We’ve begun! Sort of. We got down and dirty mainly doing your average garden/landscaping work. We’ve been clearing away a lot of rocks and roots; going at the rocks with the big horn axes and exposing the really big tough roots so they can be easily pulled out is my favorite thing even though it is tough work. My friends and family keep saying I will get muscle by the time I get home but I’m not that hopeful. One thing that really took me by surprise was the scale of the work that we’re actually doing. When I heard about this opportunity/trip excavating an ancient Roman Acropolis, I thought it would be a small site in an unpopular part of Turkey where not many people went to. Kind of like how Northfield is small and not completely known unless you’re going to Northfield for St. Olaf or Carleton. Turns out the site we’re working at is one of the most well-preserved sites in Turkey and the importance is so much greater than just a small unknown Ancient Roman town.
Gazipasa is very different from my big city home of San Francisco but it has many similarities to El Salvador, where my family is from. I got off the plane and the area felt oddly familiar and it almost didn’t even feel like I was in a different country. The food is also very similar, in a way, to the food in El Salvador so there is this odd sense of a kind of familiarity with everything. The only issue I have myself is the language, I wish I could communicate more with the people here. Oddly enough, my previous idea of what Turkey and Gazipasa would look like was very similar to what my uncle’s town looks like in El Salvador and there are similarities but Gazipasa looks more like the central, bigger cities of El Salvador and not so much the smaller outskirt towns of the central cities.
One thing that I did not know a week ago, that I know now, is how much of a terrible assumption people in the “west” have of the Mediterranean. The land here, the surrounding mountains are so much like California; aside from it being twice as hot. And the history that we believe to be true, a lot of it is wrong. The idea that Romans used slaves to build cities and row massive ships, it was easier to use daily paid labor than having to pay for a slave, pay for their lodging, food, clothes, and everything else so that the slave wouldn’t die and then you would have to go out and buy another one. Also, and what I find incredibly amusing, is that the natural foliage here will not die. You can try your hardest but the plants here have adapted to survive. Try as one might, they are stubborn little buggers.
One thing that people should know about Gazipasa, which you probably already know, is that it is hot. It is very hot and humid and you feel like you will never be cool again until you get home. But brushing the unbearable heat aside, Gazipasa is beautiful. For a while, you might feel like you can’t do or appreciate anything because it is so hot but this place, this cute little town with a rich history is absolutely beautiful and has so much to offer; just remember to drink lots of water, and don’t forget to try the tea; you’ll never want another kind of tea again.