Bon Azewa!
I don't have a lot of time for this post so it's going to bemostly bullet points. We're working longer hours because we have a lot to finish before our last day on friday!
So this past weekend was spent at Simleu Days, a street festival in a nearby town. It was SO much fun and I definitely think I made the right decision in going.
~Started off with lunch with Szolt's family (our Romanian-Hungarian team member) at his childhood home in Simleu. His mother made us an amazing meal of samale (stuffed cabbage), chicken, watermelon, and plachenta, a type of jam-filled doughnut. His 5 year-old neice was also there and she's just about the cutest thing ever. She wants to be an archaeologist so we were having a lot of fun chatting with her and telling her about Porolissum.
~Visited a medieval church after lunch. Lunch went really late though so we took a quick look and were out before6:00 mass.
~Headed to the festival, which wasn't very crowded that early. SPent some time wandering around, shopping, and finding WATER because it was almost 100 degrees out. We grabbed a couple tables under one of the tents and stationed people there all night so we always had a meeting spot/resting area.
~Ran into Stefan, who had invited us to his birthday party in Moigrad a few weeks ago. His friend's band was playing, so we watched them. Pretty good, though they admit they'll be better when they have a singer.
~Had the most fun when the next "band" went on...a duo called "Daggu and Kleo." Daggu had really long braids/dreads, and they were both lip syncing the entire time. They kept trying to pep the audince up but noon was very impressed. Then they brought out the free CD's to throw into the audience and people went crazy! We were really interested in hearing what their CD would sound like, so Ashley and I battled our way to the front and started dancing and pretending to know all the lyrics... it was really amusing. After quite a few tries I finally was able to grab a CD out of the air (thanks to all the frisbee practice we've been doing here!). Super excited, I ran over to show Ashley I had caught it, we celebrated, and then realized there were two different CD's. By the end of the concert we had managed to get a copy of each. Good thing we did too! The songs are terrible... one just goes "I like flowers, I like flowers" for an entire song. It's provided us with many laughs.
~Met up with an archaeology team working in Simleu, including the three who came to visit Porolissum a few weeks ago. We spent the rest of the nigth with them which was alot of fun.
~Watched some other bands... Desperado (Romanian cowboys), Cargo, and Iris. They were all really good. We ran into some of our friends from Moigrad and hung out with them during the concert.
~After the concert we went on the bumper cars! SO dangerous... they dont have a line so as soon as it stops everyone runs out onto the floor and fights over cars. I was halfway in one of them and actually got pulled out and then had my foot run over as the other guy got it. It was so chaotic, but you get really excited when you finally manage to find (and stay in) a car!
That's about all for this update... i'm out of time and that sums up most of the festival. Not much been going on in the trenches... started taking up the "tomb" only to realize the corner was a hearth. Slightly disappointing. 3 more days to excavate, then home sunday! Amazing how time seems to fly :(
Love and miss you all,
Pupici!
Lauren
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Bon Azewa!
So this past weekend we took a trip up north to Maramures county, a more traditional part of Romania, well known for its woodwork. Each house in the region has these great big wooden gates in front, carved with rope motifs and, more often than not, religious symbols. It's amazing how intricate the designs could be, and they were all handmade. We also visited what was, up until a few years ago, the tallest structure completely made of wood in the world. It's a wooden church, no metal bolts, nails, or anything, standing 74 (i think) meters high. It was recently beaten out by another church, also in romania, that stands 102 meters. We planned on stopping to see that one as well but we got caught by a torrential downpour sunday afternoon and decided to skip it since we've already seen about 5 of these.
Sunday was pretty busy...we stopped in Sigethu and visited the communism museum that was erected in an old prison where political prisoners were kept. It was really interesting and kind of creepy, each prison cell was devoted to a different topic such as women prisoners, the arts in prison, etc. THey showed how one prisoner sewed a poem onto his bandage in morse code. Way cool. We also visited Elie Wiesel's childhood home, which was recently converted into a museum. It was pretty small because they're trying to renovate around water damage right now but since we spent so much time talking about it in school it was neat seeing more about his early life.
