River walks, Pasta and Storms

Monday day was fairly dull on dig but after an excellent home made salad for dinner it was off for more gelato! A group of us meandered our way to the gelato shop where I tried hazelnut and then peach with wine, the latter being the nicest flavor so far.

We then went on a quest to find me lip balm and ended up at the river. It was already almost dark by this point which made for some lovely views of the river. The guitarist was busking there as usual, adding to the atmosphere. 

After losing spectacularly at foosball (also known as table soccer) from a coin-operated table we found by the river, we meandered across to Tiber island before heading home. My favorite part of the evening was watching a crazy German tourist shouting excitedly to his son as he tried to fish out one of the balls from foosball that he had accidentally thrown in the river. I was so certain he was going to fall in but he didn't. 

We had storms on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon which were rather cool though they came on so quickly we were caught in the downpour. 

Thursdays storm was especially epic with forked lightening and sickly orange colored clouds rising from behind the black mountains making it look like some come of volcanic eruption. 

We finally finished the giant room we have been excavating since the beginning of the dig (I hate room 16 with a fiery passion) we had to excavate three different stratigraphic layers (imagine pickaxing, then shoveling and then wheelbarrowing uphill all the dirt from a room the size of a lounge, and then imagine doing it three times, each time going about a foot or two deeper) until we actually reached bedrock and original tufo blocks. We then had to brush the entire room crouched (so that you are touching as little of the archaeology as possible) so that it looked clean and nice for recording and photographing the room. 

Great clouds of dust were flying everywhere while doing this and I managed to get the filthiest I have so far with a layer of dust so thick on my right arm I resembled Chewbacca. I don't think this photo does it justice but you can maybe see my lovely layer of dirt, exhaustion and happiness to finally be done straight after. 

Here you can see the excitement and joy of paperwork. The one cool thing is they have started using tablets this season to record everything which is kind of amazing, every special find (e.g. a coin) every wall and floor is precisely recorded and thus creates an extremely detailed map. They are also using video game technology to create 3-D versions of onsite so you can virtually walk around and see every detail of every room. It seems like groundbreaking stuff.

 

We also had some excellent food during the week, my flatmate Liz and I buying fresh pasta and having a lovely pesto, olive pasta dish. It was divine. 

Last night we had some friends over and I made capsicum and tomato lasagna which turned out very nicely even with our disastrous oven (turns out you have to stick the gas ignitor down a hole in the oven and click it until flame comes out. terrifying stuff) and the singular oven dish the apartment provided which didn't actually fit in said oven. Luckily the supermarket had aluminum disposable oven dishes we used and the crisis was averted. We also made a large salad and Amelia made seafood risotto which looked very nice. Our friends brought wine as their contribution and overall it made for a very nice evening. 

More homemade pasta.

Tonight we have our tickets booked for the Vatican. They have introduced night visits which is pretty cool so we are off at 7:30 to explore a new (though very small) country!