http://dim-a-korinth.kor.sch.gr/index.htm

I hope I will be able to write about Samos and Ephesus in the blog, but I don’t know what type of Internet connection I will have.

I was hoping on this last blog to have an update to the kiln and a picture of the finished kiln. Unfortunately, I was not able to make it out there yesterday and so I do not have a picture. I did go and talk with Paniotis and Maria to say goodbye. Paniotis gave me some corpozi (watermelon). He is always feeding me something when I stop by. Here is Theo having some stuffed zuccini that he made one time when we stopped by! Yesterday he told me about finding coins. He has always been an antique coin collector. As a child he learned that after the rain he could go and pick out the coins that came to the surface. He has collected over a thousand coins. While he was collecting he also learned about them and how to clean them. Someday he may set up a coin museum in back of his pottery store.

He explained why he thought that was different than antiquities theft. Antiquities theft is like what I wrote about the tombs being looted. It is not like Paniotis finding and collecting coins. People actually search for treasure and then they sell it for LARGE amounts of money to dealers who eventually sell the pieces for millions of dollars to museums. This has happened to a lot of very important items from Iraq and has been happening with items from Greece. Many countries are very concerned about losing evidence of their rich histories. Recently there has been a crack down on museums to prove where they got certain items and to return what they cannot prove to the countries that they came from. You may have seen some of that news in the papers.

Here in Corinth there was a large theft of items directly from the museum. Because of good record keeping the curator of the museum was able to clearly identify all of the pieces that were missing and they were eventually returned to the museum, but this does not always happen. All of these items are now on display in a special part of the museum.

There is a big difference between collecting things that you find in your own area and keeping them and searching for things to sell for huge amounts of money. In the United States in many places this is an issue for Indian Tribes because people have found and collected things from their ancestors that have become valuable.

Here are a few stray dog pics to finish out the blog for today!

I hope I didn’t give the impression that Dig Dog (aka, Norma) is a stray dog. She is actually owned by Guy Sanders and much loved by the various people who pass through the American School here in Corinth. I also didn’t tell you about Melos, the other Dig Dog. Melos is a big black dog and is owned by the James and Iulia who are the Architect and Curator of the Museum here at Corinth. Melos is a big, sweet and sort of dumb dog, but he looks a bit scarey. He is not looking scarey at all in this picture. It is just too hot.

There are many stray dogs wandering around Corinth and when I visited Athens I saw even more. These dogs seem pretty friendly, but they are very skinny and just go around freely. They also sleep all of the time. When we were first here there was a scandal because one of the stray dogs was found killed. No one knows who killed the dog, but they say that some of the people in the villages do not like these stray dogs. Sometimes they set out poisons for them to eat and Norma has almost died because of this.

Here is a picture of a birthday card sent by my sister who did not even know about Melos. I thought it was perfect!

Yesterday we went to the beach again. It is so hot that by the late afternoon I am coated with sweat and it feels SO good to jump into the water. The salt water is a comfortable temperature. I don’t think that there are any jelly fish or anything to be concerned about in the water. Sometimes a bit of seaweed flows by and rubs you.

This morning I went to visit an orphanage here with a friend who is an artist. The orphanage was started by a group called Childern’s Ark. He is helping the kids there to create a sculpture. It will be a column in two halves. It starts with a form that the artist, John, created lined with clay. Then the kids came and decorated the clay by pressing toys and their hands into it. Then cement was poured into the mold and after two days of drying the clay will be removed and the columns will be done and ready to put up. I wish I had a picture of the final project, but here are some pictures of the orphanage and the process of making the sculpture.

Plateia is your Greek word today. It means the central part of a city. In Kansas City they have “the plaza” which is a similar idea. Here in Old Corinth it is where three roads come together and there are a bunch of restaurants and bars right there where people congregate. There are also two small grocery stores and quite a few shops selling items for tourists.
Here is a picture of each of the views of the plateia from the three roads:

Saturday evening we wandered down to the plateia at about 7 pm to see what was going on. The first thing we see every time we walk down to the plateia is the columns. These are the columns of a temple called the Archaic Temple built for Apollo. They are huge! I am including a picture of some people next to them (someone taking wedding pictures) so that you can see how huge the columns are.
First we visited with Paniotis who was in the first shop where he sells pots that he has painted. You can see is shopon the left in the picture. These are replicas of ancient pottery and are not made in the same way as in ancient times, but are souvenirs that a lot of people buy. He offered us apricots (which are in season right now) and so we sat and ate some apricots with him. He told us that there was a race coming to town and that the finish line was just down the street and it should be coming any time, so after that we wandered down the street and found a place at a restaurant where we could sit outside and wait for the runners to come.

