Syria photos

Okay, since I've got some photos ready, here are some pics from my last trip, when I was in Syria, Jordan and Israel with my family this past April.
Here's me with my mum on the Jordan-Syria border (that's why the background is so boring). This is one of the only photos where I'm not wearing an enormous camera around my neck.

Here's mum and I in the Damascus market. These are my dad's pics, which are pretty much the only ones I have where I'm in them (otherwise I just take em). That's a stupid travel phenomenon, but it always happens. Anyway, we're standing at the formerly Roman gates and behind my dad is the famous mosque.
Here we are in Palmyra. It really is as hot as it looks. That Muslim castle behind is also as fabulous, mystical and inspiring as it looks.
Here's me in the middle of the Damascus souq, with the guy on the camel, the other tourists, and my grandma handbag. Don't ask me why, but this picture amuses me.

I'll add some more here later when I've got around to resizing them.

Romania dig photos

I decided that I should post some pictures from my dig in Romania.

Here I am in Sibiu at the museum that we're doing the dig through--Brukenthal Museum. I'm standing with a statue of a mideval knight. Each of his "scales" was sponsored by someone in the village.

This is the dig team minus the director, Andrei, and a couple of others. Right after this it poured with rain and we got very soaked!!!

This is part of our dig site... what you see exposed are pieces of structural clay, pottery and bones. Thats the dig director, Andrei, and Olya, another volunteer.

Here is the coolest thing I found, a flint blade. I know, I know, not really a very big deal! Now you can see how the insignificant becomes very important.

This is the dig site from above (where we all hide behind the bushes for the loo). You can see how small and insignificant it is in relation to the area (imagine how many house sites we are NOT excavating!). Look at the lovely rolling hills, and imagine the sunshine, puppies frolicking and shepherds all around us!

Digging and Voyaging

Well, I'm finally here to post again and I have so much to say... we've been so busy!

During the week we're in a little village away from internet and phone signals, and during the weekends, we're madly dashing around the country on organized tours, so have barely had time to read all my emails, let alone reply or write a blog. Rowan in NZ and Kate in Oz both had babies, Kate from Myanmar's in Ladakh with her mum (what a fantastic place that sounds like!), most of my colleagues are around the US, Omar's just been back to Morocco for the first time, Rebecca from D.C. and Rachid are both getting married (but not to each other, thank god!), and my ex, Soufiane got married (now that is weird!), Rita's doing a hike for discovery to raise money for Leukemia, Tim's in Monrovia, Beth Dougherty's in SE Asia for the first time, Julie's back in France and over the moon and others are all over!

Romania and the dig are great. We plod along at our own pace and I must say that I'm really enjoying myself and all negative feelings are gone. The weather has improved in the last week or so, and now we have scorching hot days, which means we almost pass out in the trenches digging! We take our first photographs of the things unearthed tomorrow... mainly just bits of broken pottery and structural clay. It's interesting that so much effort goes into such insignificant bits and pieces, but I'm enjoying it nevertheless. Andrei, the dig director, gets so excited when we find a pottery shard that has paint or an etched design. We're going to put one pot back together next week! The site is neolithic. It's part of what's called the Petresti culture, which I think was pretty much limited to Romania. We spend some afternoons washing pottery in freezing water from the well behind the dig house--my first time ever using a well. I'm no longer the oldest on the dig, as some have arrived and others have left... the dynamic is very different depending on the week!

The food here is good but very simple... we've had lots of meat and potato type meals, very traditional, but good. My favorite swings between the cabbage wraps and the beans! They all have homemade wine here and a hard alcohol called moonshine (as I'm sure you can imagine). Three younger diggers have already had incidents of alcohol abuse throwing up and the like! It's evil stuff. Andrei complains that if Romania ever enters the EU, the homemade wine will disappear as the olive groves in Spain did because they form too much of a competition for businesses. Sad, really. All the home farm animals will also be eradicated for mass farming. No more cows passing us on their way out to the field each day, or chickens squawking in the back of the house.

