Day 13: Archeological Dig Site/Movie and hang out camp day

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

This morning our team went to an archeological dig site in Suhareke. They haven't started digging this season though so the site was more empty than normal. The site was about a 20 minute ride on a bus and about a 1/2 mile to a mile "hike" down this road and through the woods to the actual site.

Here are some of the pictures of the castle (9th century). An archeologist spoke and Berat translated.  

The basics:

The castle was surrounded by two natural barriers that were cliffs that no one could get up while the other two were physical walls around the castle. The walls were 6 feet thick and they haven't reached the foundations so they don't know how high they are. However, on one part of the castle they have found the floor. They have found three different, non-connected structures within the castle, but they don't know what they are yet so they call them object a, b, and c. Lots of people lived in the castle because of the amount of pottery found. Some rocks were held together by mud, while others were held together by a very basic form of cement. 

Archeologist and man who found the site on his land

I'll say that makes for a natural barrier and boundary around the castle!

Ben blowing a huge dandelion

This is our mayor/governor friend.

The other site we got to go to was a church from the 9th century. The archeologist said the church walls were painted and the building was very elaborate which signifies that for its time the church was very important. The length to which the inhabitants adorned the church showed the immense wealth of the Roman citizens (sentence created by Morgan). Later after the church had fallen out of use, it was converted into a crypt and so far they have found 12 bodies at this site. They also found various objects in the area that date back to the time of Justinian.

Gammy and Parker

Cam's classic face...Love this face. 

Kyle is always behind the camera- like father like son. They are so much alike.

coin

cross found in the church

This 30 year old lady could have possibly died of disease. She had all her teeth so she is thought to be wealthy.
We will call her Eunice for fun. 

Eunice's bones 

We will call them strange... oh our sons! Look in the background--The mayor gave us maps.

amazed by the maps

sons with their mom

Family picture-- excluding Ben in the background looking at his map to find his family.

Is the bus stuck?

When we left, some of the team went to the market, while others went to eat. For lunch, Berat, Valdete, Morgan, Evan, Adam, Jeremy, and I ate at Te Endriti. It may be one of our new favorite lunch places because it has something DIFFERENT! We are pretty tired of the same things every day. The waiters know us at all our favorite restaurants because we go there every day or every other day. We went into this trip knowing we'd eat a lot of the same things over and over though. It's not been bad, but we all have decided where or what we will have for our first meal when we get home! Kosovo doesn't have food that is grilled. Instead most of the meat or main food items are fried or baked in tons of oil. At this little restaurant, we got this thing called a dyner (Do-ner) and it's a huge breaded thing filled with chicken that was covered in some sauce. You could get lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers on it as well. It was huge but I couldn't stop eating it! 

Afterwards Jeremy, Morgan and I then went to silversmith shop called Illyria. Much thought was put into what we wanted but we finally picked out a ring. He will be making it by hand and should have it ready Sunday.

Our original plan for the day was for the whole camp to go to the dig site, but there were too many people, so just our team went. Since our plans had to change, we decided we'd go to the pool after the dig site. However, we had to move camp again to an even later time because the students had to go to school and get their report cards. After a few adjustments to the schedule, we decided to do a movie. The movie that was chosen was Inception, but about 10 minutes into the movie we lost the attention of the students because we couldn't get subtitles and the English was a little above some of their heads. In the end, we ended up letting the students go out to ice cream in their color teams. A girl named Lona asked Morgan to go and then said she could invite friends so I went to Oxxo with their team and other people (Emily, Cam, and Kyle). We had lots of fun talking about what we would do with a million dollars, what are families were like, favorites, and other things about our lives. My favorite part of the conversation was when we talked to Kada or Adda (Ah-Duh) about her report card. As a teacher I'm extremely interested in things like these. Their grades are from 1-5, where 5 is the best. A few of the girls had all 5s some got a 3 or 4 for a subject though. They have 8+ classes depending on the track (science or social science). There are two high schools here and one of them is a technical school. The most interesting thing about their report cards is that they can see the grades of other people in their class. I asked them if this was good or bad and they all said good, but all of them did fairly well. I think it may motivate some, but they talked about how their parents could see the grades and how their child did compared to everyone else. The ones that didn't have good grades also missed a lot of school or skipped. hm.. that reminds me of why some of my students have low grades. Their school continues to amaze me. They have so many classes and they are on a rotating schedule. I still don't completely understand it, but they don't have the same classes every day. All I can relate it to is an alternating schedule or like a college schedule where some classes are 3 hours a week and others are longer or shorter. I've heard that they don't have homework either.

We did our manuscript study with the leaders and then all the Georgia leaders went to Te Endriti for dinner! Yes, it was my second time, but we got some of our team to try it too and they liked it. We finished the night with manuscript and some fun times with Sami, Jared, and the Foresters. I can't believe this is almost over.