After Sigethu we drove for a few minutes and then took a short walk through some woods to a big river. "Hey, look across the river... see that? That's Ukraine! Let's throw rocks at it!" None of us actually hit it, but throwing rocks in a river is always fun :)
We continued driving and went to a town called Sarpeda, where they have the "Happy Cemetary." All the grave stones are painted blue and have caricatures of how the person died. Some of them are really funny and, though some were kind of sad, it's cool to see that they're willing to laugh about life, death, and everything in between.
Other than that there isn't a whole lot more to report. Trench work is pretty slow since Alexandru is going into crazy-mode, insisting he have total control over every decision made. Still opening new trenches so I spent all of yesterday with Bridget and two Romanians, Cris and Adi, digging and shoveling. Hardest work I think i've ever done! Over the past week I've also drawn a plan of a big rock pile (had to stay after work for 3 extra hours because it needed to get done ASAP and the doctorate students, Rob and Zsolt, needed help. Today I drew a profile which gives the strata of the trenches, and I also worked total station last week which uses GPS coordinates to plot exact points for each of the trenches and important features (it's what you see them use along roads when they're surveying land... same concept and equipment).
We also had a photo shoot yesterday! Some touristic magazine came by to do an article about Porolissum so we had to get back in the trenches and pretend to work (it was already technically lunchtime so we only pretended to work). That brings the count up to 3 Romanian publications so far... I already have one newspaper article from 2 weeks ago and i'm hopeing these other 2 articles come out soon so I can bring them home!
This weekend we're going to Simleu (pronounced Shim-lay-oo) Days, a festival in a nearby town. From what I've heard it's a lot of food, live music, and carnival-type activities. Eric (our director) has said it's a lot of fun so i'm really excited. Sadly, it's going to be out last weekend already!
Hope everyone is well at home!
Pupici! (Kisses!)
So this past weekend we took a trip up north to Maramures county, a more traditional part of Romania, well known for its woodwork. Each house in the region has these great big wooden gates in front, carved with rope motifs and, more often than not, religious symbols. It's amazing how intricate the designs could be, and they were all handmade. We also visited what was, up until a few years ago, the tallest structure completely made of wood in the world. It's a wooden church, no metal bolts, nails, or anything, standing 74 (i think) meters high. It was recently beaten out by another church, also in romania, that stands 102 meters. We planned on stopping to see that one as well but we got caught by a torrential downpour sunday afternoon and decided to skip it since we've already seen about 5 of these.
Sunday was pretty busy...we stopped in Sigethu and visited the communism museum that was erected in an old prison where political prisoners were kept. It was really interesting and kind of creepy, each prison cell was devoted to a different topic such as women prisoners, the arts in prison, etc. THey showed how one prisoner sewed a poem onto his bandage in morse code. Way cool. We also visited Elie Wiesel's childhood home, which was recently converted into a museum. It was pretty small because they're trying to renovate around water damage right now but since we spent so much time talking about it in school it was neat seeing more about his early life.
After Sigethu we drove for a few minutes and then took a short walk through some woods to a big river. "Hey, look across the river... see that? That's Ukraine! Let's throw rocks at it!" None of us actually hit it, but throwing rocks in a river is always fun :)
We continued driving and went to a town called Sarpeda, where they have the "Happy Cemetary." All the grave stones are painted blue and have caricatures of how the person died. Some of them are really funny and, though some were kind of sad, it's cool to see that they're willing to laugh about life, death, and everything in between.
