Malahini in Greece and Turkey

I was going to write about toys next, but I had the most exciting dinner last night and I need to tell you about it and show you some pictures.

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 figure that you may have LOTS to read if you are trying to keep up with my blog since the Internet was down several days last week. So, today’s entry will be mercifully short.

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!

Now back to a few days ago when we were talking about clay. The next step is very important. When clay dries it is very breakable. It just turns into powder like the clay that they first dug from the ground. In order to become hard the clay must be cooked for a long time at a very hot temperature. This is done in an oven called a kiln. Guy is having a kiln built in his backyard. In the picture you can see John building the kiln.

The kiln is built with three kinds of bricks. The first is a very hard firing brick. These are the yellow ones. They can withstand really high temperatures. The whole inside of the kiln is lined with these. The next is a similar brick that can withstand high temperatures, but it is wedge-shaped and will be put over the whole top of the kiln. The third type is the red brick with a honeycomb center. Because they have air holes they hold the heat in. They are good insulators.

In the picture you see wooden forms on the top forming an arch. These are just supports for the bricks and will be taken out when the bricks are all in place. This is a long oven. The pots are placed in the back of the oven and the fire is made in the front. It takes two days for the pots to fire in the kiln and two days for the kiln to cool down enough so that you can go and get the pots out. Once the pots are fired they are really hard. They can break, sort of like glass, but they will not just fall apart.

By doing this Guy and Phil are learning about the particular clay here in Corinth and the process used by potters to make all of the shards (pieces of pots) that they are finding in the excavations. Clay can be different colors and the clay in Corinth has sort of a yellow color to it. Archaeologists can look at a shard of clay and tell you where it probably is from! In the ancient world pottery was made in certain places and exported (taken different places in ships and sold), so you often find pottery from another location here in Corinth. The clay in Corinth is not the best quality. It was used for cooking pots and that sort of thing, but the more beautiful items were made somewhere else and imported here.
Susie asked how far the dig site is from normal civilization. Good question. It is interesting, but the village of Corinth that we are living in is actually surrounding the archaeological site, so it is about a 5 minutes walking distance from where we stay. I volunteer at the museum and actually am staying in a little house on the archaeological site. The elementary school that I visit is right across the street from the current excavation. Because they have been digging here for over 100 years there is a whole lot of area that was excavated in the past and is now open to visitors and tourists. I have made a map to sort of show you the layout here. It is not accurate and there are lots of details missing, but you can see where we are staying, the village, the dig, the museum and the school. It is all within close walking distance. The dig is called Panagea Field.

I haven’t been able to put up blogs postings since Tuesday, but I keep writing. The Internet connection at the Corinth Dig went down on Tuesday sometime. Each day the repairmen were supposed to come, but they have not been here yet. It is Friday morning and so I am really hoping that they will come before the weekend. [Friday afternoon I was finally able to post this]
Yesterday I went into New Corinth to an Internet Café in order to upload two days worth. The Internet Café was pretty nice. In October I went to one that was more like a bar. It was dark, smokey and loud. This one was more like a café with computers around the room. Unfortunately the site where I put my blog (Edublogs.org) was down yesterday! So, I was able to read my email, but not to post the blog.

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!

[note: I think this is out of order because I am trying to catch up on posting!]

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.

Clay
Did you know that clay is actually just a certain kind of mud that you can find in the ground? Yesterday I learned all kinds of things about clay that I am going to tell you about.

Some of the archaeologists here are extremely interested in clay. I bet you wonder why. Well, it is because when clay is fired in a kiln it becomes very hard and all through time people have used clay to make cooking pots and all kinds of things. There are the things that archaeologists find a great deal of and by looking at them they can tell how old they are and learn about life centuries ago.

Some of the archaeologists here decided that to become even more knowledgeable about clay they could make their own and from the clay make tiles, and other things, fire them in a kiln and learn about the whole process. Here are some pictures of what they are doing:
1. Phil explained to me about how clay is found in the ground. After it rains you can sometimes see cracks in the earth. The ground in that area might be clay. Guy Sanders, Phil and others go out and collect a bunch of this clay from the ground. This clay is actually from Acrocorinth (shown in the picture above). This picture shows how it looks when they first get it. It is sort of like a rock.
2. Next they break the clay into small pieces and dust by hammering it. This makes it ready for dissolving it in They put the crushed clay into these old limestone tubs and add water and then let it sit for a day or two and let it melt.
3. When it has melted it feels like clay. You can stick your hands in and feel how it holds together. When enough of the water has evaporated the clay can be wedged.

