Today was the first day of our actual field school. We spent about a day on a bus coming from Tirana to Butrint. It was a pretty tough ride because there was no air conditioning, I think everyone passed out because we were just so sweltering. Today we were supposed to start in on the human remains but politics seems to be the name of the game here as it is everywhere.
Butrint is beautiful and there is only around 8% of Albania that has been excavated and it is filled with wonderful artifacts. There are artifacts here from Greece, Rome and many more. We are near a great site and will be analyzing remains dug up from burials near the forum here. It's amazing.
But politics have caused us problems. There is a man who has come to power in the park where the site is, he will be labeled Toad Man. Toad Man controls the remains. Toad Man wants more power over the people who work in the park, specifically anthropologists/archeologists. He wants bribes. My professors don't want to pay bribes. Toad Man is powerful with many friends and so negotiations with him have been tough. But finally we were able to obtain the key to the remains. Sadly the remains had been tampered with and seemed not the way the professor had left them. We also couldn't get our hands on the newer set of remains that had been excavated recently by the people digging in the forum.
The country has so many ruins of Roman and Greek cities. It is amazing to watch the layers unfold and see where architecture changed and how so much is uncovered. As this is my first foreign country I had a much different experience with the ruins, which are mostly free to roam over, the back of the theater being the only thing that you really can't climb on.
After our long wait to obtain the bones I headed into town with Caitlyn, Sarah and Sarai. We were driven by the son of one of the owners of the hotel we are staying at, a charismatic young Albanian man named Alex. He loves to flirt but is a good person, he loves his family and his homeland, he fought in the war over government. He also is part Greek and spends much time there. He didn't just take us to Saranda so we could go on the computer in the internet cafe, he also took us to a sweets shop, to get alcohol and then drove us to a historical castle and took pictures, it was all in all very nice, I sadly neglected to bring my camera so I had no pictures of my own from that time except a picture I took on my phone.
The first rain storm happened. It was quite unusual to see. Albania's landscape is flat plains surrounded by mountains that are impossibly tall. We watched the rain approach across the plain but the amount that rained here was really quite a small amount and passed quickly, lots of lightning and thunder however.
This country is beautiful and I am so excited to be here.
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