Sunday

Although I planned to do nothing all day Sunday it was in fact a good day.

I went to the market (and spent all my money) but managed to purchase a suitcase, a pillow, a towel and some other odds and ends I needed. Haggling I discovered, is not my forte.

After my successful market trip it was lunchtime. And as usual I was craving pizza. There is nothing better than the excellent combination of pizza and red wine (and checkered table cloths!)

We then followed this up with gelato. Tiramisu.  So very good.

Weekend in Rome

Although I had a lot planned for this weekend I barely managed to do anything because I came down with a cough and cold yesterday.  So that hasn't been fun at all and I'm still feeling really awful today.

On Friday night I had a lovely homemade entree with my flatmates, who knew bread mozzarella basil and cherry tomatoes could taste so good!

Amelia and I then went out for a late dinner at the little piazza in Trastevere,  I had lovely bread mozzarella mushroom olive oil goodness and we had an awesome view of the piazza.

On Saturday we wandered Rome for a while which was nice as we were able to take in the scenic streets. Anywhere there were vines or mopeds looked pretty fantastic in my opinion.

The main thing we actually managed to see was the pantheon which was fantastic to say the least. 

Outside was a little square with a fountain and an Obelisk which was also very picturesque. With the Obelisks and the people dressed as Roman soldiers wandering around I felt like Asterix and Obelix would come running out beating up the Romans at any minute. 

We saw the Vatican and Castel Sant' Angelo from the outside but I was feeling too crappy by then for the line and walking more so they will have to be another day!

Today is storming and raining so doubt I will do much except try to recover . 

Third week

This week has been fairly boring, same old routine of shoveling dirt and wheelbarrowing. We have all been too tired to go see anything in the evenings either. The only interesting thing that happened was a frog leaped out of nowhere at one point!

I've been in labs a fair bit this week which has been a welcome relief. Finds is always fun because cleaning pottery and bone is awesome though slow work. I had zooarchaeology on Wednesday which was quite interesting.  Francesca who is the expert on animal bones on our site showed us all the interesting creatures that had been found at Gabii, including lions paws, part of a leopard and a Beaver!  

Interesting stuff. She then tried to show us how to identify different bits of bones, but the fragmentation made it so confusing. 

 By the end I could recognize bird bone but that was about it. The number of times I asked 'is this a rib?' Only to be told it was a humerus or a long bone or a scapula was ridiculous.  

Still it was actually really cool (though I wish we had been allowed to look at the baby bones from the tombs) and something I could see having further interest in.

 As I realize that although dig can be fun, I really don't love it, I am also discovering things I do enjoy such as pottery and osteology. Now what to do with that...

The third lab of the week was simply awful. I almost fell asleep it was so dull. Enviro lab. aka sorting dirt. Its the most mind-numbingly dull thing in the world and I was not a fan. Here's my plate of dirt that I had to sort through with tweezers before grabbing another plate of dirt.

The most exciting thing that happened was I saw this bug.

Just before we headed home yesterday a storm rolled in from the mountains and created a beautiful landscape.  This was my view from the Enviro lab.  

We then had takeaway pizza for dinner sitting on the balcony, it was awesome.

We were thinking of going to Siena for the weekend but can't really be bothered as there is also a trip to Ostia put on by the school next week. 

Also it looked like it would end up fairly expensive so instead I'm going to spend the weekend trying to stuff everything I want to see in Rome into two days. 

Hopefully see the Vatican, Castel Sant'Angelo, the pantheon, villa Borghese and a few more things. If anyone has any burning suggestions let me know!

Sunday

Today was a nice and quiet day, I went food shopping and had a quick look at the market to scope out suitcases. Looks like I will be able to buy one there next Sunday. After a very quiet morning my flatmate Amelia and I went out for Gelato in Trastevere. Mint chocolate Gelato is the bomb.

 We also went exploring which was nice as I haven't properly seen the neighborhood before.

We saw a number of nice restaurants which had lovely shaded areas with trellises, so we may go there one day during the coming week. 

We then walked along the river which was very quiet as it was a Sunday.

Additionally, I now own a new pair of sandals! Hurrah! And they are so so pretty.

The Roman Forum and the Colosseum

Saturday we were all up bright and early for the trip to the Roman Forum and Colosseum (paid for by the University, yay!) We all took the tram there together before getting our guided tour from Andrew. 

First of course we took tourist photos. 

I got photo-bombed by my flatmates, it was great. 

It was extremely hot of course which made it hard to stay alert, but I did learn some cool things. We first went to the Roman Forum which was huge. One of my favorite places was the Arch of Trajan. My photo probably doesn't do it justice, but it's huge and very cool. In fact the entire site is pretty breathtaking. It was originally just marshy unusable ground until it was worked and artificially raised, if you think about how big an area it was and how high they filled it, the amount of manpower and effort that went into making the ground usable is breathtaking. 

Another very cool place was the Temple of Saturn, there isn't much left, but it's huge. One of the decorative pediments had fallen off and it gives a good idea of scale. Also it is very pretty. 

Arches are cool.

The most interesting thing about the whole site for me was this temple, which was turned into a medieval church. During the Medieval Ages there was a movement to get rid of the temples to Christianize everything, so they attempted to pull down the pillars but it was so well built that they couldn't. You can actually see the rope marks biting into the tops of the pillars where they struggled to pull it down before giving up and building their church around it. Super cool. 

We then wandered off up the hill and saw some pretty cool ruins (and flowers!) there. The view was very cool. 
















