Sunday March 2nd 2008

Where do I start? Ugh.


So if you had not deduced already, knowing me to be the avid blogger that I am, I have been without access to the internet the past few days (amongst other doses of chaos- where’s a Pharaoh when you need one?)

My last two days in Luxor weren’t anything too amazing. Thursday I never even left my hotel, though I did do a lot of research on graduate programs and other things I should probably know more about. I worked on posting pictures, which still proved to be a pain in my ass. I suppose it is better to pace myself on posting pictures anyways since I probably wont be doing too much more site seeing, which means less pictures overall. Perhaps it will work out better if I can divide up the areas I went to and devote a detailed blog entry to each and post that about once a week….I’ll think of something. Either way, I’ve taken over 400 pictures, so fret not, this trip is documented.

In general, the last you heard from me, you read of my very public love affair with Luxor. Well let me assure you, the honeymoon is over. Friday, my last day in Luxor, began great and slowly deteriorated. In the morning I ate breakfast with Mohson, and later met with Richard to head back to Luxor Temple. Even though I had already been to Luxor, I knew Richard would point out things that had not originally caught my attention, and that he would know information that wasn’t presented in my guide book. Sure enough the day was completely different than the time I had spent there Tiuesday. We actually, privy to our specialization, went through the relief scenes and focused on the animals portrayed. Anthropological Archaeologists who study in Egypt are different from Egyptologists and one of the ways in which they are different is that Anthro Archarologists are not as focused on the texts. To be an Egyptologist you are required to know Egyptian texts, to be able to decipher hieroglyphs and various other aspects of Egyptian wrtiting systems and language throughout Egyptian history. Even though anthropological archaeologists don’t approach research questions with that avenue of knowledge, we still look at the texts nonetheless. For example, one way we can double check some of the taxa present in our samples would be by seeing if they appear in the text reliefs. Its just an additional piece of evidence to provide a context to evaluate some of our results. We can double check certain species of fish, like the catfish, because we see catfish depicted in Egyptian carvings…in other words we have collaborative evidence to suggest that they consumed fish in some sort of context whether dietary, or ritual etc. Additionally we can see how animals were used, how they were prepared, what ways they were butchered etc.

That’s all a little bit tangent, remember the point was, Friday started off good. Well 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I was getting ready to leave for the airport when Richard met me to tell me some news about my living arrangements. Originally, before I left I was under the impression that I would be staying in the Villa again, which although a little run down, I was happy about since it’s the main hub for everyone and its where the meals are, and where our transportation to the site leaves. At some point while I was in Luxor, I was told I would be staying in the large apartments, which is where I stayed last year for the final 2 weeks. If you read my blog last year, you know that I enjoyed the apartments very much since it was air conditioned, but also, those last two weeks, no one else was around. Since it was just Richard and I, we went out to eat every night, and the transportation still picked us up there. In other words, all the reasons why I prefer the Villa, applied to the large apartments as well. Regardless, I was not displeased with having to stay in the large apartments. I was told I would have two sweedish roommates (any guys out there reading this can keep their sick little fantasies to themselves!). I was pretty content with all of this, especially after I heard about all this drama going on with the living arrangements and everyone else having problems. One problem is that, a crew member this year is bringing her new born baby, and no one wants to be shacked up in an apartment living with her and her baby. The problem eventually seemed taken care of because they were going to put the woman and her baby in the small apartment complex, by themselves, and everyone else would be in the Villa, the large apartments, or in a hotel. Well before I go to leave Richard says he has some news for me. First he tells me that I am going to be here before any one else and so I will be all by myself my first night in the apartment. This isn’t that big of a deal to me either. I’m not going to get in until late, I have Saturday off to sleep in and Richard comes in early in the morning on Saturday and we were planing to go into town to pick up some stuff at the market…I was looking forward to it all. The next thing Richard tells me is this, “Also there’s been another change…you are no longer staying in the large apartments. You will be in the small apartments, and beginning April 1st..dum dum dum (he actually said dum dum dum)…you will have to be with Ferra and the baby.” I could feel my blood rise to my cheeks and heat my face with my lividness. I did not know what to say….this was not something I signed on for…Earlier in the week though, Richard said that if I really wanted, I could use his tent after he leaves Giza (he’s leaving the 14th of March). Richard stays in his own tent in the yard of the villa. It has an air mattress and electricity. Initially when he offered, I considered it for a second, thinking it would just be neat to say that I stayed in a tent, but then said I didn’t want to be antisocial and opted for the apartment and the swedes.

Recalling this I say….”Okay, well then I am going to have to take you up on your offer to stay in your tent….remember how Jessica was complaining about originally having to live with the baby, and her feelings on it were that she likes babies some of the time, she just doesn’t want to live with them…..well, that is not me…I don’t like babies ANY time.”

Richard said that it was not a problem and that I could move into his tent as soon as he left…and you bet your ass that is where I will spend the next two months…yes I would rather live in a tent, outside, in Egypt, instead of in the same apartment as a baby.…I don’t say aww when I see a baby…I don’t want to hold it, I don’t want to touch its “itty bitty hands” or its “itty bitty feet”….I don’t want to make faces at it, and most importantly, I don’t want to hear it crying in the middle of the night when I have to get up at 5:00 am.

