Just too much to tell

Well, I'm a little sleepy right now, its been soooo busy and I think I'm coming down with a cold. I find it somewhat offensive that I'm on an island in the Mediterranean in the middle of August and I caught a cold. Sigh.

But I've been keeping ridiculously busy travelling around the island and seeing all kinds of things. Today we went to the Hypogeum, which is a giant underground temple/burial complex dating to around 5000 years ago. The islands of Malta are famous for the megalithic (mega=big, lithic=stone) temple complexes. There are a lot of theories about what the temple areas were used for, they're kind of like strange stonehenge constructions (but they're about 1000 years older than Stonehenge). The hypogeum seems to be the same kind of construction, but it was carved out underground instead of using huge stone blocks above the surface. We also met up with a professor from the University of Malta who showed us some of the different settlements in a valley on the north side of the island. In about two hours we saw a prehistoric temple, a Roman apidary (bee keeping place), a prehistoric tombs field, a Greek/Roman house carved out of the cliffside and a British road and farming system. Those are the bits that I can remember right now at least.

Yesterday after doing a walking survey along the cliffs by the ocean and visiting two more of the megalithic temples we went to Valetta, the capital city. The city is heavily fortified from the middle ages when the Knights of St John were occupying the island and defending it against Turkish invasions. The capital city of Valetta was one of the world's first planned cities and its surrounded by massive fortresses and walls. By climbing down behind one of the major fortresses and following a narrow tunnel from the water's surface we managed to get into the fortress of St Elmo which isn't usually open to the public. We couldn't stay long though because of the really loud guard dog. Never actually saw the dog itself, but the sound was definitely intimidating enough to make me leave in a hurry. Makes one think about getting one of those alarms that just sounds like a mean dog, thats probably all the security you need...

And after Valetta we drove across the island to the north side and took a boat over to Comino, one of the smaller islands. Malta is the main island of the group with Gozo and Comino being the next two largest islands. There are a number of smaller islands, but since they're just small rocks sticking out of the ocean, no one lives on them. Comino is really small too (1.5x2 km) and only has one fortress and a single hotel on it. I don't think anyone actually lives there year round. But the island is famous for its Blue Lagoon - its supposed to be some of the bluest water in the Mediterranean. It was absolutely gorgeous, totally blue with white sand and surrounded by dark limestone cliffs. Since it was pretty late in the day there weren't too many tourists either. Usually the place is so packed that you have to jump over people just to get off the boat at the dock.

After coming back from Comino we went to Bugibba to a Chinese restaurant. There was a beer festival at the University over the weekend really close to the house that we're staying at. I got a free voucher for the Chinese food restaurant from one of the drinking contests. I feel that I should point out that I did not win the contest, so my family can put their mind to rest about what I've been up to. I got a secondary prize instead. But the restaurant was absolutely fantastic, though it was really empty. The owner is an incredibly sweet woman from Beijing who was so terribly nice that I almost felt bad using my voucher instead of paying full price for one of the best meals I've had in awhile. The compromise was to leave her a ridiculously large tip instead. So, I suppose it all worked out.

I've been doing all kinds of other things since my last post, but it would take waaaayy too long to write about all of it, so you'll all have to wait to hear the stories in person or in a later post. I'm going to Msida tomorrow to visit the catacombs of St Agatha and St Paul and the torture museum. I've been told that the museum has authentic sounds and smells to go along with the atmosphere, so I'll have to let everyone know how that works out... I'll be here in Malta until Monday or Tuesday and then crossing over to Italy. I went to Sicily on Tuesday for the day already - I managed to climb more than halfway up Mt Etna! The cable car was 40 euro to ride to the top so we attempted to climb. It didn't totally work out, but I'll wait until I can add the pictures from that little adventure.

From a tiny rock in the Mediterranean...

Alright, I'm stealing a good idea from a friend. Since I'm staying here in Europe for another year, I thought it would be good to keep everybody updated on what I'm doing (I wouldn't want you all to forget me!). Since I just got to Malta, I figured this would be a good time to get started. The last couple weeks in Holland were crazy since I had meetings with program coordinators, supervisors, professors, housing agencies, etc.

