Somehow it's Saturday again. Saturdays mean sleeping in to 9 a.m. or even later - sheer decadence. Since I spend way too much time in front of the computer during working hours, I'm fighting my aversion now for another update.
Last Saturday I went into Antakya with Ferhat and Guzin for late afternoon. We went for food, wandered around the mysterious twistings of an older section and then ate Kunefe, this incredibly rich dessert that Hatay is known for. It's very good but I shouldn't have eaten a whole one - on top of our awesomely good dinner I was sick as a dog (literally and figuratively) afterwards. Even more thrilling was when we went to get the dolmush back to our village they'd stopped running - there was a bunch of our team members who'd also been in town for the day/evening there too, the company actually called another one to come and get us all half hour later - but an unfun ride for me trying not to vomit along the way (I was successful in that endeavor at least).
Monday Bike (pronounced Bee-kay) was going to see an eye doctor and I went along because my ear was getting worse again. After she did her thing at the eye clinic/hospital we went along to the private hospital of Antakya where all the girls who work the desks and assist the doctors wear green and white striped shirts and lots of makeup as well as look vaguely similar. The doctor there sent a camera down my ear, then a vacuum tube and water, then stuffed it full of gauze drenched in iodine. All in the space of 2 minutes. Ouch.
Apparently it was serious - not gravely but almost. The pharmacy provided me with a bunch of drugs including shots - yikes. Bike's dad is an ear, nose and throat specialist so she talked to him that evening to get a second opinion on what seemed an extreme treatment. He agreed and so I began the fun of shots twice a day of antibiotics for five days. That first night Mara on our team wielded the needle, but the following day and since I've had Barrati, the village handyman, as my shot-giver. He inoculates the village children and obviously knows what he's doing, which is a relief. 500 ml of antibiotic twice a day along with two kinds of ear drops and painkiller seem to be doing the trick, I have 2 shots left and then my hope is that this ear will actually stay open instead of teasing as it's been doing. I've been striving to take care of myself and get lots of sleep, all that jazz... I'm not a patient patient.
What's nice though is that so many people care. And are entertained by my injections (which is silly). A little tiny bit of gold has been discovered on site, squares are fighting to find features in some, others to make sense of the seeming mess they have in front of them. I've learned about Cypriot pottery from Ekin, our expert, as I helped her enter data and proof-read a paper she'd written. Drama continues but at a minimum (seemingly), now I'm here wondering what to do with the swiftly disappearing free hours I have left for today. Perhaps I'll venture to the museum in Antakya, work up the energy for farther afield once I'm whole again. At least the Turkish is coming along bit by bit - the young ladies that wash bones and pottery chatter with us in the mornings in a mix of English and Turkish, so that's helping a bunch too. Once again one has to be an utter fool to survive.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Some photos
I had a mini-break, here are some photos from the dig camera to give some ambiance - a little on site, our compound during last Friday's fiesta. I'll take more soon, promise.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Now that's an earful!
It's been a week now - where has the time gone? Friday we visited neighboring Tayinat site (our site is cooler and we could totally take them in a fight even if there are more of them. Adam said "There's a great view of Atchana" when Mike asked how our visit had been.) Their crew came over to our compound for a cookout/fiesta. Yummy burritos and chili and grill - here's Ferhat on the right (my boss man) setting things up with Murat, our fiercely competent site manager.
On Saturday we had an excursion to the seaside after visiting the beginnings of a new site (it was on what was the coast and start of a river delta). Our lunch of yummy salads and grilled fish was the very thing before going to play in the water. It was dirty but the sea looked so appealing I and several others decided what the hey and jumped in anyway - totally fabulous. Just nice to float for awhile and I didn't even get that sunburned! (Just a little, not a surprise).
