Digging Holes: At D.E.P.A.S. Field School
 
Hello anyone who is here!
When I was accepted into the D.E.P.A.S. Program at Mycenae, Greece this spring, I decided that I wanted to keep a journal of my time there. I'd write everyday, keep things in between the pages, even takes notes and draw pictures. It was going to be awesome!
Then I realized that, although I am a good writer, I am complete CRAP when it comes to drawing ANYTHING, let alone the details of an archaeological excavation. So I decided that, although I enjoy ancient things, it was time to bring myself into the 21st century. I decided to create this blog, hopefully chronicling my days in the D.E.P.A.S. program. I have no idea if I will be able to do it (keep up each day, that is) but I figured the first place to start it with a first post. I still have little over a month until I get in a big steel bird and fly across an ocean and a sea to start my adventure, but like my fellow undergraduate archaeology majors, I am STOKED!
To give a little background, this program is one that I have been looking forward to since I first started college. I had visited Mycenae in 2008 as a tourist (see the slideshow on my "Background" page for proof!) but I had not known about the D.E.P.A.S. program. All I'd known was that it was an ongoing archaeological dig and looked pretty darn cool! Believe it or not, I'd wanted to be a NASA flight controller (Mission Control and all that stuff) and was pretty set on becoming a rocket scientist. But I spent two weeks touring as many archaeological sites throughout Greece as I could and, well the rest is history (pun intended =) ).
So here I am, three years later, preparing to go back to Greece, this time as an undergraduate archaeology student and NOT a prospective rocket scientist. Funny how things change, huh? To prepare for D.E.P.A.S. all students have to take specific courses. One is Pre-historic Aegean Art and Archaeology, which I took in the Fall of 2010,and the other is an intensive Modern Greek language course, which I happily finished just a few weeks ago. Both are designed to help you when you go to Mycenae, to understand the context of the ruins you are unearthing and to at least partially communicate with the locals. Well...I guess I'm happy I can say "Please", "Thank you", and "My name is Katie" (or Κατερίνα if you want to be REALLY Greek).
I don't really know what it will be like over there, but talking to other majors who have gone on this program just makes me more and more excited to go.