Io sono felice tornare a casa

"I'm glad to be back home."

It already seems like Italy and everything there is a million miles away. Some of us on the trip had a theory that it would still be June 6 in the "real world" when we got back, but things have obviously been moving along here as well, so there is a lot to catch up on...bills, mail, work, etc. It seems daunting right now, but I will take a break of four days or so to relax and be with family before heading back to LA on Tuesday night.

Our last day at the site was very nice...at the end of the workday the Italians gave us all a small gift...a CD with about 100 pictures of the dig and the entire team, plus the newspaper article that was published on us last week. I haven't had time to look through it all, but look forward to it!

After we finished working for the day, Jenn and Genna and I decided to stop for our last post-digging popsicle on the way home. While we were in the shop it started to rain, and by the time we got out we were caught in the middle of a freak hail storm! Instead of running to the hotel as fast as we could we decided to walk slowly, enjoy our popsicles, and laugh it off. Jenn said it was God advising us to get out while we still could!

Enrico came later to take me to the train station (I left a day earlier than everyone else due to a snafu in the communication processes between me and the Academy when planning the plane tickets). Jenn and Genna rode into town with me for a quick meal and to see me off, which was nice.

I had been worrying for weeks about getting all of my luggage, now with the addition of souvenirs for everyone, from train to train to train to plane, because they were already so heavy that on the way to Ravenna from Rome I had had to rely on Jason and Taco to help me get them from place to place. I was very excited Thursday afternoon, though, to find out that one of the benefits of the month-long manual labor lifestyle I had just been enjoying was that now I could actually lift both of the suitcases, one in each hand! It was definitely good to know that I could handle myself if need be, but I soon found help along the way anyway. A nice young man from Senegal, who had studied medicine in Prague in the Czech Republic and then moved to Italy, helped me get my luggage on the train there in Ravenna, then sat with me and chatted all the way to Ferrara. When we got off the train he helped me find my next platform and move my luggage there, then found me a place to sit and offered to run to a restaurant outside the station (all the shops inside were already closed by this time) to get me some food. I politely declined that last bit, but the company was nice for awhile.

Waiting for the train from Ferrara to Tiburtina was bizarre and unnerving. My train was not scheduled to arrive at the station until 1:40 AM the next day, and there was NO ONE at the station for most of the time I was there (I arrived about 10:00 or so). The platforms of the stations are outside, but the building itself was locked so the only people coming and going were those getting off of trains, but at about midnight that stopped happening and I was basically alone in an empty train station, standing outside by the tracks in the middle of the night. About 1:30 a train pulled in and stopped, on the tracks my train was supposed to pull in on, and some people were leaning out the window smoking cigarettes. I asked them if it was the train to Naples (the terminal stop on my train's line) and they said yes, so I ran to the appropriate care and started heaving my luggage up. A conductor appeared and yelled at me in Italian and threw my bags back down. All he would say in English was "Not this train!" I had no idea what to do, buthe obviously was not going to let me board, so I let the train pull out and stood there wondering if my train was going to come or if that had been it. Mine did finally show up about 30 minutes late, and I made it to my box...I mean bed. I think I slept a little, but I kept waking up very disoriented, as you can imagine.

Once I got to Tiburtina though it was no big problem to get the train to the airport, and from there to get checked in and on the long flight to the US. Customs in New York was a pain as usual, and by the time I got on that plane to TExas I was completely exhausted. What a relief to see Mom and DAd and Nonnie and Foy and Calinda and Billy and William waiting at the luggage carousel! It took the luggage FOREVER to show up, but finally it did and we all went and joined Celia and Kevin at Christina's for some long-awaited Mexican food and some souvenir handouts. Then finally back to Nonnie and Foy's and a nice soft full-sized bed.

I guess that is the end of the adventure, at least for now. Hopefully the friends that I made will be around for a long time, and I would also like to offer my services as an Italian tourguide, so start making plans! Oh, and if anyone thinks the backbreaking, sweaty work sounds appealing, let me know and I will tell Enrico that he can have some more American workers for next season! I just might go myself...

