My morning started off with an intense cramp in my right leg that woke me up; I wasn't surprised because we had walked nearly 20,000 steps in Plovdiv yesterday. Since it was 5:30 a.m., I thought I would get up and begin my day so that I would be able to get some things done, since I hadn't finished some of my other blog posts yet, so I worked on them a bit. It was the first time I was not the first person at lunch because I went down a little closer to 6:40 a.m. instead of right at 6:30 a.m., which is when breakfast is supposed to start. One of the things that was exciting about breakfast was that a person had messaged me on Instagram asking me about how I got to an archaeological dig and what I had done for school because he was interested in Ancient Rome, so I talked up the program and offered to help in the future if he ever needed it. It was a good feeling!
It looked like everyone was pretty beat because of how much we did in Plovdiv, we were less rested than usual, even compared to when we stay up late. We got our shoes, took the bus to the site, and started working. We were all on the one side of a square while Ivan was doing something different with a feature that was sticking out of the wall of the square. Mathilde, Siyu, Jianing, and I were all working in stripes or rotating who was checking the dirt for findings and taking the wheelbarrow. I dug in two different places, but I was mostly at the wheelbarrow today.
Our break went by super quick. I didn't drink any tea because I had plenty of water and I just ate the tea biscuits because I was tired and had finally changed which pants I was wearing so I forgot to bring a power bar to eat. The tea biscuits are fine enough, but I want something to fill me before we have our late lunch at 2 p.m. It says 1 p.m. on the schedule, but it's usually 2 p.m. by the time we eat, and if you know me, you know that's my limit before I get extremely cranky about lack of a meal.
We got back to work, and right after the break, it began raining! It was a light rain but there was a lot of it, so we were worried we would have to pack up again, but it passed quickly enough. (A fun fact we learned when it was raining that our supervisor told us was that in Bulgaria they say that if the sun is shining when it's raining, that's when the bears get married; she doesn't know why they say this, but they do - she said it was most likely just a folk belief.) Luckily, I had brought my raincoat and decided to cover my bag and my water under it to keep dirt off of both, but mostly because my waters kept getting too warm in the sun. I put my field journal and Angela's notebook and pen under my jacket as well along with Siyu's bag so that they wouldn't get wet. As soon as the rain subsided, we got back to working more intensely.
The mass material was most of what we've found thus far, so our special finds have been pretty slim. The first of our special finds wasn't even found by us, it was found by one of the supervisors with his metal detector in our pile of dirt, but I believe that was on Saturday. I don't think we've found anything since then.
We stopped at 1 p.m. and sketched the part of the square we were working in and wrote all the information about it in the field journal. I don't think my field journal is as intense as it could be, but part of my problem with the field journal is that I have to write on pages that are squares and not lines. If I had a field journal that had graphing type paper on the left and lines on the right, I would have an easier time. Additionally, the standard size of paper in Europe is something called A4, which is about 8.27 × 11.69 inches, so none of the papers I'm given fit into my notebooks, which is frustrating.
The sketch and the journal entry didn't take me long and I packed up and took two of the boxes to carry back to the barrack. Jianying saw me struggling and took one off my hands for me, and Siyu grabbed something that was haphazardly on top of the other box I was still carrying, which was just trash. We put everything away in the barrack and Alex, the son of one of the instructors, helped us put things away. Everyone else was still doing their field journals, so I washed my hands and got onto the bus when Gena mentioned it.
The ride back to the hotel, I sat with Shahruz and talked with him for a bit, but everyone seemed very tired and hungry, and a lot of people seemed cranky. We got to the hotel, and Angela told us that our bus would be back to take us to the museum for the lecture at 4:40 p.m. Today, we had cold cucumber soup again, chicken and potatoes in some kind of sauce, and then fruit for dessert. I can only eat so much of the cucumber soup before I have to stop; I don't mind it, but it's mixed with yogurt and it's cold, and I'm technically lactose intolerant, so I don't want to go overboard. I had most of the chicken, but the skin fell off into the sauce so I didn't bother with it, and the potatoes were good, but all of it was so hot, it was hard to eat, and I was impatient, so I just burnt my mouth instead. I don't eat peaches, so I thought that this would be a good time to go upstairs and get my shower.
After my shower, I took some time to catch up on the blogs that I haven't been able to publish because the nights or days I wanted to write them, I was either too busy or too tired to finish them. We were told to meet for the bus a little earlier than it showed up, so I was one of the first people out waiting.
We went to the museum for a lecture about coins and coin minting in Thracian areas; I assumed this meant we would be walking in the galleries and talking about those coins, but we ended up in a basement with a long table. This frustrated me because I didn't bother bringing my notebook because I thought we would be standing the whole time. So, instead, I just listened and tried not to nod off. During the lecture, we did learn that the hotel we're staying at, Villa Terres, was named after Teres II, the king of the Odrysians in middle Thrace from 351 B.C.E. to 342 B.C.E. Angela pointed out that the owner spelled the name wrong and doesn't know why he had spelled it with two R's when traditionally it's only one R.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the supermarket first, and I spent nearly forty leva on chocolate and some pop - they had Elderflower Fanta, I had to try it. Also, I got a big Cherry Coke so I would stop buying them from the hotel bar. Everything else was candy, chocolate, and paprika flavored Ruffles.