This was quite amusing. No one seemed to know what time to expect people to come. First a bunch of people showed up with red t-shirts and hats that were (I guess) volunteers helping out with the race. Then a police car came. Then two policemen and one policewoman came walking up the street. They found one car parked in the way and whistled loudly, but then did not wait for anyone to come and move the car, but walked on. A bunch of cars kept going either way through the area. It only takes three cars to make a traffic jam in the plateia. Then the bus came. Here is a picture of the bus coming through the platea.

You can see that there is not really room for a race and the bus. The bus is bigger than the van in the picture and it passes through the plateia and then does a loop through the next village and comes back through, so we knew that most likely the runners would not be arriving until the bus did its run through town.

Finally, the first runner came, then the second and much later the third. Much later the rest of them came one at a time (maybe 20 racers total)hjv .. Then there was a small ceremony giving awards to the winners. They got a medal and a large gold cup. We are guessing that it was a 10k run. It was from Kenchrea to Corinth and was called the St. Paul race because that is a trip that Paul (from the New Testament of the Bible) made when he was here.

We ended the evening by watching the sunset (and the bats) from the upstairs veranda of a restaurant whle we ate pizza and Greek salad. It has been very hot out during the day, but it cools off and there is a pleasant breeze in the evening. A nice end to another interesting day.

Our friends here have a daughter who is 2 1/2. She agreed to show me some of her toys. Here is a picture of her doll. She also has a stroller that you can see in the bottom right side of the picture. She put her doll into it, but only for a second and I missed the picture.

She also has a toy cell phone. It makes different noises when you press the buttons. Her dad explained that here in Greece you can get just about all of the same toys that you have in the United States. They may play more soccer than in the US, but less basketball. They love Play Station and other video games.

This week they are beginning to set up for a huge holiday that is coming at the end of June. One of the things that is already active is the carnival. The big attraction is the bumper cars, which I have heard they drive differently than most of us would. We think that the whole idea of bumper cars is bumping into each other. I have been told that here they try NOT to bump into each other and just drive in circles!

Greek words for today: Ti ka ne te? Kala (the spelling might not be right because I am writing what I hear. It means: How are you? Good.

p.s. I did get a picture of everyone at the table in the morning so you could see our sleepy diningroom!

Steve and I were invited to eat out with some friends who have a car, so they drove us to this restaurant, which is at the west side of the Corinth Canal. It was a BEAUTIFUL evening and so we sat outside and watched the sun set and watched boats go through the canal!

First of all… I have never seen a bridge like this one. There are low bridges like this at either end of the canal. Instead of being a drawbridge that pulls up the middle when a boat goes through, this one drops the middle way under the water! Here are two pictures of the bridge with its middle down:

I was told that sometimes when the bridge comes back up there are fish on it and the man who operates the bridge runs out and gets them. A very interesting way of fishing! There were no fish on it that we saw last night.

Then there was the beautiful view of the canal itself and of the diolkos (the path where they transported the boats before there was a canal).

Can you imagine bungie jumping off of one of those bridges?

Then there was the beautiful sunset.

Finally, there was the food. Do you see that purple looking thing with tenticles? That is pickled octopus! I actually ate it! The other stuff is small fish and calamari (or squid). Others at the table said that grilled octopus is delicious. hmmmm… To me all of the food was OK, but I think I would rather have a giro J. The pickled octopus was not bad. I didn’t even feel the tenticles. Would you have tried it?

I thought I would just address a few really short questions.

1. Several of you have encouraged me to bungie jump. Don’t hold your breath. I am the kind of person who doesn’t like roller coasters, so I don’t have a yearning to bungie jump.
2. It is crazy driving here. I have not tried it, but I have ridden in cabs, busses and friend’s cars. In cabs I figure that they know what they are doing and don’t want to hurt their own car. In the bus I figure that we are the bigger one and so in an accident we would be OK. With friends I am sometimes nervous, but I mainly try to believe that they know what they are doing and hope that there won’t be too many other cars. People park just about anywhere that they figure is out of the way. The cars are very small. Notice the Mini? There is also a car called a Smartcar that is really tiny.