-Candace

Last Post from Italy -- July 21

Well, I have almost reached the end of this adventure. I just enjoyed my last gelatto, dripped the last bit onto my last clean dress, and am getting ready to enjoy my last night in the Olympia center. This evening I have been out to dinner with the three people I most enjoy from the group. Not surprisingly they are not the people I started out spending the most time with, but are the people I have come to enjoy and respect over the past two months. Tonight is Jenn's 26th birthday and she and Ginna and Taco and I had a lovely dinner, did a little shopping, and talked loudly about silly things in the restaurant because we knew that most people could not understand us. I will sincerely miss each one of them, and we have already been making plans to meet around the world and at each others homes...in our "natural environments." Ginna's sister is going to be starting USC as a freshman this fall, so I may actually eventually end up teaching her, as she is in fine arts, but I will definitely be seeing Ginna when she comes to visit, which is good.

Other than our birthday celebration not a lot has happened since the last post. The scavi is still humming along...the skeleton is almost completely preserved, which is marvelous...only the top half of the skull is missing. It's a "he", but that's about all we know so far. Rachel and I may have found another tomb today, but will probably not be around to see it excavated far enough to know for sure. Not much else, except for the fact that the museum attached to the excavation has demanded that we stop using the public restrooms and eating lunch under the shade trees by their building, which is the only natural shade anywhere around. Apparently we are bothering the tourists. All 2 of them. Who have come to see us. But whatever. The result is that we are now lunching with the professional archaeologist in the other area, under their gazebos. Actually, the gazebo we eat under is the gazebo that the dig director ordered for us Americans, but when it was delivered it was delivered to the pros, who just put it up without asking any questions, and apparently the politics of the situation are delicate, so we can't request it back. Strange indeed.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoy their company. We call them the pirates because they are all rather rugged looking, even the ladies. I suppose that's what a life in the sun does for you. I just know that none of them have to wear sunscreen ever because they are now impervious to it. Probably not a good thing in the longrun. But they are all very nice. Unfortunately some of my fellow Americans are not fond of them, or are scared of them because they are different, or something like that. They eat their lunch quickly then retreat to the meager shade of our portable office building rather than stay and talk. I think it is extremely rude and a shame. The pros are genuinely interesting people and very nice to boot. Also one of them, Gilberto, should be congratulated on the birth of his daughter last night.

Many of the Italians, most of the pros included, came to our hotel for dinner and dancing last night, which was a riot. The one bad incident involved my camera. That ALWAYS happens to me on trips, but at least this time it was one day before the end. Maybe it can be fixed in a camera shop, but that remains to be seen.

I have to sign off now, my friends are waiting on me to get a taxi back to the hotel with them. Thanks to everyone who shared my trip and I hope to see or speak to each of you soon and share in more detail!

Love to all.

Ciao,
Candace

A Very Full Weekend -- July 16 and 17

Well, my last weekend in Italy was quite eventful, although it did not turn out exactly as planned.

I spent Saturday with Max. I am sure that by now some of you have been reading between the lines a little and figure that he is a little more than a new Italian friend. He would like to be much more than a new Italian friend, but for now a little more will have to be what he settles for. Anyhow, having some small romance in a foreign country has always been a dream of mine, and several friends did predict it, and who am I to stand in the way of fate? OK, now it sounds like a lot more than it was, but on to the stories:

On Saturday I asked Max to take me somewhere that he thought I would like to see, since he is a native of this area. He drove me about an hour north to a tiny medieval town called Gradara. There is an incredibly well-preserved castle and small town complete with the original walls. The castle itself was not as beautiful and picturesque as the ones perched in San Marino but, as Max pointed out, the ones in San Marino are "fake", meaning that the Republic built them specifically because they wanted pretty castles (they are still old, which makes them interesting to me, but I do see his point). By contrast, the castle at Gradara is real...it was the home of whatever powerful individual held a certain post that I can't remember the name of in Medieval Italy. Because the post was held for only a short time, several important historical families have made this their residence...the Malatestas (their modern-day descendants still occupy the top floor...talk about posh!), the Borgias, the Sforzas, and several others. It is also the castle in which the historical Paolo and Francesca, the famous lovers in Dante's "Inferno" were killed.