But on Sunday I awoke with my ear pounding and it got worse throughout the day. So a trip to the local emergency room made it on the agenda for Monday (since a trip to town was planned for then anyway). I had the lovely Guzen to translate for me as well as Ezgi (our conservator who was also sick) and away we went after lunch, some others along for other errands as well. Got to the hospital and found man behind the glass who checks people in. I don't have a health card so had to show my passport. And explain my name, give my parents' names as well. When we got the printout it showed they'd taken away my last name - I'm now Bethan Erin - and Turkified "Andrew" into something else. Another window let us pay (since I'm not a citizen don't have free meds) and then we went to wait. The doctors would be there at 4 we'd been told (it was about five till). At 4:15 we're contemplating breaking people's legs in order to get to a place to be served. Ezgi went in and got looked at, then I get called.
The doctor picks up probe to look in my ear and it falls apart when he tries to attach the plastic piece that will go into the canal. So we have to go out of curtained cubicle #1 to wait and see if can get into another one. #3 has an already broken instrument as well. And #2 has a large man sprawled across a bed but they rouse him after awhile, put him in #1 and there I am now with a new doctor. I get asked for the second time if I have a fever - I don't know - but they don't take my temp. After the pain of having my ear probed, twisted and torqued I'm told I have an outer ear infection. We make sure there's no penicillin in the prescription meds, then leave to find a nearby pharmacy. The man there marks my boxes of drugs with slashes and lines to indicate frequency and dosage before or after eating. Pretty cool. The adventure rounds out by finding the menfolk we'd dropped for personal shopping, going to a big supermarket for the general supplies as well as getting personal items (I now own Priates of the Caribbean flip flops since the puppies (guard dogs in training) here chewed on my others). Chocolate with pistachios inside fueled our trip home. And the craziest part - my hospital visit AND drugs was under $30.
Now I'm feeling more human and hope to hear properly soon. Yesterday Ferhat and I went to site and I finally got to see where all these things I've been recording come from. We started out in a far square, were shown around and then got to help out picking away a thin layer as the workers went to the next level. Hot work in the sun (yay for longer sleeves) and I found bones, pottery sherds. And flint! Nuri, the supervisor who's a bit of a clown, regularly came over and yelled "work! work!" at me. We were there two hours, I'd no idea of time passing. The workers didn't want us to leave but we rambled up and around to all the squares seeing what's going on. There's a lot of dirt. And some very cool things - I'll take my camera next time and post more photos. The set up for a square is a supervisor and usually an assistant, then 5 or so local workers. I want to know more Turkish - now that my brain seems to be settled I can work on that a bit more. I think that Ferhat just wanted to keep me sane after two days of entering in records from 2004 - today I attached photos to some of them. I'm developing a grudge against Access, but you work with what you've got. Here's hoping my ears decide to become normal soon!
On Saturday we had an excursion to the seaside after visiting the beginnings of a new site (it was on what was the coast and start of a river delta). Our lunch of yummy salads and grilled fish was the very thing before going to play in the water. It was dirty but the sea looked so appealing I and several others decided what the hey and jumped in anyway - totally fabulous. Just nice to float for awhile and I didn't even get that sunburned! (Just a little, not a surprise).
But on Sunday I awoke with my ear pounding and it got worse throughout the day. So a trip to the local emergency room made it on the agenda for Monday (since a trip to town was planned for then anyway). I had the lovely Guzen to translate for me as well as Ezgi (our conservator who was also sick) and away we went after lunch, some others along for other errands as well. Got to the hospital and found man behind the glass who checks people in. I don't have a health card so had to show my passport. And explain my name, give my parents' names as well. When we got the printout it showed they'd taken away my last name - I'm now Bethan Erin - and Turkified "Andrew" into something else. Another window let us pay (since I'm not a citizen don't have free meds) and then we went to wait. The doctors would be there at 4 we'd been told (it was about five till). At 4:15 we're contemplating breaking people's legs in order to get to a place to be served. Ezgi went in and got looked at, then I get called.