We're in a little village called Mosna, in between Medias and another mideval city called Biertan. Every little hamlet and village had a fortified church once, built by the Saxons in the middle ages, who themselves were invited by the Hungarians to live here to protect from Ottoman and other raids. The Saxons left as soon as Ceausescu was out of power, but their legacy is still left in a strong German prescence. Mosna has a church, but not much else as most Saxons left and now it's 60% gypsy (much to our dig director's disgust). There are two shops, houses and that's it! It's charming but very simple and rural. The countryside is lovely.. rolling green hills and forests, and very few fences in sight. This is a place where the shepherd still takes his flock out each morning. We have a shepherd that hangs around our trench singing to himself each day accompanied by his sheeps baas.

We've also adopted a stray puppy that lost his leg somehow... he's all fixed up and one volunteer is going to take the dog back to Canada (which has much more animal liberal laws than ours). I was very amused to watch the vet patch him up with scissors that fell into two parts and a blunt blade to saw at the extra bandage! He has a "satellite dish" around his head to stop him knawing on the leg and tail (which he bit off in fits of agony!). Andrei was very amused to hear that he had 8 canine teeth which means that he would surely have won in any fight against the village dogs! He has gone from a whiny old man to a playful puppy, and has amazed everyone with his progress!

Well, must go now as I'm late for dinner! Oooops!

Digging

So the last post was in a bit of a rush as we were leaving. I'll put a bit more now, but I'll have to leave again in the middle, no doubt. I'm in the middle of about 5 months worth of backlog on things I want to say (I have a little notebook full of it!) so will whittle away at it while I'm here. I'll even try and post some photos.

But for now, Romania. How's the digging, going? For the first two hours of the first day, I asked myself over and over again: What have I got myself into? Why did I sign up for FIVE weeks of this? Do I really find this interesting? This was as I used a small trowel to put small holes in a square meter of dirt, pick through the dirt so that it is in small pieces, then put the dirt in a bucket. Over and over and over again. Occasionally, I would find a shard of pottery about an inch across, or a small piece of earthen clay (neolithic building material) and dust it off and put it aside, but for the most part it was very monotonous. My back aches, my fingers get dry from sifting dirt, my arms, knees, and legs are sore from trying to stand in the correct positions.

However... as the time passes and my hole gets a little bigger, as does the pile of things I find, the monotony bothers me less, and I enjoy the sun shining (in the few seconds it does, the rest of the time I shiver in my 50 layers of clothing), the birds chirping, the lack of fences, the puppies mingling around us, the shepherd and his flock on the paddock next to us. It will be a long 5 weeks, but I am glad that I have done it. Perhaps if I do it again, I'll choose something where a little more is likely to come out of the ground, but this Petrich culture is interesting even if they really didn't leave us much. And even though I'm doing one square meter in a million, and with all of us we'll only do 20 squares in a million, and even though I have a reputation in the group for always finding nothing in my plots, in the whole scheme of things, I am doing something. And it's interesting and relaxing and I'm happy.

In Medias

I'm back in civilization again.... and after only two days out of it, I really noticed it. I go from one place without email to another one without email!! I'm in this tiny little village where the power goes off for half a day, there are stray dogs everywhere, and I can't speak the language, there's no phone, internet or any shops whatsoever... it sounds too familiar!! We've come to the closest town, Medias for the afternoon mainly for the others to let family know that we're alive!

We had our first "dig" today.... I'm the oldest one in the group...all young North American uni students... a very strange sensation for me, as I'm usually the youngest. The head guy is hilarious... he talks proudly of selling his Canadian passport for $2000 in France, getting court marshalled for swearing at higher ranks in the army, sleeping on park benches, smuggling knives through US customs, etc, etc!!!

The weather's been miserable and I haven't got enough clothes... it's like NZ in mid winter. Hopefully the sun will come out!

Anyway, troops are moving on, so will write more later.

In Bucuresti

Well, have arrived in Bucharest, finally... it took stops in Bangkok and Vienna to get here, but I'm here now. What a shock and difference from elsewhere! I feel like I've jumped back in time. I think the biggest contrast was because I came from the orderly Vienna. Romania has so far to go in order to catch up to the rest of Europe. I wonder how much further along the new EU members are in comparison!