Not only is the castle itself interesting for the architecture, but much of the furniture and decorations are still intact, so its like walking through a big empty, very rich home. One of the highlights was the room of Lucrezia Borgia, which is beautifully frescoed and still contains her chair and wardrobe. Also, since several of the families were families from which popes were drawn (the Borgias and the Sforzas at least), there is a Cardinal's Room, complete with massive four-poster bed with red velvet draperies and an incredibly posh kneeling bench for prayers.

The torture chamber is also intact...my very first oubliette! In addition, the guardroom still contains much of the original weaponry, and the dining room holds several large sets of decadent dinnerware. Overall it was an incredible experience and one that is not in any of the guidebooks I own, although I don't understand why.

I also had the best meal I have ever had in Italy in this town, in a small restaurant built into the walls, with windows overlooking the mountains and the sea. It was a ravioli dish stuffed with a local cheese and served with a cream sauce made with pears and poppy seeds. MMMMMMMM!!!!!

Then, as it seems is my habit in small Medieval towns, I visited the local wax museum. Not much in wax here really, just small dioramas of peasant life and rooms of the castle, in which the dummies were all inexplicably dressed in plaid with lumberjack-type stocking caps. Very odd. The diorama of the torture chamber was the best, though...it was like those multiple sclerosis coin-drop things at Taco Bell where you try to get the coin to land on a certain level to get a free burrito, but in this case if you dropped your coin correctly it landed on a bullseye on the back of the executioner's axe and caused him to chop a lumberjack's head off. My aim is impeccable!

Later that evening, back in Ravenna, Max took me to his younger sister's birthday party. Everyone seemed very excited that Max was bringing a girl over, and even more excited that she was American, and his eldest sister (although younger than him), who is my age, knows some English so we were able to talk a little. At least I can say that I had the experience of the Italian mother trying to force me to eat more than I wanted, and offering to make me anything I wanted in an attempt to fatten me up. All set in the beautiful countryside outside Cervia, complete with salt lakes and flocks of pink flamingos. Yes, you read that correctly...flamingos!

The next day Max and I drove to Venice. I am glad that I made it there, and it is definitely a beautiful city, but we did not realize that this weekend was the weekend of the Redentore festival, one of the biggest inthe city, during which they celebrate their deliverance from the plague in the 16th century. There were tons of people and it was very hot, although not as smelly as some people say it is. Of course my sense of smell was destroyed in New Orleans, so I may not in fact be the best judge of stinky.

Regardless, we were able to do quite a bit...San Marco piazza is beautiful and the church itself is stunning...I will definitely have to post pictures online to show the full effect. My favorite part of the church was the Treasury, which has many many reliquaries and relics on display, including some relics of the Passion.

We also visited the Doge's Palace which is filled with amazing art and is an incredible building in its own right. Thanks to a very handy guidebook we were able to navigate successfully to cross the Bridge of Sighs from the council chambers of the Inquisition and into the prisons. The bridge is so-named for the sighs of the prisoners who glimpsed their last views of freedom from it. The prisons are interesting as old prisons always are. This one is most famous because it is from here that Casanova escaped through a hole in the roof, only to appear later the same evening at a dinner party a few blocks away.

Afterward we had to decide on one quest to undertake...two churches on one side of the Canal or one church and a major statue on the other side...I decided on the church and statue, the equestrian statue of Gatto Mulatto (the Spotted Cat...a condotiere (hired soldier) who saved Venice, but I can't remember his real name right now). Anyway, it took us over an hour to navigate there because it is difficult to know whether a road will end in a bridge or just at the canal bank, but we finally made it, only to find that the statue is currently enclosed in a wooden box for restoration...of course.

That was all we had time for, besides a whirlwind boat taxi ride up the Grand Canal and out, so Venice will have to be re-visited. Anyone want to come along?

Today at the dig was also somewhat eventful...we are still uncovering the skeleton, although very slowly. I say we, but the anthropologist is picking at it with dental tools, so there is really no we anymore, although I still feel a great personal sense of attachment to it. Also, there was a headstone of sorts by it, a marble slab, although by the shoulder, not the head. It looks a lot like a slab I found earlier this week about 4 feet or so away, and has the same orientation, almost due north, so maybe we have found a cemetary of sorts! Only time will tell, and I probably will not be here to see it.

