Yesterday, because we weren't digging, we slept in and had breakfast at 8:30. We then headed over to Mihail's house as finished up cleaning and tagging our finds.
We cleaned the bones and pottery simply by gently scrubbing with a toothbrush in a bucket of water. Most of the dirt on the pottery came off pretty easily, but some of the bone needs a special solution to remove the remaining grit.
The clean pottery was then sorted and tagged with a permanent marker, denoting location, year, trench section and depth at which it was found (e.g., MUR '12 S2C 60). Next, Mihail will take all the tagged pottery to the museum in Tulcea. Both bone and metal pieces will be sent off to a lab for testing, before going to the museum.
It's exciting to know some of our better quality finds will be on display in a museum, like my two coins and the North African plate I found. And Mihail and John say all of our names and finds will be mentioned in records.
After four hours of work, I walked up to the dig site to check on Jenny. She wagged her tail when she saw me. She laid exactly where we had left her.
I brought her fresh water from the well, which she lapped up happily, and fed her a can of fish. I was glad to see she was drinking and eating, because yesterday she wouldn't do either. I then sat with her a while, petting and kissing her black fur.
The vet came while I was there to give her the second of three shots. He will return today to give we the final one. In his broken english, he assured me she is on the mend. She did seem better, was able to sit up and walk a few feet on her own if need be.
After the vet left, I sat with her a bit longer before saying goodbye, and made one of the Romanian students promise me to take care of her until he leaves next week.
I hope he keeps his promise.
Last night, after dinner, we had a little send-off party for ourselves with beer, wine and tchurika (sp?), which is a Romanian liquor that reminds me of whiskey; except it's clear and much smoother than anything I've tasted.
Both Mihail and John say we are one of the best groups they have had, and we are all invites back next year. Mihail also invites us to join him in another excavation project next August, as well as a surveying project a few years from now on Alexander the Great's journey through the east (Asia minor, Egypt, Persia, India and back).
Some of us will still be in school or just graduating next year, so coming back is more likely.
For me, on the other hand, I have already graduated, and next year is truly up in the air. I don't know where I will be, what I will be doing, what my financial situation will be like. But I hope, with every ounce of my body, that I am in a situation where I can return to Romania and pick up where I left off at Halmyris.
But as Mihail says, you cannot know with life what next year will bring. You may be certain this year, he says, but next year things will change. You just have to sit tight and enjoy the ride.
So, for now, I will say "pe curând," Romania. See you later!
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