As our days here in Gazipasa come to their end, It becomes important to reflect on how this experience has been impactful and what has changed since I first got here to Turkey. Fortunately, for the most part, my original impressions remained true. I’ve also managed to learn more about myself than I had originally expected.
Firstly, my initial impression of the place turned out to be true, people are not only friendly but will do whatever they can in order to help, even if communication can get complicated sometimes. Additionally, the food is still amazing, even after countless meals in the shiny metal trays they give us during meals. Furthermore, the town’s restaurants proved even better, with the best breakfast I’ve ever had being found in an unassuming small restaurant that just so happened to be near our apartment, with an absolutely huge quantity of food being offered for only ~ 5Dollars.
Moreover, personally-wise, I learned some really interesting things about myself. It took only the first few days of work for me to notice that I tend to get sort of compulsive when powering through large chunks of rock and soil to dig out a wall or clear wall fall. Unfortunately, as I came to learn later on while working on the various “diggy-holes” opened throughout building 6, I work much more enthusiastically and hard when I can actually see my progress clearly, otherwise, I will get demotivated and lose steam making my overall progress slower. This is especially visible when I had to level small passes of a large surface, which would take me way longer than when I had to make a large trench to accomplish the same task.
Finally, I also learned that I am able to adapt and learn quickly to my work environment. As even though I had never done anything remotely close to archeology, I still feel that I managed to get all done properly. This became clear to me as I prepared to close my unit of the excavation, all of my earlier work on cleaning the walls gets progressively better as I checked the different walls found at different times.