Oh, and we have uncovered other important things as well...apparently after the heavy rains of last week and now our heavy picking, the leeches have come out in force. Yet another reason that we wear those heavy boots I suppose.

That's about it for now...this very well may be my last post, so a quick trip into the future...we are having the Italians over for Thai food at our hotel tomorrow night, going out for Jenn's birthday on Wednesday night, then I will be on a train home by Thursday night! Can't wait to see everyone!

Ciao,
Candace

Last Full Week

First of all, happy birthday to my cousin Christina. I know she is concerned about her age, but she should remember that I'm OLDER! I know we are both still relatively young, but I have to say that all of the physical labor I have been doing has reminded me that I am not AS young as I was, say, 5 years ago. Sounds silly I am sure, but I have aches and pains and limitations that I know I did not have then. In fact, Jason, our 25 year old Berkeley student is on his third dig and says he can notice a difference from his dig in Israel 2 years ago when he seemed to be able to do much more in a shorter time without as many physical consequences. I think the long and the short of it is that this is a very physically demanding line of work and it must have both its benefits and its consequences on our bodies. That being said I received my first real injury this week, but I'll get to that in a moment...

Basically this week on the dig was very exciting for all of us. Finally our area, which you might remember we had "opened" on our first day here (began the first ever work on it, including removing vegetation, etc.) is finally beginning to yield some interesting finds. In fact, the University of Bologna professor who is in charge of the area and has been for several years (not my buddy Enrico, who is only an assistant professor) actually came by to see what was found by our group on Tuesday and said that it is the most important thing that has been found here in 5 years and will ensure that the foundation will be given enough money to continue digging at this site for 10 more!

We were all just picking merrily away, still hitting everything as hard as we possibly can since we hadn't really found anything of any consequence, when suddenly Genna's pick turned up a large piece of marble. That in itself was not unusual, but we generally look them over to see what color they are, and if they are really pretty or seem to be one of the interesting types such as the pink marble imported from North Africa, so Liz picked it up. It only took her a few moments of brushing it off to realize that what she was holding was actually a marble head! As far as I know no one has ever found sculpture at this site before, and now the Americans had a beautifully carved female sculptural head. The nose is missing completely (not at all unusual for ancient sculpture) and it is broken at about the point where the bottom jaw would start, so I guess it is only really half a head, but the hair is finely carved and the eyes are drilled, which allows us to date it to the post-Hadrianic period because the first Roman sculptures with drilled eyes were of Hadrian's boyfriend Antonioos. This datable characteristic is part of what makes it so valuable.

Needless to say we have spent part of the rest of this week trying to find another part of the sculpture, but have pretty much given up hope. It seems that what we were digging through is probably either a robbery trench or a simple dump, and that the broken statuary was discarded there. Regardless, it is still very important.

We were still all very excited about that when, on Thursday, Jason and I were working in the opposite corner of our area and uncovered the top of a wall. It appears to be the wall of an important structure because from what we can tell it is two parallel walls, fairly thick, with a rubble fill between them, the kind of walls that were made for things like fortresses because they were very sturdy (2000 years sturdy at least, right?). It may also end up being two smaller parallel walls that were filled in later for some reason, which would not be as impressive, but we can't know until we uncover more. A few hours later, Enrico and I found more of the wall a little further down, and then Jason and I found the corner, which is very important of course because it gives the whole are a frame of reference. So apparently we have been working inside some type of structure this whole time but had no real idea about it until now.

But the fun doesn't stop there...as Jason and I were working on cleaning out the corner of the wall, just inside the wall we found the top of an amphora (probably of a type imported from Palestine, and so not something that belonged to someone without some small means). This is not unusual in and of itself, althogh the type is not the simple type we have been finding hundreds of shards of in the area. But even MORE exciting, next to it we found an adult human leg bone! Unlike the baby burials that seem to be very common in one of the other, deeper areas where the people commonly buried their children under or near the house (two more found this past week), we had the bone of an adult, apparently buried just inside the wall. This really brought the Italians running!

