Orientation and Lecture

Hi everyone! So first official day of field school was pretty great I had i nice breakfast of fresh bread and fruit, yogurt, and cereal.  After breakfast we went on a official house tour. Then we went on a tour of the city. It was so cool to walk down these tiny roads that twist and turn. There are also hidden stair cases tucked with in the houses, that lead to even more streets. We walked and checked out the sites we will be working on. One of the sites is in front of a castle. Yes an actual medieval castle. One site is in the middle of a piatsa. A piatsa is basically a dead end road kind, that leads to a kind of plaza.  There is large hole in the middle the plaza. This hole is what  we will expand on this summer. So after the tour we went back to the house and had some sandwiches for lunch.  And i do not mean just PB&J it was fresh bread, fresh cheese, meat from the deli, and presto. Umm... let me see after lunch we split up into two groups. One group, mine went outside and learned how to set up a dig site, and how to record data properly. I also learned how to use my compass to mark degrees. Thanks Dad, by the way everyone here is jealous of my compass even the dig instructor was like “wow yours is really nice, how much was it?” i said “not sure it was a gift from my awesome Dad.” I also learned how to set up a One by One which is basically a one meter by one meter square. We will need to make these when setting up dig sites. I also learned how to record strata levels. It was a lot of information at once, but its all sinking pretty well. I also learned how to keep a field journal. The journal will be graded on weekly and we have to learn how to record really good field notes. The notes are things like where did we dig, what we found, where we found it, the dates, who was there etc... After the dig information session everyone broke for lunch, then the groups switched and we went into the pottery lab.  We learned how to take the info we recorded on the dig site and use it to label the pottery sherds. We use white out a sharpie and cleat nail polish to do this, yeah we are professional like that. We also learned how to tell pottery from rocks. Don't laugh it can be really hard, especially with roof tiles.  How do we tell, you ask well.....  you lick the unidentified object. Yep thats right you lick it. At first i though it was a joke but nope this is how the professionals do it.  And to be honest its actually the easiest way. The trick is if your tongue kind of sticks to it then its pottery. Ok so after that exciting lab introduction, we went off and did out daily chores. I was on bathroom cleaning, with Leah and another girl her name is Emily. Next was dinner, it was prepared by the chef Deno. It was amazing. Best meal ever, and he is gonna cooks for us every night!!! so much for losing weight on this trip. O and did i mention all the wine you can drink, red and white. I wasn't much of  a wine drinker before i came here. However the wine is really not that bad, and its served like water is served in the states, as part of the meal. So after dinner can you guess where i went?? Yep galato shop.  A bunch of us walked to a gallato shop and i got my soon to be daily serving of galato. After sitting out on the veranda enjoying our ice cream and talking we head back to the house. All in all a very awesome day.