Vado a spiaggia con le MEDUSA!!!!!!!

How's it going homies? I'm doing well. I'm leaving to start my trip home on Wednesday (which includes a 2.5 day stop over in London to see friends). It's pretty crazy that this is finally ending, and I'm sad to leave all my new friends in Italy, but I'm incredibly excited to go home and see my family and everyone again. I'll be home on June 13th, so save time for me in your schedule from there on!

The dig is going very well. Last weekend it rained, which meant we couldn't dig on monday. When it rains, the soil gets wet and it is difficult to find everything contained in the layer as well as to seperate the layers from each other. Instead we washed pottery, which was also pretty cool. We got to see what the pottery we'd found actually looks like. It is amazing how many different shades and types there are. I am incredibly proud to say that I can now identify when a sherd of pottery is African cooking wear from Tunisia or Italian glazed pottery or anything else. It's a pretty sweet skill for a geek like me to possess!

The rest of the week we spent digging in US 1017, which is an area we've just started. We couldn't finish 1016, which is supper crammed with amazing finds, because it was too wet.

In other news, the Italians have dubbed me with many, many nicknames, mostly created and initiated by Daniele, my supervisor type on the site. To be fair, we've been calling him Ciccino mio, which is an Italian term of indearment that means 'my little fleshy thing.' While I didn't come up with his nickname, I did shorten it to Cici, which he is not wild about. But anyway, the most common my new nicknames is Jellyfish. I also get Jennifish and Jennifeets. The second two are just sort of random, but the first has a story. I didn't know this story until I'd been called Jellyfish for over a week and the name was totally stuck. I kind of thought it was cute (I still do). So one night, Ivana asked me if I knew why I was called Jellyfish. I said no.

Ivana starts the story by saying "So there's this place called Torre del Lago, which is kind of near Pisa"
Me: "I think I've heard of that."
Ivana: "And in Torre del Lago, there's this club."
Me: "Right. Okay."
Ivana: "And this club is for the gays and the lesbians and their friends"
Me: "Okaaaaay...."
Ivana: "And at this club there's this drag queen."
*So as you can imagine, at this point, I'm really wondering where the name Jellyfish came from and why it's my nickname*
Ivana: "And at the club the drag queen always shouts at some point, 'those of you who agree with the gays and the lesbians are welcome, if you don't agree with us, VADO A SPIAGGIA CON LE MEDUSA!!!!!!!' And that means, 'Go to the beach with the Jellyfish.!!!!!!!!' And so that's why Daniele calls you jellyfish."

And now it makes sense that when Daniele is pretending to be irritated with one of us, he'll tell us to 'G0 to the beach with the jellyfish!' I tend to ask him a lot of questions such as "Daniele, what's this? Is it pottery? Is it glass? Do we keep it?" To which he responds about 90% of the time, "Jellyfish, that is a rock. It is nothing. Throw it away." And after about the 5th time in 10 minutes that I've found a rock and thought it was something exciting, he starts showing me things that are quite obviously rocks and saying "Hey, Jellyfish, what's this?" To which I respond "Ciccino, it's a ROCK! I can tell it's a rock." And he responds, jokingly, "Very good, Jellyfish, you are learning." Although now I don't really show him rocks anymore because I have gotten good at discerning when something is worth keeping and when something is a rock, but the name still sticks. And often people will tell me to go to the beach. Which I should probably take them up on. Perhaps next time I'm sent to the beach, I'll just leave work and go to the beach!

In all seriousness, I do like the nickname, and especially the fact the I'm the only one with a nickname. I've made friends with all the Italian archaeologists leading the dig, and they really want me to come back next year. We have a lot of fun and joke around a lot, but I know they respect me as well. This was evidenced by the fact that Carolina, who is in charge of everything, invited me to go to Rome with her this week. She was giving a presentation about our site and could only bring two people, so she selected myself and Andrew, a Canadian classics major who's also volunteering here. It was an amazing opportunity and I was hugely excited to go.

On Wednesday, we got up early and boarded the train to Rome. We were met at the station by two archaology professors who have been involved with the site and are friends of Carolina. We got coffees and then headed to the conference which was at a university in Roma. There were only about 30 people there, all of whom were working on the ancient city of Populonia and its surroundings. It was all in Italian, but there were powerpoints with pictures, so I understood quite a bit. Everyone presented on the new developments in their area and what they were working on. Carolina went after lunch. There were pictures of me working in her powerpoint, and she pointed me out in the back. After her presentation, vigarous argument and discussion commenced, which I was unable to follow. I later found out that first they discussed whether the villa was abandoned at one point because of an earthquake and then talked about having volunteers and students on site. Carolina was really happy with how it went and said we'd gotten many congratulations from professors and others at the conference. Carolina was one of the younger presenters and is currently working on her PhD, but she is so brilliant and passionate. It's so much fun to work with her.

After the conference, we had a bit of time, so we saw the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Pantheon, all in under 2 hours. Andrew had never been to Rome and was completely floored by the sights. I've been twice, but every time I see the Colosseum, it gets cooler and grander. Seeing it with Carolina was incredibly cool because she'd say things like "This part was mostly excavated during the last 10 years. Remember the professor who met us as the station? He worked on this." SO COOL!

We taxid back to the train station and got pizza and beer for the train ride back. Andrew and I tried to pay, but Carolina wouldn't let us. "You're STUDENTS!" She'd say as she pushed our hands out of the way as we tried to pay. "Yeah, but you just brought us to ROME!" I responded. It was an amazing day.

Okay, this entry is obnoxiously long, so I'll tell you all the rest of my stories in person when I get home. Wednesday, I head to London and then home! I'll perhaps post once more before then.