yay!

It's 6:40 a.m. I just found out I can't go to work today




BECAUSE I'M GOIN TO SAKKARA! Woooo! :)
Sakkara is home of the step pyramid and the tomb of Mereruka
(look it up)

5/7/07

I managed to sleep through the call to prayer again last night. My professor says that I am therefore pre-adapted to Middle Eastern Archaeology. However, after the massive heat today, I am fairly certain that the Middle East and Egypt will be of no interest for me in terms of dissertation work. It was 96 degrees today. My professor took me on a 2 and a half hour hike through the site and the quarries. The quarries were the areas where the pyramid builders extracted the rock used to form the pyramids. He explained to me how they carved them in order to use posts to move them. He also showed me how they were able to form the 90 degree angles at the base. He explained a lot about the geological formations about the rock layers in the quarries and how they related to the sphinx construction, but i've never taken any geology so it was a little over my head. My pictures today are pretty much just the pyramids from more elevated viewpoints as I climbed atop some massive sand hills.





Here are the quarries and following those are some tombs.






This is a photo capturing my walk down the causeway leading to Menkaure's Pyramid. it's 608 m long. The funerary procession for Menkuare would have traveled down this causeway into the pyramid.



This may all be exciting stuff for you guys (or maybe not since you have seen these pictures in my blog, as well as everywhere else). But the following was the most exciting for me:



This is a reconstruction of a cattle calcanium that I found and pieced together all by myself. It is HUGE. Today, my professor had to meet with the AERA (acient egypt research associates) lawyer, and he has to meet with potential donors throughout the rest of the week. This means he has officially cut me off from help. He no longer double checks all of my work before I weigh it and enter it as data. From now on, this is my research, decided at my discretion, using my methods. In fact a lot of times when he does correct how I sort, he does mention that it's a matter of preference, and that everyone chooses to sort things differently (for example when to decide something is unidentifiable limb or just downright unidentifiable). So long as I am consistent, my numbers will still proportionally make sense. The only things he will still check is how I sort fish since I am still learning that, but even now I am getting pretty good at it since it is freshest in my head.

Me doing this on my own now has already made me 10 times better at all of this. It really forces me to commit everything to memory and check things to the utmost cerntainty since I know he wont be over my shoulder anymore.

I think that is going to do it for today. Friday we are going on an all day excursion down to the Fayum and back around visiting various sites. Thursday i should be going to the market with Professor Redding for the first time to pick up lunch stuff for the trip. It should be interesting!

Night everyone!

5/6/07

I'm still working through this whole picture posting issue...( i can only post 4 or 5 images per entry) however, I might be seriously over estimating how many pictures I will take after the newness of everything sets it. But I know that I am still going to a lot of different sites on my Fridays off, so I am going to go aheaad and assume that a forum for posting more pictures in an album format is necessary- what is not necessary is proofreading my entries, or the use of commas.

Last night I went to be at around 9:00 again. This was good since I went to bed early (thanks to melatonin!) however I woke up at 4:30, unable to really fall back asleep. It didn't really matter though, because I was rested, and was fine throughout the whole day. I cannot emphasize enough how fast the work days go when you are doing something you really enjoy. I have thus far been consistently blown away when lunch time, or the end of the shift comes.

We have a little mice problem in the lab. Actually, it's a funny little mice problem. The first day we came in, we were cleaning out the shelves and getting the comparative material ready (I have a photo of this, it is all of the skeletons in the boxes). While doing so of course there were little mouse "presents" all around. At first we just shrugged it off, we didn't see any actual mice, so it wasn't really a big deal. However, when we got to the corner of the shelves, we lifted up this box and low and behold, there were a bunch of the animal bones! Those little sneaksters stole a bunch of the pieces from the collection and hoarded them off in the corner. We started opening the boxes to find that pieces here and there from each had been mous'd. The funniest thing was, they stole every last bone from the bull frog skeleton. Bull frogs beware! To prevent this from happening again, we set two mouse traps last night. Sure enough, this morning there were two hoppity little mice in the cages. We let them go though.

