Overall things are going well at the site. I am making decent progress in my trench and have been told by my supervisors that I'm doing a good job. The area isn't too complicated yet. I have a wall, which we removed this week to get to a lower level, and now I have another wall which I started work on today. Both of my walls are made of mudbrick with stone foundations, at least the one. The rest of my trench is fairly blah because I am working through layers of fill (dirt) before I get to levels where actual activities took place.
I have been getting along well with my workers and am improving my Turkish daily. Things were going well until yesterday where there was an incident concerning baklava. I basically said all of my workers couldn't stop working at once to eat baklava (it was to celebrate the birth of one of their nephews), but that they could take turns eating it. They had a break an hour earlier and I didn't want them to stop working. There is a little more to it, but that's the situation in a nutshell. It set off a storm of anger and my workers stopped talking to me for the rest of the day. I apologized at the end of the day for the misunderstanding and they said it was fine, but only one worker talked to me the entire day today.
Things have been stressful in the trench for other reasons too. I was given a new assistant who is Turkish. Things were pretty good the first day. His translations were helpful and we got a lot of work done. That was the highlight of his work career though. He has overslept twice in four days and shows up an hour+ late to the site. He also talks a lot, which slows work down and he doesn't do anything unless I ask him to. Between him and my young workers (4 are 21 or younger), I am essentially babysitting the entire day. Alas. Luckily there is only one day left this week and then I am free. Hopefully this weekend will give them some time to relax.
On a high note, I had a great time this past weekend. I went into Antakya with some of the Turkish folks and we walked around for the entire day. We started off by going to the Antakya Museum which has some amazing mosaics! Wow! The color and detail of these were phenomenal! While these were the highlights, there were some other interesting pieces and some cool things from our site on display as well.
While in the city, we walked around the bazaar, some of the old city with amazing architecture, and some various religious structures. We had kofte wraps (seasoned meat) for lunch and kunefe, a very sweet dessert made with cheese, sugar, and a shredded wheat-like subsistence topped with ice cream, for a snack. It was really great to get out of the compound; I was starting to pace like a lion daily. I've loaded some photos of the day on Facebook, so check them out! (Also, I've updated photos from my life at the site -- see previous blog entry for link).
Even though things have been a bit rough this week, I am still really happy to be here. There are a lot of interesting personalities and various ages at the site/dighouse which keeps things fresh daily. I'll try to write again soon. I'm likely going to a few other archaeological sites this weekend, so I'll have more photos soon! :)
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