Questions from Wisconsin

I got these questions from students in Wisconsin. Next time you ask questions send me a picture to represent you (if you don't want me to post a real picture of your class you can send your logo or something) and I will post it!

QUESTION Have you seen anything valuable yet?
MY ANSWER What is your definition of something valuable? I have seen lots of things that are extremely valuable to me like the mud baths in Pamukkale and all of the different and interesting people. But I think that you probably mean valuable like being worth a lot of money. Most of what I have seen looks like rocks and rubble to me, but to an archaeologist even a broken pot piece is valuable. The early archaeologists only wanted to find complete pots and big things like statues. They threw away anything that did not look interesting. Now archaeologists keep just about everything they can identify. When they do find something that is valuable it is moved to a museum so that it doesn’t get stolen from the archaeological site. I was amazed to hear that even big blogs of stone that are carved are stolen. Does this picture look like it is valuable? At the end of the post I will put a picture of what it looked like after it was cleaned up!

QUESTION Who build the theater and terrace houses?
MY ANSWER People in the first century (that is up to year 100) built the theater and the terrace houses. Actually, slaves probably did the building. You can see that there are huge stones, so it really took a lot of workers to move them and put them in the right places. Very rich people could hire artists to paint the walls or to carve statues and make mosaics on the floor. It is easier to find evidence of what the rich people did. We know that very rich people owned two of the seven terrace houses by other evidence. We think that many slaves just slept on the floor in their master’s back rooms. They probably didn’t own much.

QUESTION Why can you hear in the theater when there are no microphones?
MY ANSWER The theater has amazing acoustics. The way it is built the sound on the stage in the front goes up and out so that the audience can hear. Here is an experiment that you can do. First stand in a line and have someone stand several yards away from you and talk in a normal voice. Can everyone hear? Now do the same thing only instead of a line have everyone stand in a semi-circle around the person who is talking. Is it better?

The reason that this works is that sounds come in waves through the air (like in cartoons coming out of a speaker. As the sound travels it gets quieter. In a curved theater the sound is trapped and can only go up from the central stage. It is amazing that someone can stand on the stage and still be heard by people in the last row! Here is a picture of a performance of an opera in one of these theaters called Epidaurus (this one is in Greece).

And now for the valuable item that looked like something to throw away. When it is carefully cleaned by an expert it looks like this:

Skyping with Vermont

I am still in Israel and I just finished talking with a group of teacher in Vermont who were taking a course on using Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. It was amazing to be able to connect with them. It was short, but exciting. I hope it motivates these teachers to try something in the future. They had to guess where I was calling from, so I used these pictures to give them some clues. The bread and butter that is hard to see here has Hebrew writing.

There was one thing that I wish I had answered differently. Someone there asked about the reaction to Obama’s speech.

I was struck in Turkey at how interested in Obama many people we talked to were. I told them how in Turkey I talked to a guy from Zimbabwe who is studying in Oslo, Norway and was on the trip to learn about archaeology in Turkey. He was very positive and hopeful in his comments, In Turkey the comments were all really positive.

In Israel it is different though and I actually have not talked to any Israelis yet, so I cannot honestly answer the question, but now I will make that one thng to explore while I am here. My American archaeologist friends told me that many Israelis are worried about how the Obama foreign policy to Israel will work out. They do not like his middle name and are concerned that he is really Arab. There are also others who do like Obama. It is complicated, like everything.

The Skype conference was fun! I would do that again! Anyone else want to Skype? If so, just comment her or email me at janicef@jfriesen.net.

Skyping from Israel

Tomorrow evening if everything goes as planned I will be Skyping with Bob Dunn and two other colleagues of his as they present to a class in Vermont (I think of other teachers....) about how to use Skype in the classroom. I am very excited about this and hope it works out. Bob, if you read this comment adding your home email address because I lost it!

I decided to take down the comment area on the right column. It was making the blog download really slowly and I think it is confusing to have two different places to comment. If you want to comment please click on the word comment below the blog post. These always have a number next to them (0 comments) for example to show how many comments there are. I am looking forward to hearing from you all.

THIS IS AN ADVENTURE! WE ARE HAVING FUN!

If I say it often enough will it be true? The trip becomes longer and longer

On the morning of Tuesday, June 9th at 9:45 am we left the house for the airport in Austin, TX. Our flight was supposed to be taking off at 11:30. Unfortunately when we got there we learned that there had been a lightening storm in Newark, NJ where we were supposed to be transferring for our Athens flight and so everything was delayed. After a long wait in line an attendent rerouted our flight so that now we went from Austin-Newark-Frankfurt-Athens.

That change made it so that we now missed our flight from Athens to Samos and therefore the ferry to Turkey (Kushadisi).

As I write it is 9:45 pm on Wednesday, June 10, 2009. It has now been more than 24 hours since that time and I am sitting with my foot up on Steve’s lap because it is swollen. We are in an overnight ferry on our way to Samos from Athens. There is a Jackie Chan movie playing on a screen at the front of the room in English with Greek subtitles and I can hear cell phones going off, people speaking Greek (I assume that is the language they are speaking) and the rumble of the engine on the ferry.

All along the way I have been collecting pictures and sounds of my experience. I am posting them here for your interest and amusement. We still have the all night ferry ride, a taxi from one side of Samos to the other, another 2 hour ferry to Kushadisi, and finally another taxi drive to our hotel and finally a bed. The professor says, “I owe you one.”

Today is the Day!

Hard to believe, but the day is here! Our house-sitter is coming at 9:45 and taking us to the airport. My carry ons are scattered over the floor. Our flight to Newark, NJ leaves at 11. We fly from there to Athens, Greece and then to Samos (one of those beautiful Greek Islands... but alas we only have a lay over there). Then take a ferry over to Ismir and a taxi to the hotel we are staying at in Selcuk. Then we crash for a while.



We should arrive in Selcuk sometime on Wednesday evening. (It is Tuesday morning). When I say we will be traveling for 24 hours the professor says not to exaggerate that it is more like 20 hours .... I say ... whatever.

Selcuk (pronounced Selchuk) is the modern town closest to Ephesus which is an incredible archaeological site. I am posting a picture I took from there when I was there a few summers ago.

Two Days

We leave TOMORROW... Today is actually the last full day of getting things done at home. I recorded a short conversation with "The Professor" about where we are going tomorrow. I thought it was a good test for the recorder I downloaded to my iPhone.

Listen to the Audio by clicking here:
Where are we going tomorrow?

4 more days!

It is Saturday and we have 4 Days before we go. Today the car gets an oil change and we do some house cleaning. I did download and test the italk recorder to my iPhone. Amazing! It is a free app (you can pay a little and I am sure get more features). Good sound and easy to use.