Other than that there isn't a whole lot more to report. Trench work is pretty slow since Alexandru is going into crazy-mode, insisting he have total control over every decision made. Still opening new trenches so I spent all of yesterday with Bridget and two Romanians, Cris and Adi, digging and shoveling. Hardest work I think i've ever done! Over the past week I've also drawn a plan of a big rock pile (had to stay after work for 3 extra hours because it needed to get done ASAP and the doctorate students, Rob and Zsolt, needed help. Today I drew a profile which gives the strata of the trenches, and I also worked total station last week which uses GPS coordinates to plot exact points for each of the trenches and important features (it's what you see them use along roads when they're surveying land... same concept and equipment).
We also had a photo shoot yesterday! Some touristic magazine came by to do an article about Porolissum so we had to get back in the trenches and pretend to work (it was already technically lunchtime so we only pretended to work). That brings the count up to 3 Romanian publications so far... I already have one newspaper article from 2 weeks ago and i'm hopeing these other 2 articles come out soon so I can bring them home!
This weekend we're going to Simleu (pronounced Shim-lay-oo) Days, a festival in a nearby town. From what I've heard it's a lot of food, live music, and carnival-type activities. Eric (our director) has said it's a lot of fun so i'm really excited. Sadly, it's going to be out last weekend already!
Hope everyone is well at home!
Pupici! (Kisses!)
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Bon Azewa!
So Val and I finally gave up on the pit of death Monday. We worked there in the morning but it was starting to dry up, so we handed it over to some other people :) Still managed to find some nice pieces of pottery before we passed it along though. Found a fairly large piece of a basin in another trench, too.
Tuesday we got caught by big rainstorms TWICE so that whole day was mostly a bust, and then Wednesday afternoon was also a big storm, so we stayed up at camp washing pottery. It's really fun when people are washing pottery and get excited about a particularly large or interesting piece and you look over, only to realize you had found it a few days ago. I found a couple of the really nice pieces so I was VERY proud of that. My next mission is to finally find a coin. So far the Romanian's are beating us, 4 coins to 3.
Today we finally started digging into what the Romanian director is certain is a tomb. Unfortunately, he showed up after the American co-director gave us the go-ahead and was not happy that we had started digging in. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that it's actually a tomb, but Alexandru is so certain it is that he was planning to have a camera crew onsite to film the uncovering of the tomb. He made us stop before we had gotten very far... hopefully I'll be able to continue with it tomorrow because we're all anxious to see what it actually is.
Although there hasn't been much else happening on site, we've had an adventure or two in the afternoons, after the "work day." The most recent of these, and to date one of the best, was an adventure down near the spring where we explored an abandoned, and reportedly haunted, house. Ashley, Bridget, Dara, Johnathan and I all hopped the gate (which was locked...and had rusty hinges...oops!) and headed up the steps to try the door...as we were heading up we heard funny noises coming from behind us... Sean was stuck on the gate. Naturally, we laughed at him for a while and then finally went to help him over. For some reason I was at the front of our line and went to check the door handle...locked. As I walked forward to check another gate I hear the door handle start to rattle. A bit freaked out I jump and turn around really quickly, only to see Bridget was also trying to open the door. We continued forward trying every door on every shed and every window but sadly everything was locked. BORING! Until, that is, we notice some fresh wood chippings in front of the shed... and some cups and jars in the kitchen window... and some fresh flowers in another window! But EVERY hinge was completely rusted. Slightly creeped out by all of this we decide to look around the other side of the house. We turn around and walk past the shed and what do we see? A half-unstuffed bunny NAILED to the wall. CREEPY! Naturally, we stopped and took a picture with it. It's probably cursed but we figured we had already hopped the fence, and picked some apples and peaches, so taking one picture wasn't going to curse us any more than the rest of that...
Our adventure pretty much ended there though... to get to the other side of the house we would have had to walk through a VERY overgrown garden and none of us were too excited to try avoiding all the nettles that were probably growing.