We all had dinner (during which I cleared up a misinterpretation I had this morning when I thought Ivan had said "that's a bit much" in response to me saying "Good morrow, fellows," but the bit much was in reference to the I <3 Bulgaria bag I bought in Plovdiv to replace my other bag that began to die...) and then gathered together and managed to get The Prince of Egypt to play on the big television. We were told the drinking game that went along with it, and my drink was almost gone before the first five minutes of the movie, but I stuck with only one beer.
It was time for a quick shower and then some YouTube and a chat with Folklore Fiancé before bed.
It looked like everyone was pretty beat because of how much we did in Plovdiv, we were less rested than usual, even compared to when we stay up late. We got our shoes, took the bus to the site, and started working. We were all on the one side of a square while Ivan was doing something different with a feature that was sticking out of the wall of the square. Mathilde, Siyu, Jianing, and I were all working in stripes or rotating who was checking the dirt for findings and taking the wheelbarrow. I dug in two different places, but I was mostly at the wheelbarrow today.
Our break went by super quick. I didn't drink any tea because I had plenty of water and I just ate the tea biscuits because I was tired and had finally changed which pants I was wearing so I forgot to bring a power bar to eat. The tea biscuits are fine enough, but I want something to fill me before we have our late lunch at 2 p.m. It says 1 p.m. on the schedule, but it's usually 2 p.m. by the time we eat, and if you know me, you know that's my limit before I get extremely cranky about lack of a meal.
We got back to work, and right after the break, it began raining! It was a light rain but there was a lot of it, so we were worried we would have to pack up again, but it passed quickly enough. (A fun fact we learned when it was raining that our supervisor told us was that in Bulgaria they say that if the sun is shining when it's raining, that's when the bears get married; she doesn't know why they say this, but they do - she said it was most likely just a folk belief.) Luckily, I had brought my raincoat and decided to cover my bag and my water under it to keep dirt off of both, but mostly because my waters kept getting too warm in the sun. I put my field journal and Angela's notebook and pen under my jacket as well along with Siyu's bag so that they wouldn't get wet. As soon as the rain subsided, we got back to working more intensely.
The mass material was most of what we've found thus far, so our special finds have been pretty slim. The first of our special finds wasn't even found by us, it was found by one of the supervisors with his metal detector in our pile of dirt, but I believe that was on Saturday. I don't think we've found anything since then.
We stopped at 1 p.m. and sketched the part of the square we were working in and wrote all the information about it in the field journal. I don't think my field journal is as intense as it could be, but part of my problem with the field journal is that I have to write on pages that are squares and not lines. If I had a field journal that had graphing type paper on the left and lines on the right, I would have an easier time. Additionally, the standard size of paper in Europe is something called A4, which is about 8.27 × 11.69 inches, so none of the papers I'm given fit into my notebooks, which is frustrating.
The sketch and the journal entry didn't take me long and I packed up and took two of the boxes to carry back to the barrack. Jianying saw me struggling and took one off my hands for me, and Siyu grabbed something that was haphazardly on top of the other box I was still carrying, which was just trash. We put everything away in the barrack and Alex, the son of one of the instructors, helped us put things away. Everyone else was still doing their field journals, so I washed my hands and got onto the bus when Gena mentioned it.
The ride back to the hotel, I sat with Shahruz and talked with him for a bit, but everyone seemed very tired and hungry, and a lot of people seemed cranky. We got to the hotel, and Angela told us that our bus would be back to take us to the museum for the lecture at 4:40 p.m. Today, we had cold cucumber soup again, chicken and potatoes in some kind of sauce, and then fruit for dessert. I can only eat so much of the cucumber soup before I have to stop; I don't mind it, but it's mixed with yogurt and it's cold, and I'm technically lactose intolerant, so I don't want to go overboard. I had most of the chicken, but the skin fell off into the sauce so I didn't bother with it, and the potatoes were good, but all of it was so hot, it was hard to eat, and I was impatient, so I just burnt my mouth instead. I don't eat peaches, so I thought that this would be a good time to go upstairs and get my shower.
After my shower, I took some time to catch up on the blogs that I haven't been able to publish because the nights or days I wanted to write them, I was either too busy or too tired to finish them. We were told to meet for the bus a little earlier than it showed up, so I was one of the first people out waiting.
We went to the museum for a lecture about coins and coin minting in Thracian areas; I assumed this meant we would be walking in the galleries and talking about those coins, but we ended up in a basement with a long table. This frustrated me because I didn't bother bringing my notebook because I thought we would be standing the whole time. So, instead, I just listened and tried not to nod off. During the lecture, we did learn that the hotel we're staying at, Villa Terres, was named after Teres II, the king of the Odrysians in middle Thrace from 351 B.C.E. to 342 B.C.E. Angela pointed out that the owner spelled the name wrong and doesn't know why he had spelled it with two R's when traditionally it's only one R.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the supermarket first, and I spent nearly forty leva on chocolate and some pop - they had Elderflower Fanta, I had to try it. Also, I got a big Cherry Coke so I would stop buying them from the hotel bar. Everything else was candy, chocolate, and paprika flavored Ruffles.
We all had dinner (during which I cleared up a misinterpretation I had this morning when I thought Ivan had said "that's a bit much" in response to me saying "Good morrow, fellows," but the bit much was in reference to the I <3 Bulgaria bag I bought in Plovdiv to replace my other bag that began to die...) and then gathered together and managed to get The Prince of Egypt to play on the big television. We were told the drinking game that went along with it, and my drink was almost gone before the first five minutes of the movie, but I stuck with only one beer.
It was time for a quick shower and then some YouTube and a chat with Folklore Fiancé before bed.
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