Date: May 23, 2007
Partners for the day: Brooks Smith (text) Pete Kitlas (pictures)
Sites: Delos
Museums: Delos Museum
Principle Buildings/Monuments: Delphian Temple, Athenian Temple, Naxian Colossus, etc.
Time Spent on Sites: from ca. 8:30 to ca. 13:30 [5 hours]
Weather: Partly Cloudy
Back home at Dartmouth, they just had Green Key Weekend. For those of you who don’t know, this is basically the spring term party weekend, when all the fraternities and sororities throw large parties with dancing, concerts, games, and general raucous. Interestingly, the students of the Classics FSP thought, this falls very close to the time that we are on the party island of Mykinos. Needless to say, we took advantage, and discovered that we are indeed in a small world. Yesterday afternoon, Chris Blankenship, Mike Holmes, Pete Kitlas, Ben O’Donnell, and Brooks Smith started off this partying atmosphere by taking the bus out to the well-known Paradise Beach. While there, we ran into a Canadian group that we had just seen on the island of Santorini a few days ago, who just happened to take a similar route to us through the islands. After enjoying the music from the beach club for a couple hours, we returned to our hotel.
Soon afterwards, most of us on the FSP, including Professor Rutter, headed out to what turned out to be a delicious Italian restaurant. There, a man walked up to our table and greeted our professor, who was quite surprised to see an old friend: a Ph.D. student he knows. After paying our nicely group-discounted bill, some returned to the hotel to do work, but most headed out to the famous club scene in the city.
The largest group, which included the writer of this blog entry, started out at the Bar Down Under (yes, it was indeed quite Australian), and then later moved on to the Scandinavian Club and Disco, where we danced the night away. While dancing, however, we had an interesting surprise; Ben O’Donnell had his Dartmouth class shirt on, and was spotted by a young woman … who turned out to be a Dartmouth alum from the class of 2002, on vacation with her sister. Just as surprised as we were to randomly see fellow Dartmouthians in a small club halfway around the world from out Alma Mater, we formed a Dartmouth dance circle and partied away. We finally returned to the hotel in staggered groups between 1:30am and 2:15am.
On a slightly more academic note, today we visited Delos, an entire island of nothing but archaeological remains. Two months ago, the island would have absolutely captivated us, but now it is merely an interesting place with a lot of the same things that we’ve seen before, though several quite new things. It was the heart of the Delian League, the grand “alliance” of the Athenians. The site was all-inclusive, with everything from a museum to a cafe all on-site on the island. It even had recently-added signs to explain various parts of the site to visitors, a rarity on French-excavated sites.
This is the last blog entry for the next seven days, as we now turn to some time for us to (hopefully) finish our independent study projects and/or go on vacation. While a large group is going together to the island of Paros in order to work on a quiet beach, most people are going out on their own to various parts of the Aegean. Below is a list of those places:
-Kelsey Blodget, Kristina Guild, Kyle Jazwa, Johann Maradey, Nick Ortiz, Gahl Rinat, & Kinsey Stewart: The crazy group here will be renting an apartment on the island of Paros together, eating cheap food cooked by themselves, and enjoying the beaches of that beautiful Cycladic island. Oh yeah, and finishing those 10,000-word papers.
-Chris Blankenship: Another ISP break, why not stay in the same place you stayed in before – especially when it’s free! Chris found a friend in a Christian lady located just outside of Athens who apparently makes delicious home-made food. There, he shall complete his military-themed paper.
-Josh Drake: This insane young man finished his ISP during the first ISP break, so this break is a true vacation for him. Sick of looking at ancient Greek ruins, he shall be flying over to Cairo, Egypt, and looking at all the ancient Egyptian ruins there.
-Mike Holmes & Ray DiCaccio: Remember all those climbing urges that we’ve been telling you about Mike holding back? Well, he’s not holding back any longer! He’s bringing Ray along to the island of Kalymnos in the Dodecanese, where they shall be scaling as many rock walls as they can find … and have time for in-between finishing up their papers.
-Pete Kitlas: One of the people who will be traveling with an academic purpose, Pete shall head off to the islands of Syros and Tinos in the northernCyclades. There, he will hunt down churches which he will observe. I hear there are also nice beaches here.
-Ben O’Donnell: “Wherever’s cheap,” he says. Ben shall be traveling to some yet to be determined island in the area where he can plant down and finish up that ISP. Later on, he may meet up with other people who are still in the area.
-Lizz Sigler: Still a bit unsure as to how her ISP break will shape out, Lizz will probably be going to the beautiful Cycladic party island of Ios, and then later possibly meeting up with Pete Kitlas on Syros or Tinos.
-Brooks Smith: The writer of this blog entry will be heading to Sitia, in eastern Crete, where he will base himself in the company of beautiful landscapes and beaches, as well as much better Greek food, on this southern island. Nearby, there are also the palaces of Palaikastro and Zakros, where he can observe more Minoan roadways.
-Liz Stamoulis: The only real Greek on this FSP, Liz will be traveling to her family’s home island of Ikaria, just southwest of Samos in the Dodecanese, and having a working vacation there.
-Caleb Chaplain: Ah, our dear Teaching Assistant. He has nothing to do for the next week! Or does he? Caleb will be living vicariously, going wherever the winds, and the beautiful men, wisp him away.