Here's what the comparative collection looks like (it's very small compared to what is at U of M) and also some of the stuff I sorted through today:






On the topic of animals, there are a lot of stray kitties that walk arounf egypt. I don't touch them because I'm sure they have fleas, and I don't want fleas. Speaking of bugs, while it is not malaria season, there most certainly are still mosquitos. I have more bites on my body right now than I got all last summer in Michigan. Good thing I brought some hydracortizone. The other night when I was walking around with some grad students, we also walked by a jackal. He didn't do anything though.


Here is a picture of my bed in the villa- the place where i zonk out at 9 p.m. If it looks comfortable, then I am merely a fabulous photographer. It is a wretched piece of furniture.




Here is a skyline of Cairo (don't mind the sand-dusty air) taken after i climbed atop some mastabas. Cairo has 22 million people, hence the terrible traffic. It is unreal how many people and buildings they manage to squeeze in here. It is also a very poor City. It is so different from any place I have been to in the states.



Working from my last entry, I thought I would detail my little walk to my designated pee spot.
Picture one I am walking away from the lab, Picture two I turn a corner, and picture three is the mastaba where I pee. While peeing I get an amazing view of the pyramids...you may be jealous, but also remember, I am peeing in the middle of a desert, and there are flying ants and jumping spiders, and I am in constant fear.





That's going to wrap it up for today. Hope you all enjoyed!

Lunch Break Post

Here are some pictures that prove that I am actually here (since I am conventiently absent in all the others). Two of them are me outside of one of the pyramids, and the sphinx. The pictures do not do justice at all to how large the pyramids are, but surprisingly the sphinx is not nearly as large as I had pictured. The other two are me working on some fish bone. I am weighing and recording the different postcranial, vertebral, and skull fragments. Today was the first day I actually worked through a sample of fish bone and it took me forever, but I am getting the hang of it. I took other pictures today as well which I will probably post after work.

I hope everyone appreciates my Dondero Pride...Dondero is most certainly being represented here in Egypt.

5/5/07 Happy Cinco De Mayo From Cairo!

I am in the process of figuring out the best way to organize my informational entries, and my pictures. I have yet to figure out how to integrate text and photos so that I can talk about each picture, as opposed to just having them all lumped together in the beginning or the end. I might create a new website where i can post photo albums and then just use a few on the blog when updating. As for now though, the days are incredibly long and exhausting and the wireless is slow, so this will have to do.

Last night I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. ( that's about...2:30 p.m. usa time). It is amazing how easy it is to wake up at 5:40 a.m. when you go to bed at 9! I slept so hard that I didn't even wake up during the 4 am call to prayer (the sirens and singing that occur to cue prayer) We had breakfast downstairs and then we all loaded up in this little van (think Little Miss Sunshine) and drove to the site. The site is only about a 5 minute drive. Let me tell you all about Egyptian traffic...it is chaos...madness I tell you...madness...for all of you who have ridden with me as a passenger and have witnessed me clutching the center council, gasping, frantically pointing at how close you were riding to the person in front of you, rest assure that I will come back a very different Kelly. Here, the traffic is absolutely absurd...I don't think you can even see clearly defined road lanes...and even if you could, that wouldn't stop the drivers from zigzagging everywhere without care. Turn signals? NOOOPEEE. Speed Limits? Nahhhhhhhhh. Horns? You betcha- in fact that's all you hear, is people honking their horns and refusing to use their breaks until absolutely necessary. After this, I don't think any single vehicular excursion in the states will be able to frighten me.

Also today, I started eating TOMATOES. I don't like tomatoes...but I was so hungry, and there was nothing else i wanted so, i had to eat this tomato and cucumber salad but, I don't like wasting food here, so I ate all of them. I guess they aren't so bad...I'm still not a big fan though.

Also, I have a feeling that by the end of my stay here I will drink my coffee black. Or at least be able to tolerate doing so.

Beyond those kind of mundane revelations, today was my first day at work. It started right at 7 am. I spent the first two hours washing bones and then Professor Redding and I walked around the area, and I took some of the pictures you see below. Afterwards, I waited for the bones to dry, learned how to ID some fish, and discussed my research design in further detail. Then I spent the rest of the day, identifying, weighing, and recording my data, Tomorrow night I will start putting it into my database. I will take more pictures of the lab and my work specifically, probably tomorrow.

