Buongiorno!!

Hello from Italia! The trip has been fantastic so far. After an extremely loooong day of traveling, I finally arrived at Camping Zeus. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but out camp grounds are literally a 2 minute walk from the entrance to Pompei. Our tents are set up in an orange grove, which is beautiful but makes for lots of ants everywhere. It's an experience.
I'm starting to settle into the routine of the group. We wake up and leave at 730 every morning to get an espresso or cappuccino and the cafe up the street. Then we walk up the hill to the different sites we are working on. We work all morning, have lunch, clean pottery or sort ecofacts, and then leave at around 6 to go make dinner and hang out in the camp. And it is all done in the actual ruins of the city. Its a long, but wonderful day! I'm still not over the awe of looking up to see Vesuvius or Capri or the remains of a set of stairs or a 2000 year old piece of pottery.
Other than me and the other intern, everyone else on the team has been working on this project for at least 3 years. They are all extremely helpful and great about showing us the ropes. I've been memorizing different types of construction build for walls, how to identify ancient vs modern reconstructions of edifices, how to analyze and document structures and pottery, how to identify ecofacts in flot, and on and on. I learned how to survey an area using a total station yesterday to make a digital 3D model of the sites we are working on. You have to learn quickly and hope that you can retain everything.
Our director gave us a lengthy tour of the city on the first day. We walked around for about 9 hours, and I still don't feel like I saw everything. There are so many houses to see and paintings to gawk over. Maybe I'll get around to everything in 5 weeks. We shall see!
The people here are really nice too. Everyone on the project has been here for so long that the people living in Pompei know the VCP very well. It makes living here and learning Italian much easier and more interesting.



I remembered the city being beautiful, but the longer I'm here the more I love it.