Other than that life at Porolissum is pretty low-key. We've been making a story line for a movie we want to film... basically a murder mystery... we have such an amazing setting it seems silly not to! And then this weekend we're taking a trip to Maramures county. We'll be going to a city called Baia Mare, where they have some nice museums, and some other small towns that are very traditional. I'm really excited for that! And then next weekend we're going to either Shimleu Days which celebrates a nearby archaeological site, or some of us might try to make it to Budapest. It's a bit of a trip but should be exciting!
I'll have tons to say about Maramures next week i'm sure.
XOXO
Lauren
So Val and I finally gave up on the pit of death Monday. We worked there in the morning but it was starting to dry up, so we handed it over to some other people :) Still managed to find some nice pieces of pottery before we passed it along though. Found a fairly large piece of a basin in another trench, too.
Tuesday we got caught by big rainstorms TWICE so that whole day was mostly a bust, and then Wednesday afternoon was also a big storm, so we stayed up at camp washing pottery. It's really fun when people are washing pottery and get excited about a particularly large or interesting piece and you look over, only to realize you had found it a few days ago. I found a couple of the really nice pieces so I was VERY proud of that. My next mission is to finally find a coin. So far the Romanian's are beating us, 4 coins to 3.
Today we finally started digging into what the Romanian director is certain is a tomb. Unfortunately, he showed up after the American co-director gave us the go-ahead and was not happy that we had started digging in. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that it's actually a tomb, but Alexandru is so certain it is that he was planning to have a camera crew onsite to film the uncovering of the tomb. He made us stop before we had gotten very far... hopefully I'll be able to continue with it tomorrow because we're all anxious to see what it actually is.
Although there hasn't been much else happening on site, we've had an adventure or two in the afternoons, after the "work day." The most recent of these, and to date one of the best, was an adventure down near the spring where we explored an abandoned, and reportedly haunted, house. Ashley, Bridget, Dara, Johnathan and I all hopped the gate (which was locked...and had rusty hinges...oops!) and headed up the steps to try the door...as we were heading up we heard funny noises coming from behind us... Sean was stuck on the gate. Naturally, we laughed at him for a while and then finally went to help him over. For some reason I was at the front of our line and went to check the door handle...locked. As I walked forward to check another gate I hear the door handle start to rattle. A bit freaked out I jump and turn around really quickly, only to see Bridget was also trying to open the door. We continued forward trying every door on every shed and every window but sadly everything was locked. BORING! Until, that is, we notice some fresh wood chippings in front of the shed... and some cups and jars in the kitchen window... and some fresh flowers in another window! But EVERY hinge was completely rusted. Slightly creeped out by all of this we decide to look around the other side of the house. We turn around and walk past the shed and what do we see? A half-unstuffed bunny NAILED to the wall. CREEPY! Naturally, we stopped and took a picture with it. It's probably cursed but we figured we had already hopped the fence, and picked some apples and peaches, so taking one picture wasn't going to curse us any more than the rest of that...
Our adventure pretty much ended there though... to get to the other side of the house we would have had to walk through a VERY overgrown garden and none of us were too excited to try avoiding all the nettles that were probably growing.
Other than that life at Porolissum is pretty low-key. We've been making a story line for a movie we want to film... basically a murder mystery... we have such an amazing setting it seems silly not to! And then this weekend we're taking a trip to Maramures county. We'll be going to a city called Baia Mare, where they have some nice museums, and some other small towns that are very traditional. I'm really excited for that! And then next weekend we're going to either Shimleu Days which celebrates a nearby archaeological site, or some of us might try to make it to Budapest. It's a bit of a trip but should be exciting!
I'll have tons to say about Maramures next week i'm sure.
XOXO
Lauren
Sunday, July 5, 2009
ok, i'm going to try not to write such a novel this time...
Over the past week the excavation has yielded some interesting results...
