Πορος!

Poros! That's the name of the town where we'll be living from the start of the last week until the end of November!

It's a tiny town on the island of Kefalonia -- one of the Ionian Islands located south-west of mainland Greece. The people here are sooooo friendly!

We get discounts at several of the restaurants and at least one of the three small supermarkets gives us small discounts or free goodies almost every time any of us make purchases simply because they're all almost as excited that we're here as we are to be here!!

We arrived on Friday evening (Sept. 11) and had dinner at Pantelis -- this has become THE hang-out because the food is fabulous, Pantelis (the guy who owns it and who I've come to believe NEVER leaves) and the rest of the 'help' (his mom...) are super friendly, and... they have wireless Internet and oodles of plug-in places all over! Plus, because we all spend so much time here, they don't mind if you sneak some free Internet once in a while when you're not hungry (or don't have the money) to buy something.

Oh. And the ice cream is also the best in town. I had some chocolate-banana tonight while Interneting before bed.

ANYWAY.

So we ate here for dinner on Friday night and for breakfast on Monday morning. After that, Hetti, who is very involved in the planning and organizing on the Greece end of the getting our program running and whose husband was the mayor here until he retired just a year or two ago, gave us a quick tour. Quick because the town is small; it only takes about 20 minutes to walk through all of it.

Then most of grabbed some groceries and headed straight for the beach!

We spent most of the rest of the weekend on the beach...

Then on Monday and Tuesday from 10am - 1pm (ish), Geoffrey (our prof and guide and translator, etc.) gave us some background and instruction in preparation for the dig which officially started yesterday!

I feel like other things happened over the course of the weekend... But really, I think we did just spend most of our time on the beach! Or sending e-mails and skyping home to tell everyone about how beautiful it is here!

On Monday NIGHT we experience just a little more of the kindness of this tiny town when the mayor threw a party in OUR HONOUR at his hotel in Skala (the next town over). This party included a buffet dinner and an open bar -- for 19 university students! Crazy! We were also allowed to make use of his incredible pool but sadly, none of us brought swimsuits (except Amanda, who didn't go swimming because obviously no one else was up for joining her...)

The night also inluded some live music and lots of dancing! It was both hilarious and FUN! Thalia (Pantelis' wife who works for the municipality) and Yuria (who is one of the other 'real' archaeologists working with us on site) taught us some Greek dance moves -- I'll post some pictures and maybe even some videos as soon as I can!

In any case, I learned something about Greece... They don't measure alcohol here. It's all free poured. Generously. I was definitely feeling it a little by the time we headed home. I was feeling a little more back to myself once we got back to our hotel and decided to join a few of the others for some night-time swimming in the sea and it was SO perfect! I can't get over how WARM the water is here! Soooo good.

Wednesday... was our first day on site!

I felt nausiated by the time we got to the site but it wasn't because of motion sickness (though it definitely could have been!) but rather because of my fear of heights (and edges of cliffs) and how close we CONSTANTLY were to DRIVING OFF OF ONE. Gah. Not a fan of these narrow winding roads with no barriers. Especially in big buses. With large windows. *shudder*

Once we recovered from our bus ride to the site we worked hard to clean it up! Lots of moving rocks and sweeping... it was so incredible to see the difference between what it looked like when we arrived and what it looked like when we finished! I'm so excited to begin excavating!!

We were supposed to begin our excavations today buuut... it rained. We were able to measure the absolute elevations for the site and then it started pouring. The rain won't always mean that we have to pack it all in but a more real concern is lightning (we're working on the top of a rocky mountain, completely exposed and with a bunch of metal tools...) and there was a lot of thundering and lightning going on leading up to the downpour. SO. First day of excavation... we didn't actually do any excavating. *sad face*

We did, however, decide to split up the "field trip" that we had planned for Friday. On Friday we were to go to Argostoli (capitol city of Kefalonia) and check out the museum as well as the giant supermarket (cheaper than Poros and with more selection). It was also the place where we could pick up other odds and ends that we'd all forgotten at home. Poros, being the tiny town that it is, doesn't tend to carry things like headsets. Headsets (with microphones) are pretty much a must-have here for those of us using skype to keep in touch with family and friends (and boyfriends) back home.

After Argostoli, the plan was to visit Assos and Fiskardo -- Assos to see the town because it's beautiful and also to visit the HUGE castle on a hill that was built as a defense against pirates and foreigners back when they used to frequent (and raid) the island on a regular basis. Apparently the most frequent course of action was to kidnap a bunch of people, keep 'em on a boat off shore, and demand ransom money from those remaining on the island in exchange for the return of the hostages. Fiskardo because it was the ONLY town on the island that escaped destruction in the 1950's when Kefalonia was hit by a really big earthquake (rated 8 point something on the richter scale).

ANYWAY.

We decided that since Friday would otherwise be a LONG day, we would do Argostoli on Thursday (since we'd been rained and lightning-ed out of digging) and Assos/Fiskardo on their own on Friday.

To be continued...