4. Wedging is when they take a bunch of the clay and throw it down 40 times to get out all of the air and to help it really stick together. After the clay is wedged it is ready to be made into something.

5. The day I visited Phil and Guy decided to do something else with some of the clay that was too wet to wedge. They put it all into a form to make tiles. The clay will dry in the form and then they can cut it into four squares that will become floor tiles.
6. These tiles will be very breakable until they are fired in a kiln. Check back tomorrow for more information and pictures of the kiln!

The Internet in Old Corinth at the archaeogical dig has been down. I wasn’t able to send in an entry to the blog yesterday. I am sorry. It is still down today, but I am visiting an Internet Café in New Corinth (the modern part of Corinth). To get here I took about a 15-minute bus ride. It costs 3 euro an hour to use the Internet. Can you please figure out what that is in dollars and write it into a comment?

The weather here has been unusual (that is what everyone says!). It has not been too hot and has been overcast and rainy a few days. We are not getting tan or sunburned. Steve has been wearing his hat at the excavation (see an earlier post in the blog), but I have not used mine.

Hi Everyone! I am back after taking a day off and going to Athens. Monday was a holiday here for Pentecost. It was one of those holidays where schools and government agencies close, but stores are open and most things seem to go on normally.

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!

By now you are wondering what I do every day and if I do different things on the weekend. I am wondering the same thing! I am not sure what we are doing this weekend. I can tell you about my daily schedule though:
At 7 am we go to the diningroom and have breakfast. Everyone is very quiet at breakfast. I will have to put a picture with people later. It is Sunday, so no one is in the dining room. At 7:30 everyone else gets up from the table and goes to work at the excavation. At the excavation they meet some Greek workmen who do the actual digging. All of the archeologists (doctoral students mostly) participate by writing notes and keeping track of what is being dug up. They also make decisions about where to dig next. There is a head archaeologist who supervises everything and makes the big decisions.

While they are working at the excavation I go and connect my computer to the Internet and send up my blog and the pictures. Then I go and volunteer in the museum. I have been taking digital pictures of everything they have on display in the museum and making a book that will be a record of what is there in digital form. By the way, what they have on display is only about 10% of what the museum has in it!

We all work until about 1:30 p.m. (with a break about 10 a.m.) and then it is time for lunch. We meet back in the dining room where the table is set and food is ready. After eating it is time for pottery reading. This means that all of the archaeologists meet in the pottery shed and look through all of the pottery shards that they collected that day. They sort them and decide what might be worth keeping. This is very difficult work and takes lots of practice. When they are done with that they go and record what they found that day into a computer. This takes until about 5 pm.

I took this picture of pottery shards to show you what the archaeologists are working with. I think I would have a very difficult time sorting this in any way that made sense.

During this time I sometimes do more volunteer work, write my blog for the next day, take pictures, visit with pot painters in the village, or read. I brough a drawing pad and pencils, so I might go and find something to sketch or take a long walk. So far I have not done these things yet. Then at 7 it is time for hors-devours and at 7:30 is dinner.

On Saturday the day starts a little later with breakfast at 7:30, work until 12:30 and then after lunch everyone is free. Some people travel, others stay at the site. Usually the work-week starts again on Monday morning, but this week Monday is a holiday. It is called Pentecost and is 50 days from Easter. It is an important church holiday, which is why we don’t celebrate it except in church in the USA. Greece is a Christian Orthodox country and celebrates religious holidays. They even have crosses and icons in their school classrooms.

It is Friday while I am writing, so it is a good time to have a blog on the topic of food. I have already mentioned proeno (prounounced pro-ye-NO). This is breakfast, but most Greeks do not eat much at this time. They definitely have Greek coffee (coffee grounds boiled right in the water) and maybe a piece of toast. Their real breakfast is at 10. It is a break. This is the one that consists of pasteries like I have in this picture. People often also drink Greek coffee again or have juice. It is a major recess in school and a break at work, but not like our lunch. In my experience this is a time when people bring something special to share if it is their birthday or name day (a day that the saint you are named after is celebrated).