Oh well though…I’ll live in the tent, be closer to the villa, and everything will be fine. I am calmed back down and I get on my flight for Giza. Again, after calming myself down, I realize I have it great, I am excited about my job, I’m excited to spend the day in town and to just relax before I begin work and learning on Sunday.

I get into Cairo airport at about 8:00 pm. For whatever reason I don’t get my lugguage until almost 9:00 and I don’t make it back to my apartment until almost 11:00. At this point, I’m pretty exhausted to say the least. I’m given a key to my apartment and a note which reads:

“Kelly, we are actually opening the site tomorrow. Morning meeting is at 6:45. See you soon.”

Really?


Wait….

REALLY?

This was the EARLIEST I could be informed that we were working…not to mention this didn’t even make sense….I was the first person here, who else was going to be working?! The whole point of me being here was that I was paired with someone to teach me everything…I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.

At this point I’m too tired to care….I just wanted to walk into the apartment, make some hot tea and get into bed…I walk into the apartment, and it is absolutely barren. I mean empty. Last year it had furniture, the kitchen was stocked, the internet was on…it wasn’t the most lavishly decorated place, but it felt liveable. This was just big empty open space. The stove didn’t work so I couldn’t heat water for tea…I was such a sadface Kelly…haha I literally felt like it was similar to being sentenced to a night in Jail. It was freezing and the blankets here smell like gasoline (which I guess is what mothballs smell like to me?) the only good thing was that I ransacked the apartment and stole the most comfortable pillows.

The only good thing I could say about it all, was that I was exhausted and I fell asleep pretty quickly.

Then I woke up and went to the meeting…my premonitions were correct, I was the only person going to work at the site, anyone else that was here was working at the lab (which is actually really far away from the site, so it means that I will not be in the vincinity of any one I know). At 7:00 I went down to the site with Ana. She is an excavator who holds some other important position for the project because she is constantly on her cell phone and seems to be who a lot of people answer to or go to when things go awry. She shows me the site and then a team of Egyptians, entirely non english speaking Egyptians, start removing the backfill on the site (at the end of a season, a site is covered up with sand to protect everything = backfill). Ana tells me to go grab a brush, and join the men in removing backfill….which seems like an easy enough thing to do right? Well, it’s a fucking desert…that’s a shitton of sand…and if I wasn’t doing something right, or I wasn’t removing enough, I couldn’t be spoken too, I was just tugged on and yapped at in arabic…always they tried to tell me things in arabic…apparently my looks of utter confusion and bewilderment were of no indication that I had absolutely no idea whats going on…mind you at this point, Ana has left me there. So there I am, with a brush, removing sand from some mudbrick structures amidst a group of 40 or so arabic strangers. I didn’t know where the bathroom was, I didn’t know where water was, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know any one.

When Ana returned after a few hours she gave me a notebook and pencil and told me to start sketching the layout of the site…didn’t give me any sort of standard or convention on how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what they are, so again, I’m left alone teaching myself archaeology apparently. But I wasn’t complaining at that point…I would draw for the rest of the day if it meant not returning to the stupid brushing.

Finally Ana comes back to the site with Richard and another student, whose English is also not good. Ana brings the site plans and goes over a lot of information for the site and what the general plan and goals are for the project this season. Finally. Information. She gives me and the other student two things of measuring tape and tells us to go map the features to scale 1:100….if you think I knew what that meant when I was told, you’re wrong…I had no idea. The student and I tried to work together on it, since she had actually done it before, but not being able to communicate really prolonged my ability to grasp what was going on, but I think I got it eventually.


We ended at 1:30, which made me happy. We had lunch and Richard and I went to town as planned. This was especially a relief since there was no food or anything in the apartment. So we picked up some things after a long long taxi drive there. The ride there was long and pretty standard chaotic Egyptian driving…but the ride back…I really thought I was going to die this time. It took me a few times before I was adjusted to the recklessness of Egyptian driving last year…I thought this time I wouldn’t even be phased….but that was until I got into the car to return home from town. This guy was terrible...I felt like I should have been praying in the backseat. I seriously questioned whether or not I was going to survive that ride home, and sure enough….we got hit by a bus….A BUS! A bus. Side swiped by a bus, along my door no less.

It wasn’t really that bad, because luckily, traffic is so bad in Cairo you’re never really going that fast.

That brings us up to today. Finally internet! Today was a basic repeat of yesterday...again I'm pretty much on my own a lot at site and try to figure things out. I've done a lot of background reading on Khentkawes so that I can approach the archaeological material with as much knowledge as possible.

Well there are a lot of things that are wrong with the apartment I'm living in (no internet, only 2 minutes of hot water, no shower head, toilet doesn't flush etc) and we are going to go attempt to take care of said issues now.

Sorry for the delay in postings, I am safe and making it through, and per usual working on the picture posting situation.