Goodbye Italy

Now I have some sad news for you. Dill has decided to stay in Sperlanga. It is a beautiful beach area with that interesting Villa built into a cave. He must have really liked it.

We can’t go on without a mascot, so I was happy to find this Buffalo. The Professor has named it Buffy. In southern Italy people raise water buffalo for the mozzarella cheese that they can make from their milk. In many places you will find ads for buffalo mozzerella. This picture shows Buffy on an altar. It is a small one built right into the corner of a street. Besides the big temples where there were priests that did special sacrifices to gods there were also smaller alters like this one that were for more ordinary people to use for smaller sacrifices. We took this picture when we went to visit Pompeii for one last time. The day before this most of the group also visited a place called Herculaneum. It is smaller than Pompeii, but also was effected by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. They are doing lots of preservation work at Herculaneum and there is a lot of really fascinating stuff to see there.

In Pompeii I saw a few more things that I want to share with you before we go on to Greece.
Flour Mills-This is a picture of a flour mill. We saw places that had several really large ones and also smaller ones. People would bring their wheat and pour it into the top. Then a wooden rod would be put into the slot on the side and the top part would grind around the lower part and the wheat would turn to flour. Most of these places also had ovens, so you could tell that people came for their flour and also the baked bread to these places.

More evidence of people-This is a picture of one of the bodies that was found here. They did not actually find the body because it would have burned up, but they found places where people had been and they were able to fill the space in with plaster and then it was like a mold that showed the people. The ones that were left there had died of asphyxiation because they could not breath and then when the ashes fell they were buried right there. You can actually see the skull and teeth of this person.

A Puzzle-I saw this piece of a column and wondered why it was slanted. Did people use slanted columns for something. I asked the professor and he figured it out. Can you? It is sort of a geometry problem. If you need a clue click here. Tomorrow I will post the answer.

Today the Professor and I have been traveling from Italy to Greece. We will miss Italy. It really was a great place to visit. I am only on this trip for a few more days. I would really like to write more about what my readers are interested in. Write a comment to let me know what questions you have!

Finding things and Friends

On the right side of this blog is a section called Followers. I decided to put it in and see what it does. Here is one thing I have figured out. It helps you connect with other people who might be interested in the same types of things that you are. I saw that Kate was one of my followers, so I sent her a friend request. On her profile it showed the other blogs that she was following and one of them was about Tom the Turkey's trip to Turkey! You should really check it out! Also, check out the followers to see if there are any of them that you want to be friends with!

Three More Days

3 Days
Can you believe it! Here is the great licorice that I found for snacks on the plane yesterday! You may think that I am making to big of a point about snacks, but we will be on the road for a LONG time. I think it will be around 24 hours. I don't sleep well on planes, so it REALLY seems long. The snacks help.

5 Days to go!

5 Days to Go
Have you checked out Google Earth 5.0? One of the amazing additions to this version is Ancient Rome 3D. I have begun to look at it and will try to share specific places to go and ideas of how to use this in a classroom. Today is my first real day of freedom. No school, no training! I have a few appointments, and I hope some time to do some of the preparation that I need to do!

The only problem with it so far is that it takes a LONG time to load. I guess it depends on how powerful your computer is. I think it won't work on some computers.

Today is 8 DAYS until we leave for Turkey. This is a mosque I saw when I last visited Turkey. I am bringing a recorder (actually an app I downloaded to my iPhone!) and I hope I can post some of the sounds I hear. One I particularly remember in Turkey is the call to prayer.

Feel free to use any of the pictures in this blog. They were all taken by me unless sited as something else!

Countdown Begins

9 Days to Go
Today is June 1 and so I am beginning the countdown to the trip. We leave on June 9th! It is coming up!

Image from http://www.fodey.com/generators/animated/talking_flower.asp

More news about the trip

My husband just sent me this info about something we will be doing on the trip.

Nicola Denzey Lewis will be taking us down underground to a couple of the early Christian catacombs (2nd-4th centuries). No one knows how many miles of underground tombs there are around Rome from that time period. There are burials for all kinds of people, not just Christians. Because these tombs were underground, they were hidden and preserved. So wall and ceiling paintings in the
(the image is from amazon.com and links to the listing)

Christian tombs provide us with some of the earliest examples of Christian art. Nicola is the author of *The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women*. Since women were often in charge of burial and mourning, the catacombs also provide us with important evidence for the activities of women in the early churches.

2009 Odyssey

View Larger Map

I am preparing right now for a 5 week long trip to the Mediterranean this summer. I have an opportunity to travel with my husband to archaeological sites in Turkey, Israel, Italy and Greece. I hope to see many other things and meet people in all of these places. Below you will see a map showing the itinerary for the trip. I hope you will join and put your comments and questions onto the blog. The map is interactive. Zoom in and out and slide it to see the parts you are interested in.