What's different... here things are still obviously recovering from communism. Things have a shabby appearance, and signs for shops still look as if they were erected yesterday. Things are dirty and run down. I love all the cobblestone streets that are left, but they are obviously left, and not deliberately. Trams and busses are rickety, people's fashion is just not up with the trends (still tight, boob showingly scandalous at times), and women's makeup is still very overdone and way too 80s and pink! I'm very surprised at the amount of English that's spoken in random places (why am I so arrogant as to expect it, require it, need it, seek it?). I went to the main square, where, elsewhere in Europe there would be souvenir shops and street cafes. Here, there were certainly people, but it was disorganized and more of a place of passing through, than hanging out and enjoying being social. To be fair, there was a huge festival (with lots of beer and meat on sticks), and many were heading down to that.

Get nothing wrong, I don't disagree with the statement that Bucharest is just awaiting a mass exodus of travellers from across Europe, but it's still not really ready for them. My own archaeology leader advises us not to pass through the "awful" Bucharest airport (I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it was---these people need to go to Baku or Yangon!!), and the busses and trams were positively alien in terms of how difficult they were.

Let me give you an example: I spent half an hour standing in the puddle of water that was dripping off my trousers (which it had soaked up from the splashes of water of passing cars, not to mention getting rained on with no jacket, umbrella or convenient tram-stop shelter), waiting for the tram that took forever, only to be unable to pay for it (silly clicking machines don't work), and then told that it didn't work (I'm assuming) by random Romanian guys laughing at me for even trying. I got out at what I assumed was my stop (only the observant who had walked the route before would have had any idea that it was the right place as there were no a) signs, b) street lights, c)indications of it being a tram stop, even!) only to try and cross the road (remember, no street lights, so cars are very likely to run me over!) and get hooked up on ginormous puddles and almost run over, while slimly escaping being turned into a drowned rat by the cars speeding and the said ginormous puddles. Then I turn around and seconds after the very-long-in-coming-tram, the tram-I-waited-forever-for-in-the-rain-tram that had dropped me off, another tram passes by. Talk about annoying timing!

Okay, time to sign off... I'm getting evil looks from the other hostelites... that hermaphrodite (random!) sitting over there seems to want on this gloriously fast connected (and free) machine.

From Vienna

Copy of post from Beloit Blog:

So I'm here in Vienna and now I can be just a tourist instead of having to worry about all the little details... those finally appear to be out of the way. Got the visa, got a place to stay, am ready for Romania. Now Vienna... let me just put you in the right mind frame: I arrived and it was 10 degrees centigrade (that's probably 40 or so) and this is meant to be SUMMER... me coming from 100+. So I'm wearing every single piece of warm clothing I brought with me and still shivering. Dreary cloudy weather just doesn't do much to make me appreciate the palaces and my photographs of the sites look much less interesting!

I had a group of high school kids (I can't get away from them) in my hostel romping around till 3am last night (I suppose I am going to have to stop being cheap and not stay in hostels if I want to avoid this, but honestly, all I do is sleep there so why shell out for more?). Now I'm sitting in an internet cafe... the people around me are all smoking (ash trays provided, which makes this feel so seedy), it took me forever to even find this place to be able to check my email. Now, this freakin keyboard keeps spitting strange letters out at me... I was used to the French one and now they give me this one... switch the z and y, move the @ and the ' and the ( and ).... just to make my life difficult. Why do people feel so strongly about moving only some things around to prove a point about individuality and nationality? Did you know that even the American and British keyboards are not the same? There's another one... I have to look everywhere for the question mark! I haven't even mentioned that hotmail, blogger, gmail and every other site I've logged into is in German (even up there it says Titel instead of Title and 'Post wiederherstellan'... I'm assuming that means 'publish post' or something. Oh, no, that would be 'Als Entwurf speichern'). And I do not speak any German. I spent half of yesterday thinking the letter ß was a B... its not, its an ss.

But the coffee here is great, the palaces amazing, and I truly love all the Schiele and Klimt, though the Viennese (Ger: Wieners) must get tired of seeing 'The Kiss' everywhere on everything. Some other cultural things I've noticed (so help me, this is what I do when I travel-- observe) Everyone seems to be dressed like Americans (coming from Asia I suppose they must), there is no walmart, tesco, carrefour or any other mass stores (Austrians don't shop that way, and instead trot off to their local store with a little wheeled bag like little old ladies), but there is Mango, H&M, Levi's, Guess, Starbucks, and other worldwide stores... they truly are conquering the world, it's quite disgusting! Now I must go off to climb Stephansdom, walk the Graben, wander the Hofburg Palace and listen to some Mozart in the Schlosspark. Have a lovely day all!