Traditionally Greeks eat their main meal (It sounded like messmeriano when Maria said it.) at 2 or 2:30 because many of them have a long break from work at that time and that is when school is over. This is changing since many people cannot take a long time off to cook and eat in the middle of the day. This is usually a hot, cooked meal with salad and they often eat dessert (at least whenever I have been there!). Dessert can be pudding, ice cream, cookies, brownies, fruit or backlava.

Traditionally dinner (It sounded like thibno when Maria said it.) is a light meal in the evening about 8:30 or later. More modern Greeks who have different schedules have adopted the western idea of having their main meal at dinner, but they still eat later than we do in the US. Paniotis told me that sometimes he eats a heavy lunch and a lighter dinner and sometimes a light lunch and a heavy dinner. It depends on what food he is eating. Someone from John Muir asked about Giros and YES they do have Giros. Other food that is common is Souvlaki (meat cooked on a skewer), Mousakka (an eggplant casserole), Tzatziki (something you dip your bread in with thick plain yogurt, cucumbers, dill and olive oil-I like it). Something I do not really like, but many Greeks do is octopus! sHere is a picture that I took on my last visit of octopus. One of the best kinds of food here is grilled meat.

Greek Food.com can tell you more about Greek Food and is probably much more accurate than I am.

Your Greek word for the day is frappe (frapp-AY). It is made of Nescafe (instant coffee) and blended to create the foam on top. It is a cold drink that people usually drink with lots of sugar.

Greeks seem also to like snacks. There are several kiosks like the one in the picture in town that have lots of cookies and candy and ice cream.

Well, you asked for it and you got it. This is what I learned. Many archaeologists think…well, not many archaeologists…actually, it was one tour guide. So, one tour guide claims that this figurine proves that the ancient Corinthians did indeed have peeps. He can’t figure out whether this is an actual peep or a terracotta replica because the texture would be about the same by now. Also, we do not have any textual evidence, so we don’t know what flavor it would have been. The archaeological site has drawers full of these!
My friends at John Muir School in San Diego asked about the house we are living in. That was a very interesting question to research. It turns out that the house was built in 1925 by a Mr. Shear who was the head of the excavation for several years. They call it the Shear house. It has a very long and colorful history and so I will tell you one story now and if you are interested you can ask for more. Mr. Shear lived in the house until 1940 because of WWII. Nazis occupied the house! Mr. Shear had been storing lots of the artifacts that he found in the house in wooden crates. It was cold in the winter so that Nazis dumped out the crates and burned the wood in the fireplace! After the war the artifacts were collected again, but lots of information about them (their context) was totally lost because they were no longer in the crates with other things found in the same place and time. After that the house was used for storage until sometime in the 1960’s when the conservator of the museum (like Nicole, see June 9th) decided to restore the house and live in it. She lived in it until fairly recently when she retired. Now it is used to house visitors like us.
While I was looking for a picture of the house to see how old it is I came across this picture of workers at the excavation in 1896. What a cool picture! At Corinth they have found things from about 6000 BC to the present.

Yesterday I told you that I was going to visit the Elementary School (Demotico Echoleio) here so that I could ask some of the questions that you have been asking. I tried to do that, but no one was at the school. I went again today and they were all there! Yesterday was a teacher workday and so there was no school. Their last day of school is next Wednesday, June 14th and they are having a game day and I am invited. I asked them some of the questions you sent me. It turns out that they do learn English in school. They didn’t talk to me in English (or understand me), but they showed me the workbooks that they use. The class I visit is only Third Grade and so they are just starting to learn. Their teacher speaks English and translates for me. Next week when I go again they are going to tell me about some of the games they play and I will take more pictures. Today they did give me the answer “Play Station”. They are all going on a field trip on Friday and Monday is a school holiday.

Word of the day Oinochoe Here is a picture of one. Aha! This must mean pitcher. The most exciting part about this is that a miniature one from the classical period or earlier (before 400 BC) was found in Steve’s trench yesterday!