-Professor Rutter: How could we forget our dear professor? He will spending four or five days back at our home base in the Pan Hotel in Athens, and then moving out for a couple of days to meet with colleagues at Messenia, before returning to Athens and being greeted by the smiling faces of his students one more time.
As we are all separated during this independent study project period, blogs will go on hiatus. Blog entries will resume for their last three days on Thursday, May 31st, when we reconvene in Athens, hand in our final ISPs, and wait as Professor Rutter and Caleb Chaplain grade our papers … all 600 pages of them.
The last day before our ISP break could not be complete without a little adventure. The island of Delos, which was the only site on our itinerary for today is a perfect place for this. It is an archaeological island which means that there is only archaeological remains on the island; nothing else. It is basically an ancient ghost town. On our way to the boat Josh Drake and Lizz Sigler ran into what they thought was a Pelican statue. However, when it started to move they became a little scared. 
Before boarding the boat, Professor Rutter hands out the tickets to the group. Here Liz Stamoulis cautiously takes a ticket with a distinct feeling that something fishy is in the air today.
Land Ahoy! Kinsey Stewart, Lizz Sigler, and Chris Blankenship sight the island of Delos from the bow of our boat. 
Professor Rutter briefs the crew before we begin our tour around the island. The dark clouds were gathering, the wind was picking up, and there was a slight mist coming down. Professor Rutter told us that today we should not merely look at the remains, but visualize what the sanctuary would have looked like. He suggested human models as a good way to do this.
Gahl Rinat inspects a sign at the Stoa of Phillip V of Macedon. This type of signage is new to the site as it was not here two years ago. This is helpful because before visitors would need to pay for a guide or read a French Guidebook to have any understanding of the site. It seems that now they are trying to lure individual tourists and couples to the island without guides.
Heeding Professor Rutter’s advice, Mike Holmes stands in the statue base of the Naxian Colossus and recreates the monument. While Mike Holmes gives it his best effort he cannot stand up to the grandeur of the actual statue which stood nine meters high.
In an equally playful manner, Ben O’Donnell recreates a giant bronze palm tree dedicated by Nikias. This giant palm tree eventually fell down and hit part of the Naxian Colossus. Watch out Mike Holmes!
Ray DiCiaccio acts frightened after encountering the Monument of the Bulls. After all of the weathering it is almost impossible to make out the actual bulls. Little did we know, but all this mockery was going to get us into trouble.
As we exited the sanctuary and made our way to the high end housing, we passed the row of lions. This is a very picturesque place, but something seemed a little fishy today. The lions had some sort of life in them that we had never seen in statues before.
Chris Blankenship and Josh Drake confirm our suspicion of the lions. While in the museum we were able to get a closer look at them. We could see there veins pumping and then they began to move!
SUPER RUNAWAY! The lions are after us. After the constant mockery and attempts to recreate statues, the statues have become humans. They have decided to gain revenge by chasing us down. Brooks Smith leaps over blocks in an attempt to escape the wrath of the lions.
Kinsey Stewart tries to camouflage herself so that the lions do not recognize her as human. Here she is pretending to be the head of the Naxian Colossus.
Professor Rutter tries a similar tactic. However, he attempts to blend into the pelvic area of the Naxian Colossus. Unfortunately for Professor Rutter, his pelvis is not quite as large as the Naxian Colossus and the lions have caught on.
The group starts climbing up the hill to find shelter in an abandoned house. The walls are fairly strong as they have been preserved three and a half stories high. I think an attack from stone lions might make them crumble though. Here we stopped only briefly to think of our next step.
Luckily we had Kyle Jazwa and his rope. Johann Maradey, Gahl Rinat, and Ben O’Donnell watch in anticipation as Kyle measures the water depth in a basin at the house. Unfortunately, it was almost ten feet deep. We realized this would not make an ideal hiding place from the lions because we would be forced to tread water.
The group decides to make our way to the highest part of the island: Mount Cynthus, which rises 350 feet above the island. Hopefully, the higher ground will give us some advantage in fighting off the ravage beasts. 
At the top of the mountain Kelsey Blodgett stands in confusion. “What are all of these rock piles doing here?” she exclaims.
Josh Drake, Kyle Jazwa, and Ben O’Donnell decide to build a stone tower as a last attempt at warding off the attacking lions. Fortunately, this was the key to the mystery. As soon as the tower was complete, the lions froze and became lifeless stone.
The group that made it up to the mountain raises their hands in the same style as a Minoan Goddess with upraised arms. Unfortunately, the group did not seem to learn the lesson today and still decide to mimic ancient artwork. Hopefully none of us will step foot on Crete anytime soon!
“GO TEAM VENTURE”. I’m not quite sure why they do that, but after a mystery is solved Kinsey Stewart and Lizz Sigler always like to have a short victory celebration.
Final Comments:
As we approach the end of our time together on this FSP, we look back and see an amazing time that we’ve shared together, filled with hundreds of archaeological sites, great parties and movies together, and huge amounts of Greek cuisine – especially those fast-food gyros. As we prepare to go our separate ways over this ISP break, it’s like a preview of what’s to come; we shall see each other occasionally on campus, but we will likely never again spend so much time together as a group. We all look forward to getting home to our other friends, families, and places where we will no longer need to live out of suitcases, but yet there is still a sense of sadness as we prepare to end our FSP together. One thing is for sure, though, despite the love that all of us share for antiquity, none of us will be able to look at many more archaeological remains for a while without losing our Parian marbles.