What we thought was a tomb last week turns out to probably just be a late phase floor so we're a little disappointed about that. Alexandru, our Romanian director, really hopes to find a tomb though so when we uncovered some columns (!) on Thursday he decided that was probably a tomb...after we get the area cleaned up and documented a little we'll dig under and see what we find. Meanwhile, I spent most of the week working in the "pit of death." It is so far the deepest area of the site, and we've dug down almost 2 meters. Me and Val have been working and finding a number of large pottery pieces, most have rim pieces, rim and bottom, and even one that has part of a rim, an entire handel, AND part of the bottom. We also found the spout so it's a jug, we're hoping to find the rest soon. ALso lots of big bone pieces so we think it was a garbage deposit. After finding so many things we remaned it "Lauren and Val's Awesome Pit of Fabulous Finds."
We've also spent our evenings mostly hanging out on the west wall, which I can't remember if I mentioned it but is now my favorite part of the entire site. It's so peaceful and you can see all the hills in the distance. It's beautiful. We watched a big storm in the distance the other day and since there is so little light pollution we could see every bolt of lightening. It was soo cool to see, i'm going to try to bring my camera next time and get some pictures. We also like to go sit and watch the sunsets with a bottle of Uncle George's wine. I went to visit Uncle George the othe r night but he wasn't home. Instead Aunt Veronica, his wife, made us more gogoc and chated with us. It was lovely. Most of the families make their own wine, which is really neat. All the houses have grape canopies over the entranceway. We also were invited to one of the ROmanian workers houses for Crepes which was a lot of fun. We got to see her horse, water buffalo, and chickens, and then we learned to make crepes. It was really fun! It's so cool being able to interact with the locals here.
My last observation for this post: it's really neat seeing how they're all starting to develop the area. There is a lot of construction, especially near the city, and people are starting to build bigger and nicer homes. It's great to see the progress they're finally able to make!
Ok, off to lunch in the "big city" where everthing else is closed on Sundays...
Love and miss you all!
Lauren
Over the past week the excavation has yielded some interesting results...
What we thought was a tomb last week turns out to probably just be a late phase floor so we're a little disappointed about that. Alexandru, our Romanian director, really hopes to find a tomb though so when we uncovered some columns (!) on Thursday he decided that was probably a tomb...after we get the area cleaned up and documented a little we'll dig under and see what we find. Meanwhile, I spent most of the week working in the "pit of death." It is so far the deepest area of the site, and we've dug down almost 2 meters. Me and Val have been working and finding a number of large pottery pieces, most have rim pieces, rim and bottom, and even one that has part of a rim, an entire handel, AND part of the bottom. We also found the spout so it's a jug, we're hoping to find the rest soon. ALso lots of big bone pieces so we think it was a garbage deposit. After finding so many things we remaned it "Lauren and Val's Awesome Pit of Fabulous Finds."
We've also spent our evenings mostly hanging out on the west wall, which I can't remember if I mentioned it but is now my favorite part of the entire site. It's so peaceful and you can see all the hills in the distance. It's beautiful. We watched a big storm in the distance the other day and since there is so little light pollution we could see every bolt of lightening. It was soo cool to see, i'm going to try to bring my camera next time and get some pictures. We also like to go sit and watch the sunsets with a bottle of Uncle George's wine. I went to visit Uncle George the othe r night but he wasn't home. Instead Aunt Veronica, his wife, made us more gogoc and chated with us. It was lovely. Most of the families make their own wine, which is really neat. All the houses have grape canopies over the entranceway. We also were invited to one of the ROmanian workers houses for Crepes which was a lot of fun. We got to see her horse, water buffalo, and chickens, and then we learned to make crepes. It was really fun! It's so cool being able to interact with the locals here.
My last observation for this post: it's really neat seeing how they're all starting to develop the area. There is a lot of construction, especially near the city, and people are starting to build bigger and nicer homes. It's great to see the progress they're finally able to make!
Ok, off to lunch in the "big city" where everthing else is closed on Sundays...
Love and miss you all!
Lauren
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