This is all quite exciting but also means that Jason and I will probably never find out where the wall goes or what it looked like because now the area must be treated much more carefully and slowly. We are still being allowed to work there, but only under the watchful eye of the resident anthropologist who is eager to see if and when the next bone will show up, which as of yesterday it has not. It could turn out to be an isolated find, but even that would be strange and interesting.

Overall we are happy that our hours of backbreaking labor are finally yielding some results!

Outside the dig things have also been interesting...a friend of Taco's from the Netherlands arrived to visit him on Sunday. His name is Karel (Carl) and he is a lawyer in The Hague. He is also very good-looking and charming, but we are all trying to ignore that. He looks like a more handsome, taller, dark-haired Luke Skywalker.

Anyway, he is quite amusing and, for some completely ridiculous reason, has chosen to spend his vacation staying in our less-than-luxurious quarters and helping us on the dig. It's good to have an extra male hand for the really heavy stuff, but we have all decided that he is quite out of his mind.

On Thursday there was a big party hosted by the professional archaeologists on "the other side." We have just been calling them The Pirates all this time because that is what they look like...skin like leather, long hair and pirate beards, tattoos, bandanas on their heads, earrings...the whole nine yards. Frankly we were all a little scared of them but the ice was broken earlier this week when our American area got so exciting that one of them who bears a remarkable resemblance to Jerry Garcia for those of you who know who he is, came to work with us. He doesn't speak any English but does know SPanish so between that and our combined Italian skills we coudl communicate some.

Anyway, they had everyone out for a barbecue on the beach on Thursday where the served us three different kinds of pork...pork chops, pork sausage, and something they were calling bacon but we were all very unusure about and which did end up tasting quite disgusting. But the company was good, there was lots of wine, and everyone ended up singing to each other. The Italians sang songs about their home regions, and then we were expected to sing American folksongs. We were embarssed to find out that between the 8 of us who went (four what I consider very rude people from our group were not interested in hanging out with the Italians and went shopping instead--their loss) we knew few folksongs all the way through. We ended up doing I've Been Working on the Railroad and My Darlin Clementine and a few others, then had to resort to Elvis PResley and some Beatles who are at least in English. Taco and Karel, poor guys, were also expected to give us some Dutch tunes, which they finally did get around to doing. It was all quite fun.

After dinner we were getting ready to leave but the Italians all insisted that we go night swimming instead. This is the point at which I learned three very important facts:

1)The Adriatic is not an ocean, it's a SEA. So when you tell people that you are nervous about going into the OCEAN at night, it doesn't hold any water.

2) No one cares if the clothes you are in are MEANT to go in the water or not.

3) The Italian word for jellyfish is Medusa.

Overall it was a good experience...the water is shallow and warm and there were thousands of stars, but the damper on the whole experience was that the group of us blundered into a school of jellyfish. I have to say though that the sight of a bunch of adults running screaming out of the ocean at 1 in the morning, yelling in about four different languages, was so amusing that we all ended up laughing and screaming and hopping around, and somehow it remains a positive experience in my mind.

My stings are not horrible, although I did not get off as lightly as say Paolo who only had one mark on his arm. Somehow I managed to get a perfect triangle burned into my inner leg, but from what I remember from when I was a child it should go away in a few days...right?

The funniest thing about it was that Karel, who was the biggest of all of the people who got hit (except for the Jerry Garcia guy whose girth outweight Karel's height) was the most dramatic about the whole thing. Some of the rest of us were hopping around and running for the showers, but Karel was really freaking out...I guess they don't have jellyfish in the Netherlands, and he didn't really understand what was going on. He only knew that he was in pain and he was panicking. He got hit on the arm in several places and kept saying he couldn't feel his fingers, and that someone was going to have to take the arm! Of course we were all laughing at him, which didn't help any.

Eventually everyone calmed down and Jerry Garcia produced a tube of after-sting medication which I guess is really for bees and so forth, but seemed to help some and, amazingly, some people got back in the water but I was not one of them. We left soon after that, and actually managed to make it out to the dig at 7.30 in the morning as usual, although some of the Italians did not come in until noon or so. Hearty Americans!