The doctor picks up probe to look in my ear and it falls apart when he tries to attach the plastic piece that will go into the canal. So we have to go out of curtained cubicle #1 to wait and see if can get into another one. #3 has an already broken instrument as well. And #2 has a large man sprawled across a bed but they rouse him after awhile, put him in #1 and there I am now with a new doctor. I get asked for the second time if I have a fever - I don't know - but they don't take my temp. After the pain of having my ear probed, twisted and torqued I'm told I have an outer ear infection. We make sure there's no penicillin in the prescription meds, then leave to find a nearby pharmacy. The man there marks my boxes of drugs with slashes and lines to indicate frequency and dosage before or after eating. Pretty cool. The adventure rounds out by finding the menfolk we'd dropped for personal shopping, going to a big supermarket for the general supplies as well as getting personal items (I now own Priates of the Caribbean flip flops since the puppies (guard dogs in training) here chewed on my others). Chocolate with pistachios inside fueled our trip home. And the craziest part - my hospital visit AND drugs was under $30.
Now I'm feeling more human and hope to hear properly soon. Yesterday Ferhat and I went to site and I finally got to see where all these things I've been recording come from. We started out in a far square, were shown around and then got to help out picking away a thin layer as the workers went to the next level. Hot work in the sun (yay for longer sleeves) and I found bones, pottery sherds. And flint! Nuri, the supervisor who's a bit of a clown, regularly came over and yelled "work! work!" at me. We were there two hours, I'd no idea of time passing. The workers didn't want us to leave but we rambled up and around to all the squares seeing what's going on. There's a lot of dirt. And some very cool things - I'll take my camera next time and post more photos. The set up for a square is a supervisor and usually an assistant, then 5 or so local workers. I want to know more Turkish - now that my brain seems to be settled I can work on that a bit more. I think that Ferhat just wanted to keep me sane after two days of entering in records from 2004 - today I attached photos to some of them. I'm developing a grudge against Access, but you work with what you've got. Here's hoping my ears decide to become normal soon!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Look ma there's Syria or I'm in Turkey!
I made it to the Alalakh dig in the weesmalls of Tuesday morning. Leaving Belgrade went ok except that I felt gross with stuffy head and general achey-ness. Hung out for many hours in the domestic terminal of Istanbul airport reading during my layover before 22:55 flight to Hatay. I wasn't sure if there'd be anyone there since never got a confirmation to my emails, but after helping a Ecuadorian film-maker with her bags and chatting with a police officer in English I saw a man with my name on a sign. Huzzah! We drove down the deserted roads out into the middle of nowhere Turkey speaking a mix of Turkish, English, and German as he told me about where we were going, asked me questions and tried to answer mine. We arrived to the dig compound at 2 a.m. and I was shown a bed, quickly got into it.
People were up and moving to go to site at 5 a.m. so I got up with them, looked for someone in charge to tell me what the heck I was supposed to do. Murat, our general man with a plan, told me to sleep more and not worry. Easy enough. Mike was also sick with heatstroke, so got to chat with him a bit as well (he's better now). Found Aslihan (our fearless director, she hides out in this little office that wasn't too hard to find) and she told me what was going on, gave me the grand tour of the compound, and then handed me over to Ferhat, my new leader.
My job here is assisting (or being a minion) to Ferhat, the recorder of the excavation. That means that he looks at all the objects and writes up what they are, then I type the sheets into the database. He's into heavy metal, has long black ponytail down his back, studied American Lit for his BA, is totally fearsome and laughs at things I say. We get on well. Except that I type too fast and keep finishing up the little amount of work they have for me (there's this database backlog project that looms but we're running into technical glitches that I can't fix so I keep not having it to do). Thus I made coffee yesterday in the morning, today entered all the conservator's data from this season... and am writing this as he looks at more objects so I can enter them soon. He even let me switch the music from metal to a mix on my ipod - apparently I'm liked and accepted. Which is awesome.
