Lessons in Greek Language and Culture...

In our Modern Greek (language) class this week, we focused on learning how to ask a few more basic questions (who/how/where are you? What are you doing? etc.) and on numbers as well as TIME!

I can now count to 50 (πενήντα - pen-een-da) in Greek AND tell someone what time it is.

Learning about time was interesting... in part because it meant remembering all the numbers (at least up to 12). It was also interesting because Stella (our teacher) spent quite a while explaining to us when you say "good morning" or "good afternoon" or "good evening" or "good night" or just a regular "hello" (between morning and afternoon in the strange time of day when you may not be certain which to use).

SO here it is:

Good morning (kali-mare-ah / καλημέρα) is from when you wake up until about 1-1:30pm.

Remember in my last post (or the one before) when I wrote that all the stores close at 2pm until 5 or 6pm? That's because people are here legally REQUIRED to be quiet during those hours. If I were to phone someone here at 3pm, it'd be like calling my parents at 3am -- they'd think something was wrong because you otherwise just don't interrupt people at home at that hour of the day. So that'd be about the time to use the regular "hello" (he-air-et-ay / χαιρέται OR yah-sas / γεια σας - which also means "good bye").

5:30-6pm-ish would be when you'd begin to greet people with a "good evening " (kali-spare-ah / καλησπέρα).

Good night is only used when you're leaving. kali-nicht-ah / καληνύχτα.


Fun times... Fun times.


Tomorrow we're going to Ithaki!! Saturday it's supposed to rain (boo!)


We've found two graves so far... the people excavating them have gotten quite a bit of the skeletons uncovered. The skulls are the most incredible parts... It sounds creepy, but it's actually really really cool! I'm honestly the most surprised at how both skulls have ALL their teeth and they're all still in incredible condition. Crazy. One of the skulls is all crushed in because the upper torso and head was actually buried beneath a wall (the wall would have been built over the body long after it had been buried there). The other one is still all round -- just one hole above the right ear (probably because that's the one facing up -- that skull is kind of on its side).

ANYWAY. There are four of us (Chelsea, Michelle, Leesa and myself) working in Trench #VI.2 and we haven't really found too much yet. Well... we found a wall. The wall is kind of cool -- we (by we I mean our prof) think that it's part of an enclosure within the cemetery. So far we've only found one burial inside of it, but it looks like there might be at least two. Can't wait to start actually excavating the burial we do have on Monday!!


So that's about it for now...

Will update more after the weekend! Hoping for some good weather this time around... at least on Friday and Sunday since Saturday's supposed to be crappy.

Muchos love, friends!