Guess that's about it for now...I am planning on going to Venice tomorrow, so hopefully I will have more to write after that, although there is a chance that I won't make it back to a computer before I get back stateside on Friday! Please think of me as I am struggling through several train changes and the airport alone with four bags. This will also be my very first experience with a sleeper berth on a train, which I am excited about but which also worries me...how do I make sure I wake up for my stop and how do I make sure no one steals my luggage in the night? I'm sure it will all work out, and I can also take a little comfort in the fact that anyone who steals my luggage would only get a bunch of very, very dirty laundry and some bizarre cheap souvenirs, but hopefully I will make it home without incident. Wait a minute, this is ITaly...there WILL BE incidences, but hopefully they will be minor.

I can't wait to see many of you and to speak to the others, and to share pictures. Thanks for being my cyber-traveling buddies, those of you who have been responding and sharing. Take care and talk to you soon.

-Candace

A Whole Other Country

Well yesterday was another beautiful day in Italy...but I would hardly know because I spent it in the smallest and oldest Reupblic in Europe, San MArino. Only 12 km wide at its widest point, it lies about an hour from Ravenna. IT is an amazing place, famous for selling arms and armor (i.e. Medieval and REnaissance, not Smart Bombs or anything) and for Formula I racing. Everyone that lives there is rich and they pay not taxes to any state. It is rather like Monaco I think.

And talk about gorgeous...three castles set high up on three rocky crags. It was quite cold at the top, and it rained on us which was fine with me because I always imagined that if I was walking the battlements of a castle there would be a fine gray mist falling and the surrounding mountains would be shrouded in fog. I also took a walk on a deserted pathway over the Pass of the Witches from Tower 2 to Tower 3, which is hardly visited because the structure itself is not open to the public. Just being there in the absence of people made it worth the rather difficult climb.

I am sure I took far too many pictures of everything, but hopefully they will be enough to remember it by. I also picked up some unusual souvenirs for Mom and Dad and little William, so stand by for those.

In other news, I should share at least one story of my amusing attempts to use my slowly growing Italian language skills. Amusing for the Italians, anyway. I was trying to convey the slang "To drink like a fish" (don't ask) and just knew that it was "Bibite come pesca." On paper I was right, but due to a subtle difference between the pronunciation of pes-k-a and pes-ch-a, I was actually saying "To drink like a peach." Now I may have a new nickname.

Not much new to tell about the dig, except that the director of the Ravenna ARchaeological ASsociation visited and had his picture made with all of us for one of the newspapers. Enrico has promised to make sure that we all get copies. Another reporter and photographer also came to do a piece for some magazine, but it will not be out until next month. Again, we are promised copies but only time will tell.

Other than that, I guess it's business as usual if that is possible. We had an exciting find in our little area today (where Taco and Liz and I are working as of yesterday). Taco uncovered a complete oil lamp with a design of a fountain on it. Surprisingly, he found it with a pickaxe and managed not to damage it. No one was expecting something so valuable in such an early layer, or we would not have been working with the "heavy equipment." It was very exciting and I got some good photos of it. Besides that though, just hot and humid and somewhat excruciating, although most of the pains have subsided to dull persistent aches at this point. Either I am getting stronger or my pain sensors are shutting down due to overload. I hope the former.

Counting the days to seeing all of you again,
Candace

Many things -- July 10

One of the things that some of us decided would be a goal for this part of the trip was making friends with an Italian who has air conditioning, laundry, and a computer to get on the internet. As I sit in my new friend Max's apartment writing this and waiting for my laundry to dry, I can say that at least I accomplished something in Ravenna.

Seriously, Max is one of the Italians from the University of Bologna who has been very kind and accomodating to us -- driven us places, shown us where to aquire things that we need, introduced us to parts of town and the area that we would have never known about otherwise, and generally enriched our time here. Unfortunately only a few of us have taken advantage of this and of the kindness and interest of the other Italians. After the afternoon of pottery washing that I mentioned earlier, when all of the Italians took turns practicing their English on me, Max said that several of them had thanked him for facilitating it, and now that the ice has been broken most of them have been very friendly to m e. Apparently they were a little scared of us, but very interested, and now some of us get along quite well.