Freedom

Copy of blog post from Beloit blog:

Well, I have escaped the communication black zone, finally, and I'm free for the summer. Just so you know what I'm escaping: the internet in Myanmar has been down countrywide for the last week and a half (right when we needed to check to see if our pay was wired--conspiracy perhaps?). It really sucked! Get a picture of why I disappear without any trace for so long--that is seriously how bad it is.

Now I'm in Bangkok, hallelujiah, but then the visa bad luck begins. Apparently I have to proove to the Romanian embassy that I have $6000, and that I have 6 months of medical insurance. Both of these I have, but the proof! Ah, he threw it back at me saying, "This is just a piece of paper, why should I believe this when anyone could create it!" So I've spent the last two days stressing about being refused admittance. This is the only time I regret my kiwi passport. Went to Aruthaya today to get away from it all... got some nice temple pics which perhaps one day in this lifetime I'll get online.

But crossed fingers, tomorrow I head to Vienna (Yes, Matt and Liz I will be thinking of you the whole time!) for two days of transit and fun. The problem with this one is because of some festival, every single hostel in the city seems to be booked out. Ugh! What a crisis.

So, if everything goes my way, I will arrive in Romania on Saturday to start my archaeological dig on Sunday (and hopefully I won't have spent the night on some seedy Vienna street). Dirt awaits--what fun!

Sitting at school

Well, am sitting here in my last free period before our Thingyan (Water Festival) break. Let's talk about what's already happened today. My students casually mention that there was a BOMB at our opponent school yesterday. They make all sorts of crude jokes about how it was one our of students who was mad with his girlfriend who goes to that school. They moan about the fact that they have to be at school when the other school cancelled theirs for the day (surprise, surprise!).

So later on, as I'm telling another teacher about it, someone walks in to look out my classroom window--at the enormous cloud that is broiling just beyond the building next door. So there's a fire with smoke jumping 100 feet in the air and we are casually discussing it over cups of tea. "Hey, class, I want to give you a perfect example of poor government, when everything results in poor management..." Or perhaps, "...and when we want to know how people are evited from their homes we can just look out the window here...". This must be I think the fourth fire this year. The first was was the best though. We got evacuated for that one. And where to, you ask? To our open-air gym just down the street where we can spend a couple of hours inhaling noxious smoke and sweating our shirts off.

Downstairs I discover that our students went to a school meet at this other school yesterday afternoon. They had to come back too, because no one told us about it! The government sent 40 officicals to scan our school yesterday afternoon, but I only hear about it through gossip of students.

I wonder if my plane will take off today? I wonder if bombs have exploded across town without my knowledge. Perhaps there's another coup somewhere? Or perhaps its nothing.

In the news

Recently, the UN Security Council received a proposal from certain world leaders regarding peace and the situation in Myanmar. After this, one of the government owned newspapers published an open letter. Let me copy the first two paragraphs:

“Gentlemen (Mr. Vaclav Havel and Bishop Desmond Tutu), I would like to ask you ‘Do you know that according to Political Science, deception will be rampant all over the world without Abhidhamma, which means reflections of man’s mind on material world?

To elaborate my statement, man is to view the things in the right perspective, and only then will his views be right. If one’s views are contradistinction to what things really are, it will not be in conformity with Abhidhamma, and supposing, at that time one expresses one’s views, they will be lies because the views are far away from the truth.”

Even without the English errors and other fluff and rambling, the article is such a blatant example of propaganda that it’s upsetting that it is the only thing that Myanmar people read. The whole page article went on to restate history in its terms, and it takes an extreme position of defensiveness as if they know they are wrong, but still have to validate everything they do.

There are so many tragic things about Myanmar, its politics, its people, its education, its government. I’m reading an excellent book right now called Finding George Orwell in Burma, which is basically a travelogue and history of the country using where George Orwell lived as a premise. It constantly brings thoughtful examples and anecdotes to my mind and I want to rhapsodize about each and every one. A whole generation’s general education has been lost here, and the majority of the people don’t agree with the way their own country is run, but no one (inside or out) seems to be able (or willing) to do anything about it.

On a side note, the government has just decided to move their capital out of Yangon! It’ll be somewhere up in a valley between here and Mandalay; quite strategic too, as it was the Japanese command center. A good article to read about this is from the Independent: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article325441.ece