Here are some pictures of traffic in New Corinth.

3. Shannon asked if people still wear tunics. If you flip back to look at the pictures from past days you can see what people wear now. It is pretty much the same thing we wear, although I somehow always feel like I am dressed like a foreigner… It is a subtle difference.

You can look forward to hearing about toys, coins, boat-building, and answers to your other questions next week!

I wanted to write about the end of the year celebration at the elementary school here, which was on Wednesday night. The kids had been preparing it all week and I learned why they were so excited to talk about games when I came to visit their classroom. One of the things that the kids did was to demonstrate games that their grandparents had played when in school. They did some of the same games that they told me about!

There were also two plays done by the older kids. Both of them emphasized peace. The first one started with a group of boys dressed in white shirts and ties meeting in a setting that looked sort of like the United Nations. While they were meeting and arguing some aliens landed and brought peace, prosperity and disarmament. I didn’t understand all of the Greek, but I could understand that the aliens were trying to convince the earthlings to choose peace. Peace, prosperity and disarmament were three girls with white dresses and flowers in their hair. There were some funny scenes with the girls trying to get the earthlings to marry them. In the end the earthlings decided to be influenced most by the arms dealers. The sad ending was that the arms dealer came in and shot all of the aliens.

The other play was from Aristophanes, who is a very famous Greek writer of plays.

It was about a farmer who went up to the Gods to try and find a solution to the war between the Athenians and the Spartans. He ends up being successful and in the end he meets an arms dealer and buys all of the arms and uses them for other things. It was funny.

The students memorized LOTS of lines and spoke very clearly and loudly. This was all performed outside in the playground where they have PE. Raisers were put up for people to sit on and lots of parents and community members came to watch. At the end the 6th grade that would be moving on to Gimnasium (like Jr. High) were all given a graduation plaque and the rest were all given some treats. It was a really nice evening.

In Corinth I was able to read my email and saw that there were comments from Shannon, Sean and Luke with good questions! I will get to those questions in the next week sometime. Hopefully the Internet will be up soon, so there won’t be so much for you to read all at once!

Your Greek word for the day is irini. It means peace! That is what I hope for you and the world today!

On Tuesday I went to Demotico Scholeio and visited again with the third grade class. It was the next to last day of school and they were a bit excited. They told me about the games that they play on the playground and taught me one of their games.

Many of the games that they play are very similar or the same as games that students in the United States play. They play Freeze Tag, but they call it something like Bone Tag (because you become as stiff as a bone when tagged). They also play hide and seek, hopscotch, soccer, basketball, and jumprope. The girls showed me a long patty-cake rhyme that they do. I think that they know lots of them. It really made me wonder where these games come from and why childern from such different parts of the world play the same games!

One game they play differently than we play is Dodge Ball. They call it Apples. They play it with only two people on the edges and the rest of the class in the middle. The two people throw the ball back and forth trying to hit as many people as they can and get them out. I am not sure of all of the rules, but if you are interested I may be able to find out more.
I taught them a game that my students loved to play when I was teaching called Heads up, Seven up. Do you know that game? They are a small class and so we only had 5 up, but the kids loved the game and had so much fun. At first they didn’t understand the strategies of trying to trick people and pick people who would not expect you to pick them. They picked their best friends and it was easy to guess who picked them. After a few tries and some practice they were very tricky!

They taught me a new game (at least new to me!). Maybe you would llke to try it. It is called Buzz (like the sound of a bee). One person turns their back to the group and hides their eyes. Then the group beind them all begin to buzz like bees and one of them taps the person hiding their eyes on the back. She turns around and tries to guess which one of the buzzing bees tapped her. If she guesses correctly she gets to stay “it” and do it again. If she does not guess then the person who tapped her becomes “it” and the game goes on. It looked fun.

Tonight is the final festival at school and I am going to attend and take pictures to share with you.

Here is the picture of an amphora that I promised you.
Your Greek word for the day is Kalimeara (kaly-mera) which is “good morning”. I hear and say this word a lot!

Sister Susie asked what the Greeks thought about the movie Alexander. I talked to several people who said that they did not like it. They said that it emphasized less important parts of his life (his love life) and didn’t show important things about him. It was not a good movie.
Iselda asked how long archeologists have been studying Corinth and it is since 1896 Over one hundred years!