In fact, I have a nickname now...apparently there is a very famous Japanese cartoon about a blonde-headed orphan that has played in Italy for many years. As one of the girls told me, every girl in Italy grows up with it. It's called Candy Candy, so of course that is what they are calling me now. One of the girls actually downloaded the themesong on the internet at the digsite so I could hear it.

All of this is good, but there is a bizarre downside to it as well...although everyone in our group is invited to everything that I have been invited to (and a couple of the other girls, Jen and Genna, have come out with us several times), others in the group have not been very kind to those of us who are doing things with the Italians. For instance, the hotel we are staying at has as van that they will loan to our group on weekends to make daytrips. Liz, the oldest in the group, has become the self-appointed driver and tour director, and many of us had been talking since Rome about going to Venice while we are here (abotu a three hour drive away). The group went yesterday, but Jen and I were told that there was not room for us in the van, which is not true. Taco told me that we had "alienated ourselves" by doing so much with the Italians because, according to everyone else, when you are part of a group that will be together for four weeks you are just expected to do things with them all of the time. Even if all they do is sit at the rooftop bar at the hotel and drink every night of the week and complain that there is nothing to do in Ravenna, which is definitely not what I came to Italy to do.

So now I have two more weeks of having to deal with being a social outcast from the Americans, but it might not be such a big deal (except at meals, when some people just pretend that they can't hear me when I contribute to the conversation -- this is a really mature group of "adults") because the Italians have taken those of us who are interested on several great activities this past week.

For example:

Wednesday -- Max and I went to see Guerra Stellare: La Vindetta de la Sith. Yes, the newest STar WArs movie. It was interesting in Italian, but odd for several reasons. First of all, there was an intermission in the middle, which was new to me but kind of nice. Secondly, the person who dubs Yoda's voice does it in a normal, rather low, human voice. MAx said he had never heard the famous Yoda voice in his life, which was kind of shocking.

Thursday: Jen and Genna and several of the Italians and I went to the Feste de l'Unita in a neighborhing town. Every small town in ITaly has its own festival every year, and this one happens to be in a heavily Communist area, so the posters were...interesting. Unfortunately all of the shows and activities were cancelled due to the situation in London, but we had some good traditional food and practiced our ITalian.

Friday: JEn and Genna and MAx and I went into Ravenna for Mosaico de la Notte, the one night a week when the churches are open at night and all of the piazzas host live bands, some good, some not so good. The whole town seems to turn out and it was very nice.

Saturday: in lieu of Venice, Jen and I were taken to a small picturesque Medieval town (Brishigella) perched up on a mountain. A beautiful place with two castles (342 steps to the top to see them up close!), it also hosts a MEdieval festival, luckily taking place this weekend. If you have ever been to a REnaissance Fair (Scarborough Faire, etc.), imagine it set in the tiny winding cobblestone streets of a REAL MEdieval town! It was a great great experience and I wouldn't have traded it for a three hour van ride to Venice anyway. We had traditional Medieval food, saw some musical groups and some "alchemists", and wondered how the stilt-walkers could possibly do what they did on those steep stone streets, which were also wet because it had been sprinkling and raining off and on all day.

So I guess that's about it for the fun...I am about to head out with some people to Rimini and San MArino (smallest Republic in Europe -- and the oldest) so I guess I will post another update soon. Oh, and I shoudl probably mention that the dig is going well...I am learning to make plans and take elevations, etc., which is really quite interesting.

Hope all is well with everyone,
Candace

phone number

If anyone needs to get in touch with me, thanks to Enrico I now have a cell phone that can take calls but not send them (at least not without spending an exorbitant amount...it cost me 10 euros to talk to my grandparents for about 15 minutes the other day.)

My friend Tim finally got a call through to it, and said he dialed like this:

011 39 320 7270432

I don't know if you can dial with one of those 10 10 numbers or not, but you can try if you like. Just remember the 7 or 9 hour time difference, and don't call past 11:30 or so on a weekday please, or my roommate might kill me.

-candace

work and play

Well, it's still quite hot here, and we have apparently only just started the REAL work. Now that we have converted our area from a grassy field to a desolate moonscape, it is time to start really digging, which means pickaxing to a depth of 30 centimeters or so. I am getting really good at the pickaxe, I have to say, and I'm quite proud of that.