I moved out from the student house that I was living in for most of the last year in June (much to the housing company's annoyance - I'm still happy about winning the argument to get my deposit back. They overcharge and treat the residents terribly, I don't feel too bad about scamming them a bit, but thats another story). I've been living for the past two months in a friend's room since she was away on fieldwork in Italy for most of the summer. But she was coming back and I needed to find a new place. After checking the internet for listings and calling around, I decided to go with a housing agency (not the same one as before of course) and got a new room two weeks ago. I painted it last weekend - mostly a pale white-green colour, but one wall is bright spring green and one wall is dark violet. I love it! I figured I'd only be here for another year so I could do whatever I wanted and not have to live with it forever. Don't know how my landlord will feel about my colour selections, but since the room was pink-brown with one hunter green wall before, I can't imagine the huisbaas is too uptight about a coat of paint.

I've finally got most of my program arranged for next year. Depending on politics and my class schedule I'll probably be going to Jordan in October/November. Yay! More fieldwork! I'm looking forward to it and hoping that it will work out with my schedule for classes. I'm going back to Canada for two weeks at the beginning of September too, just before the start of classes. I booked the ticket about two hours before I left to come here - to Malta!

The trip started a little rocky, the plane was delayed by almost an hour because of a late arrival. Most of the discount airlines here in Europe seem to be notoriously late. I feel for them, but its really getting bad when they post on their website that "60% of flights on time in the last week". Doesn't seem like a reasonable thing to be bragging about, but hey! Its cheap!

So, I got to Malta at night, which I was a little sorry about. I wish I could have seen the islands from the air. Since I'm driving back to Holland I won't get the chance on the way back either. Oh well. The house here is nice though, even though its in a run-down neighbourhood. Not a bad neighbourhood mind you, just run down. That seems to describe a large percentage of Malta in general though. The island seems to be one giant city that is slowly disintegrating. The policy seems to be that someone will build a house, then if they move out no one will buy it and the property will just be abandoned. Thus, there is a proliferation of abandoned buildings absolutely everywhere.

There are also some spectacular fortresses around the harbours and farther inland. Yesterday, we started with our fieldwork by mapping and drawing some of the tower forts built around the coast of the island. There's a series of small towers that were used to monitor the ships around the island during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In the afternoon we went to one of the larger forts, Fort Ricasoli (I have no idea if I'm spelling that right). The fort itself was locked up tight with welded iron gates in front of all the possible entrances. However, where there's a will... We swam around the outer edge of the fortress in the harbour or climbed down a conveniently placed rope (depending on whether fear of drowning or falling was most pronounced in each individual - I swam) to get to the far side of the fortress. From there, we found an entrance that only had a small board in front, easily moved and bam! we were in! The most interesting thing about Fort Ricasoli is that both Gladiator and Troy were filmed in the fort. There were a few props and set elements still lying around the fort. In one small building we found pages from the Troy script and administration- schedules, phone numbers of the contractors in Malta, etc. Unfortunately, we were asked (very nicely) to leave by the "security guard". A Maltese guy who used to work at the fortress, but now just keeps tourists out on his own initiative. Very strange, but we thought it would be better to humour him since we knew we probably weren't supposed to be in there. Getting out was a million times easier than getting in, but I wish we could have stayed a little longer. The guy was telling us about where the coliseum and palaces had been in the movie sets. It would have been really amazing to look around some more. By the way, it seems that they're going to start filming on a sequel to Gladiator next month, I think its probably going to be shot here too...

At night it rained. I've been looking forward to coming here for weeks from Holland since I'm getting a little tired of the neverendingrain! It was really brief and dried up almost immediately, but it was still a bit rude I thought. It hasn't rained in the entire month that the rest of the field school people have been here, but the day that I arrive... Oh well. Didn't really matter and we went to Paceville anyways. Paceville is one of those Mediterranean island club districts that are so famous (or infamous, whatever your pleasure). It was a good night, we came back to the house at 4:15. I don't think I need to go into too much detail though. ;-)

Today I went to Valetta and browsed the market streets for awhile. I bought myself a hot pink air mattress! and lime green goggles. Nothing like neon! Its becoming disturbingly prevalent across Europe, although the Dutch seem to have taken to it even more than any other country. Its really scary when you come across neon witch shoes with sparkly heart patterns and this is perfectly acceptable fashion. Sigh. I'm wearing flipflops and hiking sandals pretty much ad nauseum. There's only so low I can sink for the sake of chic. I've adopted pink and green clothing as viable colour choices, I can't go much farther than that.

Well, I'm off to the beach now. Its about a million degrees outside, but the air conditioning in the internet cafe is giving me goose bumps. I need to go outside to warm up. It seems somewhat unnatural to say that though. Hopefully I'll get back here soon and post again. We're going to the other island tomorrow (Gozo) and there are beer and wine festivals starting around the island over the weekend. I'm sure I'll be able to keep myself entertained... Later!