Uh...kalespera?
Today mostly taken up with killing time, which was nice ^_^ We got shown around the laboratory here first thing, which would probably have been fascinating if I hadn't been half asleep and had understood anything about science-based archaeology. Which I was and didn't. There was something cool to do with dissolving samples in acid and then mixing them with plasma and cooking them at 10 000 degrees until they did interesting things, but I suspect I'm not going to be allowed to play with the plasma machine any time soon. After that I bumbled around the internet for a couple of hours, reading comics blogs (such a goddamned bad and time consuming habit @_@), before deciding that damnit, I was in *Athens*, and it was lame to keep sitting around in my room ^_^ So I went a-wanderin', and managed to find the Plaka, which was nice (being the area of main tourist-ness, though not in *too* tacky a manner. Lots of nice cafes and restaurants, and shops that sell playing cards of pornographic pictures from Greek vases.) Wandered back through Monasteraki, looking at shoe shops as I went. Athens has five million shoe shops, which all sell shoes with ridiculously impractical heels. Heigh ho. I just want a smart shoe that I can scramble about over archaeological sites in, is that so much to ask? Couldn't damn well find one in England though, could I.
And this evening was our first modern Greek class ^_^ Which, considering some of us have masses of ancient Greek and some have none, was partly composed of slightly redundant (for me) moments of 'now, this is what the letter 'r' looks like in our stupid-ass alphabet'. We started learning a few useful phrases though. And it's nice to know the modern pronunciation rules at last too, even if they're completely different from the way we speak ancient Greek and on occasion don't make a goddamn bit of sense. Why *should* 'ai' be pronounced 'eh'?? That's even worse than some stupid-ass English pronunciation, I swear.
Early night tonight, I think. Tomorrow is the south Attika field trip, leaving at 8am. Oy.
Comments
My textual criticism tutor had an extended rant about modern Greek in our tute yesterday; imagine having to learn spelling when almost every vowel sound is identical...
Explains a lot about how manuscripts get corrupted though.
(yes, sometimes I do proper Classics, and sometimes I even find it interesting!)
Glad all is going well; if you can use the plasma lab to somehow transform someone into a superhero you'll manage to combine two interests in one! I can't think of any good archaeological superhero names, though - Nomisma, perhaps (although that would make them neuter...)?
(yes, I have an essay to do...)
Posted by: Andrew | January 18, 2006 11:29 PM