The heat really isn't too bad either. The lab is pretty cool, and wearing jeans is not a big deal at all. It isn't nearly as uncomfortable as i thought it would be. The weather is so dry out here you do not even really sweat. However, there were various moments throughout the days where I would find myself starting to get headaches and feel light headed and naseous so even if the heat doesn't seem to be so bad, I still have to combat dehydration. I drank 5 big bottles of water today...which of course meant mucho peeing. There are no bathrooms and so you just grab a roll of toilet paper and wander through the nooks and crannies of the mastabas, pick a spot, and go to town. There are at least 2000 mastabas around the pyramids in Giza. For those that do not know, mastabas are mud buildings with chambers that housed burial sites. You read correctly...I pee on Egyptian crypts. And frequently I might add...5 bottles of water = Onslaught of Sucker Punches to Kelly's Bladder.

Well it is 8 now, and I am going to try and go to bed....10 hours working in the field require much rest.

I love and miss everyone!~

5/3/07 Day 1 in Switzerland

I cannot be held accountable for how coherent this post will be. I left Detroit at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, slept for about an hour on the plane, and then slept for another hour at my hotel before going out to dinner. It is now 9 p.m. here, 3 p.m. back in Royal Oak. In other words, I have had 2 hours of sleep since waking up at 8 a.m wednesday morning.

The flight here at first was going very well. I watched 3 movies on the plane, and only had to use the bathroom twice, much to the appreciation of the man to my left. All in all it was the least painless flights I had ever had, up until the end. As we were preparing to land in Amsterdam, a woman in the aisle right next to me had a stroke. It was unbelieveable how frantic some of the flight attendants were and how unprepared everyone seemed for this situation. Voices rang loudly, "Is there a doctor on the plane, is any one here a doctor?" There was a nurse on board, who tended to the woman who before everyone's eyes struggled to breathe, and clenched her chest. She passed out and her pulse faded. Her husband was sitting behind me, crying out for his "good wife". All most of us could do was sit quietly, gazes downward as the nurse administered CPR on the woman. As soon as the plane landed the paramedic came. They didn't pronounce here dead right there, but nothing was looking good.

Given that situation, we were late getting off the plane and came close to missing our transit flight to Zurich. However everything worked out, we made it on time and arrived here at around 9 a.m. Customs was painless. Here is a picture of Zurich. I didn't take very many because...well, I was tired and felt touristy enough. I plan to do more of the photo ops on my return. Today my professor and his daughter showed me around Zurich. We ate at two excellent restaurants and I had myself some swiss espresso, which was absolutely amazing. Later, we went to Teuscher, which is supposed to have the best chocolate in the world. Now when this was said to me, I really didn't even stop to consider the factual aspect of that claim. I just went with, oh I don't feel like chocolate right now. Richard's daughter, being the genious that she is, insisted that I try it. Now, I haven't tried every chocolate in the world, but I still would not be surprised, nor would I hesitate nontheless, to support the claim that this is the best chocolate in the world, it was absolutely amazing.

What happens then, when you combine swiss espresso, and fine swiss chocolate: one amazing piece of salatious delight for Miss Kelly. The coffee chocolate bar- beyond words.

My hotel is cute and quaint, just like the rest of Zurich. I absolutely adore the the scale of the buildings. The landscape and building structure makes you feel so personally involved with the space, you are never overwhelemed by massive buildings, nor are you underwhelemed with awning brimmed shops. What else is neat is that, despite the fact that many people are walking in and out of the town, everything is just so quiet.

Speaking of quiet voices of town walkers, my professor has been doing a lot of work with me to get me to culturally adjust and speak with an indoor voice (not my indoor voice of course). He does this by talking so quietly to me, that I can't help but hear how obnoxious I am being.

I may buttress this entry a little more later, however now, i am quiet tired, as i just took some melantonin to help regulate me
I hope everyone at home is enojying themselves and being safe