Keep those good questions coming. Each time I ask about things I learn so much and I hope you do too! Sometimes the questions you ask are SO good that not even the archaeologists know the answer and it gets them trying to look things up or thinking about things that they had never thought about before.

On the trip to Athens I crossed the Corinth Canal by train and I thought it would be a good time to talk a bit about the canal. It is only a few minutes drive from where I am staying. From here I can see the mouth of the canal easily. Sister Susie asked how it compared to the Panama Canal and also some very good questions about my comment on ships going over land rather than around the whole of the Peloppenese. I decided to ask Guy Sanders who is the director of the Excavation here at Corinth and I am so glad I did. He printed a whole paper he gave on it and told me that he will actually be featured on TV on the History channel sometime in the next year talking about it! So, you can keep your eyes open for something on the History Channel on the Corinth Canal (or shipping in the ancient world?) with Guy Sanders!

I am not going to give you the whole paper here, but just a few interesting tidbits to get you thinking. The Corinth Canal is very different than the Panama Canal although I think it was created for the same purpose. There was a narrow neck of land between the mainland and the Peloppenese for about 6 km (or 4 miles). It is about 80 m above sea level at the highest point (you will have to figure that out in yards), so there is a LONG way from the bridge to the water below in the canal. It is so far in fact that you can actually go bungie jumping there! . At the Panama Canal there are locks because the sea level at one side is so much higher than the other and the locks help the ship to “climb” to the higher level. At the Corinth Canal the sea level is the same or similar at both sides and the land is SO much higher thans sea level that locks are not needed.[picture of depth of canal from web]

In ancient times, before the canal was dug, there were war ships (triremes) cargo ships and smaller vessels that traveled the seas. We are mainly concerned with cargo ships and smaller here. It turns out that it was less expensive to drag the ships across the land (with their goods in them-I was wrong in what I said before). The shippers charged a tariff that was figured per ton per mile of transport and so the shorter distance really made a difference. Weather and safe sailing were also factors. The seas get too choppy for sailing between October and April and the land around the Peloppenese is rocky. There are many shipwrecks around the coast.
There was a specially designed wooden cradle in which the ship was firmly secured. It was on a rolling platform. The platform with the ship was then harnessed to teams of oxen. Guy Sanders estimates that it would take around 35 yoke of oxen to pull the 40 tons or so of weight repesented by the ship and the cargo. If there were 70 oxen pulling the ship I would guess that there would be many more men (slaves and workmen) securing the ship and caring for the oxen.

Over the centuries people thought about digging a canal here, but they did not have the technical ability to do it. In order to create a canal they had to cut the channel through rock. In Roman times (31BC-330AC or CE) emperor Nero used Jewish slave labor and unsuccessfully tried to excavate a canal. Finally in 1893 it was opened. The technology had developed enough to make it possible. Today supertankers will not fit in the canal and it is not as important for tranporting cargo, but it is an amazing sight and smaller ships regularly go through it. (Are you adding dates to the timeline as you go? I am!)

Well, enough about the canal. If you are interested in canals you may want to also check out the Suez Canal, which was completed about the same time as the Corinth Canal.

Today I am going to the elementary school (Demotico Echoleio) to learn about what games the kids play. I will take some pictures and I hope they will demonstrate for me. I am guessing that it will not be a day with a lot of work since tomorrow is their last day and it is a festival.

I think I should have started out this blog by mentioning that I did spend one month in Corinth in October 2005. If you are interested in reading more about it you can find my other blog at http://malahinitx.blogspot.com and look in the archives for October 2005. In October I was communicating with a 5th grade class in Missouri. You will find their picture somewhere there. I have learned a few words of Greek, but not much. I definitely understand much more Spanish than I do Greek. I heard a tourguide giving a tour in Spanish and understood most of what she said! It was a relief after hearing so much Greek and not understanding much beyond “good morning”. It is good that I can get by in English here.

This morning when reading my email I think I came across something interesting about my friends at John Muir School. If I am right they will be participating in the National Educational Computing Conference in their city (San Diego, California) ! Here is what I read. Maybe they can write us more about it in a comment!

Muir School International Projects: Global Schoolhouse and iEARN
[Student Showcase]
Be a global citizen. Share with international partners. Muir School
students demonstrate projects that change their perspectives forever.

Today’s Greek word is Amphora-this is a vessel for holding liquids, used like we would use a bottle. I will put a picture in tomorrow!