Random things

I’m coming upon the half-way mark for my time in Turkey; in one respect it seems like time is going by so quickly (I mean, I’m almost half-way done already?!?!), but then it also feels like I’ve been here for so long. I guess it feels like a long time because we finally have a nice rhythm going on – get up early, go to the site, go to town, come back and swim in the pool . . . maybe do some laundry in the sink (a little rustic, but really not bad).

The word that I was probably trying to think of when I was mentioning how we visited the Jardarma and governor was “courtesy.” I don’t know if I just haven’t been in the right situation to do something like that, but I don’t see that often in the United States. Even though it may have had an air of formality, it was a bit more informal than I expected and extremely friendly.

The other day I witnessed a procession for a circumcision. When a boy is about eight years old, he gets circumcised as a right of passage. They dress the boy up like a sultan and parade him around town, usually with a convoy of cars. It seems a little odd, but many cultures/religions have their own rights of passage – bar/batz mitzvahs, communion, confirmation; it’s just that a circumcision sounds so painful when compared to the others.

One thing that I find annoying is that they don’t recycle here. With it being so hot here, our group throws away so many water bottles. I’ve gotten used to just drinking the tap water with no ill effects (luckily). One good thing is that our hotel uses solar power to heat the water -- a plus alongside the negative.

We are getting a good amount of work done in the field. The Clarkies are busy drafting the blocks and getting ready for the crane that's coming tomorrow (exciting!). The Nebraska students have been surveying the area. Here are some photos from the field that were taken by Julia McKinely:
Here are a couple of students and a professor from the University of Nebraska using a GPR to analysis the ground. They actually saw that they was a change in material at two points that were about six feet long. The students have been digging the last couple of days. We were jokingly hoping for 6ft gold statues. It looks like they might just be large stones.













Here is me, Lily and Natch working on measuring and drafting all the faces of the block. My hat is a little out of place; it looks like I'm about to go out to the Hamptons. Lily looks like she's on a safari. Julia looks like she's a Southern Bell. Julia is from North Carolina and I'm from Long Island -- it sort of works. But Lily is from Staten Island; I don't think that fits with the safari theme.