However I will now have a slight break from it, because Taco and I have been moved from our area to one of the deeper areas where we will be working with the Italians, learning to use the technical equipment and make drawings and elevations, etc., which will be a nice change. I will have to do something else to keep in shape this week, though, so I won't lose all of the physical progress I have made these past 7 days or so.

An interesting change on the dig site today...it actually rained, so we were moved to a lab across town to clean pottery and bones with toothbrushes. It is really really boring drudge work, but after lunch I decided to take the plunge and move from our American table over to the Italian table. I was the only person from our group there, and at first it was weird, but then the Italians warmed up to me and started taking turns practicing their English on me, as most of them have at least a little. Also my new friend Max (one of the ones who took us out last Wednesday) has been showing me around this weekend and teaching me some Italian, which I think I have been picking up faster than I imagined, so I stammered my way through some Italian and it was really quite fun. When Enrico our director saw that our table was having WAY more fun than the other table he made us move the two tables together and mixed the Americans and Italians down the length of the table, and things were better after that and much more interesting. My favorite part of the conversation was about food, and the confusion that ensued when trying to explain a turducken to people in another language I am not completely familiar with. (for those of you out of the weird Cajun loop, that's a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey, roasted for Thanksgiving)

In other news, our group is down by one now. Ivana, our youngest at 20, took ill Friday afternoon, spent all day Saturday in the hospital, and was shipped off on Monday morning. Heat exhaustion they think. Seems believable to me. We were sorry to see her go, but I think she was really ready to be home, as she had come to Rome directly from a 7 week stint in a program in Turkey and Greece. In fact, I think she may have been more homesick than anything else.

Socially things are great here. Some of the Italians in our group are very friendly, including Max and Enrico, and Enrico helped us find a place to cookout on a beach yesterday for the fourth, and Max to Jen and I to buy fireworks, so we had a real Fourth of July party. Many of the Italians showed up and brought gifts of food and drink (sounds more like Thanksgiving, huh?), and Enrico added a nice touch by pulling his car up to the beach and surprising us with a CD compilation of American rock music like Born in the USA, and so forth. We felt really really welcome, and one of the highlights of the trip for me this far was singing the Star Spangled Banner on the beach by the light of a firework fountain, surrounded by our Italian friends. Definitely a picture I will have to post when I get home so everyone can share it. (Note: For all those times we hear in the news, etc. that people in Europe don't like Americans, every single Italian I have had that conversation with says it is not true, and the fact that they came out to celebrate our Independence Day with us shows that as well, I think.)

OK, enough "politics." Other news, other news...I saw Ravenna on Saturday and Sunday, and took in all the MEdieval mosaics I have been eager to see: Sant'Apollinare in Classe (out close to our dig outside of town), Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the House of the Stone Carpets (two 2nd century Roman houses joined in the 4th century, excavated beneath a modern building whose basement you can visit to see them), the tomb of Dante, and several other major sites. Enrico did his PhD dissertation on the early Medieval monuments of the city, and he met me in town and gave me a tour of several of the sites, which was great not only because of his expertise, but also because as a University of Bologna at Ravenna professor he was able to get us in at no cost, which at this point in the trip is a big deal for my budget.

The city is BEAUTIFUL. I could even imagine myself living here, especially since the people have been so nice and friendly.

The churches and mosaics are incredible as well. One of the other girls on the trip, Rachel, actually cried when she went into San Vitale, it's that overwhelming. Really something special to see, and well worth a trip if you are in the North of Italy, even if you have to go out of your way.

We have also had many evening activities. Enrico took us to see a (very bad) band on Saturday, then some of us went dancing on the beach again, which is really nice. Max also took me to tour his hometown, which is about 30 minutes away (Milano Marritimo). It is a harbor with waterways that were designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and the city has docked antique boats all along the length of it. It is very charming, especially at night. What Rome should be, without the hordes of tourists (and may be in the off-season, or so I hear).

I have tried to include a lot in this post, but there is also a lot I don't have time to squeeze in. I just want everyone to know that I am having a fantastic time here and feel like I am really seeing Italy and her people finally. Or maybe I am just delirious from the heat, I can't really tell. Either way I am enjoying it!