I can't believe that I forgot to mention yesterday that our awesome guys (seriously, they are the best) find joins in the blocks that we missed! There are 5 more blocks total that now join- 2 for one pair and 3 for another. It's really excited and they were pretty happy to help out.
Today we finished the benches, too! Bench one is nicely laid out with lots of different kinds of blocks so that tourists can see what we have (can I use this time to point out that I got really, unreasonably, excited when the first tourists came over to look?). Benches 2-4 are set up with things squished together a little more, but everything is upright and in the correct orientation, and for the most part, all similar stuff is together (columns, Ptolemaic, offering tables, etc). Greg and Nadine have been gone the past two days, so they were pretty floored when they came back and saw everything I had done (I can't take all the credit- I had a little help from Kat now and then, especially with Arabic words I didn't know).
For all of you in America, you know that it's Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving!! Typically, we'd be hopping a bus to Luxor around 2 and heading to Chicago House for dinner. But this year, Chicago House was invited to the governor's mansion and we can't blame them at all for canceling the dinner. So we're doing up Thanksgiving Edfu style! Since our guys love any excuse to have a party, last night we tried to explain typical Thanksgiving fare. They understood the mashed potatoes, though the concept of not putting meat and cheese and spices in them was odd to them. Chef was really excited about the prospect of stealing the turkey from next door for us, but we convinced him chicken would be fine. After much back and forth (2 of the kitchen guys speak almost no English and the 3rd was gone), we finally explained to them the concept of mashed sweet potatoes. In Arabic, "potatoes" is batatis. And "sweet potatoes" is batata. We didn't know the word for sweet potato though, so we kept saying, "It's like a potato, but red."To them, sweet potatoes are not actually potatoes, so they were having a huge problem figuring out what we were talking about. Yes, the words sound super similar, but for some reason, they didn't get it until suddenly a light-bulb went off in Said's head, he ran to the fridge, and came running back with a sweet potato! They were going to put it in dessert (I know, it's odd), so instead they saved it for tonight. Again, they were really confused why we wanted 2 kinds of bland puree veggies, but we assured them it would be ok. Greg even picked up some marshmallows while in Cairo yesterday so that Lindsey and I could teach the Frenchies the weirdness that is... whatever you call the sweet potato and marshmallow dish. No cranberries here in Egypt, but we're using cranberries as a substitute. So dinner tonight should be: chicken, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, some other kind of veggie (b/c chef doesn't consider either of the starches a veggie), bread, and pomegranate. I have no idea what dessert will be, but I requested kunaffa. Not American, I know, but it's not like we're going to get pumpkin or pecan pie. I'll let you know tomorrow how it turned out.
Tomorrow is our day off, but it'll be busy with all the last-minute things. We have a team from Aswan coming to visit our site, so we'll go out in the morning and show them around. The lead lady is someone whose work I'll be using a lot in my dissertation, so it'll be nice to meet her. In the afternoon, we need to clean the house to prepare for our departure and start packing up some of the supplies. Plus, this will be the last time some of us will be together until next season, so Valerie and I need to sit down and discuss the pottery that came out of Lindsey's First Intermediate Period (she's doing the other pottery and I get the bread moulds. It's actually pretty exciting because we found some things that have HUGE possibilities for being really important, so that's really cool for my work).
So, the big thing I'm thankful for today is that we have such an awesome team... and that we get to leave soon. haha.
Today we finished the benches, too! Bench one is nicely laid out with lots of different kinds of blocks so that tourists can see what we have (can I use this time to point out that I got really, unreasonably, excited when the first tourists came over to look?). Benches 2-4 are set up with things squished together a little more, but everything is upright and in the correct orientation, and for the most part, all similar stuff is together (columns, Ptolemaic, offering tables, etc). Greg and Nadine have been gone the past two days, so they were pretty floored when they came back and saw everything I had done (I can't take all the credit- I had a little help from Kat now and then, especially with Arabic words I didn't know).
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| Doing my best "Barker's Beauties" impression in front of bench 1 to show off my finished (for this season) block yard! Heck yeah! |
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| The other side of the walkway looks so empty without 350 blocks strewn about. |
For all of you in America, you know that it's Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving!! Typically, we'd be hopping a bus to Luxor around 2 and heading to Chicago House for dinner. But this year, Chicago House was invited to the governor's mansion and we can't blame them at all for canceling the dinner. So we're doing up Thanksgiving Edfu style! Since our guys love any excuse to have a party, last night we tried to explain typical Thanksgiving fare. They understood the mashed potatoes, though the concept of not putting meat and cheese and spices in them was odd to them. Chef was really excited about the prospect of stealing the turkey from next door for us, but we convinced him chicken would be fine. After much back and forth (2 of the kitchen guys speak almost no English and the 3rd was gone), we finally explained to them the concept of mashed sweet potatoes. In Arabic, "potatoes" is batatis. And "sweet potatoes" is batata. We didn't know the word for sweet potato though, so we kept saying, "It's like a potato, but red."To them, sweet potatoes are not actually potatoes, so they were having a huge problem figuring out what we were talking about. Yes, the words sound super similar, but for some reason, they didn't get it until suddenly a light-bulb went off in Said's head, he ran to the fridge, and came running back with a sweet potato! They were going to put it in dessert (I know, it's odd), so instead they saved it for tonight. Again, they were really confused why we wanted 2 kinds of bland puree veggies, but we assured them it would be ok. Greg even picked up some marshmallows while in Cairo yesterday so that Lindsey and I could teach the Frenchies the weirdness that is... whatever you call the sweet potato and marshmallow dish. No cranberries here in Egypt, but we're using cranberries as a substitute. So dinner tonight should be: chicken, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, some other kind of veggie (b/c chef doesn't consider either of the starches a veggie), bread, and pomegranate. I have no idea what dessert will be, but I requested kunaffa. Not American, I know, but it's not like we're going to get pumpkin or pecan pie. I'll let you know tomorrow how it turned out.
Tomorrow is our day off, but it'll be busy with all the last-minute things. We have a team from Aswan coming to visit our site, so we'll go out in the morning and show them around. The lead lady is someone whose work I'll be using a lot in my dissertation, so it'll be nice to meet her. In the afternoon, we need to clean the house to prepare for our departure and start packing up some of the supplies. Plus, this will be the last time some of us will be together until next season, so Valerie and I need to sit down and discuss the pottery that came out of Lindsey's First Intermediate Period (she's doing the other pottery and I get the bread moulds. It's actually pretty exciting because we found some things that have HUGE possibilities for being really important, so that's really cool for my work).
So, the big thing I'm thankful for today is that we have such an awesome team... and that we get to leave soon. haha.
