping like a baby). I splurge for a cab to take me to the hostel, and without wanting to pay for another night, seeing as it's like, 4 in the morning already, they let me sleep on the couch. I have just now finally showered and checked in and am raring to go...

Alright, so that's where I'm coming from right now. a combined total of around 11 hours of sleep between three nights and 5 of those being on a plane/couch. Yay.

But the potential abounds and I hope that the journey proves worthwhile.

Natural selection

This is the short film that I mentioned awhile back, but as a recap... some of my friends did this with super eight film and submitted it to a film festival. I'm thoroughly impressed.

I should post.
Though I honestly have not much going on here. I'm working, slowly, having trouble getting a hold of anybody in general and my supervisors in particular (being that we are still in easter holiday). I am also having trouble sitting inside working all day when the springy weather outside constantly calls to me. It's telling me that it's okay to go on 4 hour punting excursions or play football all day... the sun hypnotises me into states of non-caring. I can undertand why in edmonton they start and finish earlier because I don't think they could hold us in when spring came full force. Could you imagine going until June? You'd be wasting half the summer studying for exams. Ah well, I'm glad for the time, it'll be crunchy as it is if I keep going at this rate.
(By the way, I hear it is snowing... my honest condolences and hopes that that blasted winter departs, I no longer hope to rub it in because that's so unfortunately absurd)

There is, however, stuff happening at home. I missed two birthdays this month, my sister's and my mom's. Combine this with easter and a random upsurge of internet chatting with my friends and I am missing being home. This is, however, mixed with a feeling that I'm not finished here in Cambridge. I really hope that I get the grade that can keep me here. Not so much for next year specifically, but at least if I get the grade I can reapply for 2008 and really go at it for funding.

Oh, and I just booked a ticket for Athens for the end of the month. I just have to go for a few days to see some of the sculptures I am writing my thesis on, and an exibit that's there right now that's about polychromy. It has a bunch of coloured casts. It's really annoying because I check the websites, make sure the museums aropen on the days I want to go and buy the tickets. Then I find out that the first day I am there is a Greek holiday. Figures. The museums may be closed. I should still have enough time to see what I need to see, but I mean really. one out of 2 and a half days shot. I am so annoyed at myself, but at least I found out before I got there.

You are all going to silently hate me already for complaining that the weather is too nice to focus, so I may as well add in another point. I don't want to go to athens all that much. It's completely necessary for my thesis, it will give me that first hand experience that will make or break the paper, but it's so much effort. I am not looking forward to getting in that plane. It's British Airwas, which is better than olympic, but still. And I am banking on getting funding to go, so I really hope it comes through, but I can't get a hold of my supervisor to write a letter of support for the application so I'll be going first and hoping for the funding later. Besides I am worried that it's going to be taking precious days out of my 90 days allowed in Greece which is the exact amount of time I need to be there for this summer. I hope they don't give me trouble about it.

sorry. I'll stop now. I realise that having to go to athens is most definitely not the worst thing that could happen.

spring!

The baby ducklings have hatched! This of course results in two things: first, an automatic baby voice and desperate urge to cuddle, and second, a guilty joy knowing it's still snowy where you are and wanting to rub it in. Karma may just hurt me soon, but I don't care. Now all I need for the spring transfrmation to be complete is for them to bring back the King's cows.

First, an apology for being so very very lax on the blogging. I'v have, though been working a lot... finally. I am finally at the point in the project that I've been mentioning for awhile now, which makes for a very nice change of pace. apart from a wonderful day in london where I went to the museum and had a great dinner with kate, I've been drawing and cataloguing and inking everything pretty much all day for the past few days.

With that also comes watching way to much Xena: Warrior Princess in the background while fixing up and inking.

Ah, the joy that is the pseudo-Greek world that she inhabits. Fantastically bad. So bad. So bad.

For all of you who ask, why draw pot sherds when one can simply take a photo, I shall explain. Drawing sherds is something that you can do that will show both the interior, exterior, and a profile all in one. It also helps to show clearly the decoration when it is not always easy to see on the sherd itself, or if you need to recreate something, you can. So you draw it like:

then you ink it up and scan it so it looks something like:

Mine aren't fantastic. They are fine, but I need more practice. I don't seem to have developed a steady enough hand for illustrative drawing just yet. You have to be so exact it's disgusting. But still, I enjoy it.

I've been swapped softly

Yay! I've received a lovely little bear (and some skor bars). deceptively little that is. He actually built stonehenge he's that cool. seriously, not aliens, not celts, but a lovely blue teddy bear with a scarf (and skor bars). did I mention I also got some skor bars?

OOPs

So, the next two posts are mixed up.... go read the second one (the one with the title) first, then come back up.
And I thought I was being smart.