The arches evoked the feeling of age in a way that I can't explain in words. The sunlight angled through them and dust motes swirled drowsily through the air. Olive groves and green green grass with the offer of shade lay to the side of the ruins. If you just ignored the babble of tourists it had an almost peaceful feel to it. To me, it just had this brilliant atmosphere.

By this point we were all very hot and tired so we went and bought sandwiches at a supermarket before heading over to the Colosseum.

There were lots of Italian people dressed as Roman soldiers wandering around trying to sell you photos with them. Some of them looked really tacky (there was one guy smoking as he stood there which slightly ruined the image, another centurion was in fact a woman) some of them did actually look quite cool though. The Colosseum was actually the place where we got bombarded the most by street sellers (usually yelling 'waterwaterwater' every time someone walked past).

The Colosseum was really awesome, I probably enjoyed it more than the Roman Forum in fact. I just found it absolutely awe-inspiring. It's sheer size was insane. We could also use our tickets from the Roman Forum to get into the Colosseum so free entrance once again!

 I didn't bother spending the 70 odd Euro to actually go below down into the Colosseum. The view from above was cool enough. Shameless tourist photos also occurred once more.






















By this point it was late afternoon and I was feeling rather tired out, so we took the tram to Piazza Navona for some Gelato (coconut is extremely nice as it turns out!) My ice-cream had a hat. It was awesome.

One of my favourite things about Rome is the water fountains. Dotted all along the roads fresh clean and icy cold water splashes out onto the street, people often fill their waterbottles from it (yes it's drinkable!) splash their face or even half shower in them. We decided try and cool off by dunking our heads under the stream of water. It was cold. Then we headed home. 

We then decided to all go back out to the restaurant we had frequented for drinks the night before and ordered pizza and a bottle of red. It was a very good day indeed.

The Fountain of Four Rivers and other such Adventures

Dig on Friday was the hardest day yet. It was hellishly hot in the mid-30s C and it was a huge struggle to keep digging. Everyone was sweating so much it looked like we had just gone swimming, we were all literally soaking in sweat.

 I also ended up looking like a chimney sweep by the end of the day with a thick layer of grime all over me including my face-it was a bit of a surprise when I looked in the mirror! The one amusing thing about the day was that everyone was running around with American flags and other such clothing. And yelling things like 'Merica!' 'Represent!' I found it hilarious.

After Dig that day we decided to go to the piazza Navona which is now my current favorite place in Rome. We walked there rather than taking the tram, and enjoyed taking in the sites and trying not to get lost. We also found a rather fetching lamppost that reminded me of the one in Narnia (from the far land of Spare Oom). 

My favorite thing about the piazza was the central fountain. The fountain of four rivers was very dramatic, my favorite being the Nile, pictured here with his head covered.

Joe also told us an interesting story about Bernini; when he was commissioned to make the statues had been vying to create the cathedral art instead and was rather put out when he didn't get the role. In revenge he created these exquisite statues-all specifically not looking at the church. 

There was also a strange Gollum-like creature featured, apparently this is what happens when someone tries to sculpt an armadillo when they have never seen said creature.

We then decided to try and find somewhere to find a drink away from the square with all the over-priced tourist traps. We went down a little side-street and found a wonderful little restaurant that had 8 euro bottles of wine (obviously not the best quality) we shared it between the four of us and had a lovely evening of chatter.

 We ended up taking the tram back and got in around midnight. It was the best evening I've had so far.

Dig: Second Week

Yesterday was a fairly quiet day, I spent it in Finds (pottery lab) washing pottery. My favorite part was when I got to clean up a jaw bone, probably from a pig. There is something entirely strange about using a toothbrush to clean up a skull's teeth. It was awesome. I took a photo but of course can't post it. Gahhhh.

The evening was nice as it was a lovely day and pizza was had for dinner.The place we went was empty at first which was weird for such a big place but it got a little busier as we are leaving; turns out the Italians eat a lot later than I am used to! Also getting up at half 5 every morning does not endear me to late eating.
 I'm almost looking forward to going to France so I can use my patchy awful basic French, at least I can say a few words! I'm hopeless at Italian and just mumble thank you (pronounced wrong I'm pretty sure) most of the time. Thankfully Joe has pretty sweet Italian language skills. Jealous.

Today was a good and bad day, there was altogether too much wheelbarrowing going on and the dump pile seemed to get further and further away. That part I very much did not enjoy. It was also sweltering hot today and I haven't adjusted very well to the heat. We did however find a Well or manhole (we aren't sure yet), it even had the remains of a cover! So that was very cool. I also found lots of bone (probably from a pig), a broken metal nail and a piece of charcoal. Exciting stuff. We also finished excavating a cistern we found a few days ago, it once had a waterproof plaster floor, so that was pretty cool.

The other strange that that happened was my Early Rome lecturer Jeremy from Auckland Uni (the one who suggested the dig to me in the first place) turned up for the day. It was very surprising. I ended up excavating the cistern with Jeremy for a while which was cool, he was always my favorite lecturer at uni.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July which has never occurred to me as a day to celebrate but considering it's a big thing in America its interesting to hear everyone talk about it and their plans for after the dig that day. I'm mainly just excited for the football game but it will be interesting to see what everyone does to celebrate! Apparently fireworks are often had, it's a shame that can't really happen here.

Tomorrow is meant to be even hotter than today was, something I can't even comprehend yet. I'm sure I will be very vocal about it next blog post.