The tone of the dig is relaxed and long. Field crew leaves about 5:15-30 in the morning, we house crew (since stay at the dig house compound here where we also all sleep and eat) start around 6 (or so). There's first breakfast then, 2nd breakfast at 8:30 (which reminds me of hobbits), we're working all morning with official coffeebreak at 11ish. Field crew gets back and we all lunch at 13:30, chill out until tea at 4ish, then back to work (others sort pottery, enter their data for the day or what have you - I do same kind of stuff regardless). Dinner is at 7:30, we've watched some cartoons one night, there are a bunch of movies that will debut soon too. People wander to bed starting around 10 and it begins again. I got my own bed yesterday - been using someone else's who was sleeping on the roof until some people left (their season had started way earlier), so now settled for real I suppose.
You can see Syria from the roof of the dig house - it's a mountain right there (20 km) after a heavily guarded border. The sky at night is gorgeous and starry as is watching the sunset over the mountains. I've not made it into Antakya yet (the city nearby), there's no reason yet and the massive amount of sun means this girl stays in the shade a whole bunch.
Speaking of which, I should go and get those records recorded before lunch (to justify my "slacking" right now). It's a good place and I'm glad to be here (and already making jokes like the box that contains "non-artifacts" (a response to the pottery expert's box of artifacts which are pieces of stone that are worked but have no context because they come from the gravel in the compound, thus are no good for us)). Look at me learning.
People were up and moving to go to site at 5 a.m. so I got up with them, looked for someone in charge to tell me what the heck I was supposed to do. Murat, our general man with a plan, told me to sleep more and not worry. Easy enough. Mike was also sick with heatstroke, so got to chat with him a bit as well (he's better now). Found Aslihan (our fearless director, she hides out in this little office that wasn't too hard to find) and she told me what was going on, gave me the grand tour of the compound, and then handed me over to Ferhat, my new leader.
My job here is assisting (or being a minion) to Ferhat, the recorder of the excavation. That means that he looks at all the objects and writes up what they are, then I type the sheets into the database. He's into heavy metal, has long black ponytail down his back, studied American Lit for his BA, is totally fearsome and laughs at things I say. We get on well. Except that I type too fast and keep finishing up the little amount of work they have for me (there's this database backlog project that looms but we're running into technical glitches that I can't fix so I keep not having it to do). Thus I made coffee yesterday in the morning, today entered all the conservator's data from this season... and am writing this as he looks at more objects so I can enter them soon. He even let me switch the music from metal to a mix on my ipod - apparently I'm liked and accepted. Which is awesome.
The tone of the dig is relaxed and long. Field crew leaves about 5:15-30 in the morning, we house crew (since stay at the dig house compound here where we also all sleep and eat) start around 6 (or so). There's first breakfast then, 2nd breakfast at 8:30 (which reminds me of hobbits), we're working all morning with official coffeebreak at 11ish. Field crew gets back and we all lunch at 13:30, chill out until tea at 4ish, then back to work (others sort pottery, enter their data for the day or what have you - I do same kind of stuff regardless). Dinner is at 7:30, we've watched some cartoons one night, there are a bunch of movies that will debut soon too. People wander to bed starting around 10 and it begins again. I got my own bed yesterday - been using someone else's who was sleeping on the roof until some people left (their season had started way earlier), so now settled for real I suppose.
You can see Syria from the roof of the dig house - it's a mountain right there (20 km) after a heavily guarded border. The sky at night is gorgeous and starry as is watching the sunset over the mountains. I've not made it into Antakya yet (the city nearby), there's no reason yet and the massive amount of sun means this girl stays in the shade a whole bunch.
Speaking of which, I should go and get those records recorded before lunch (to justify my "slacking" right now). It's a good place and I'm glad to be here (and already making jokes like the box that contains "non-artifacts" (a response to the pottery expert's box of artifacts which are pieces of stone that are worked but have no context because they come from the gravel in the compound, thus are no good for us)). Look at me learning.
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