Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Antakya to begin the long and arduous process of obtaining a residency permit. It requires going to the police station for a tax rate, going to the tax office to pay the taxes, and then going back to the police station (with a tax receipt) to fill out paper work and finally obtain the permit. In previous years, the last step has taken upwards of five hours. In the end I received my residency permit and since I am going on day 6 without my luggage, I bought some ridiculously cheap Turkish clothing.
Today I spent the day in the field. One of the main objectives of the Mopsos Survey this year is to create topographic maps of a hand full of major sites discovered during previous field seasons. In the field a few people work the Total Station while another group conducts systematic collections at randomly assigned points on the site. While working with the Total Station, Dr. Hritz, Ben, Abby, Nicole, and I had a bit of a surprise. When taking the last 25 points of the day, two black snakes slithered out of a hole in the ground and started fighting. The would coil up together and then lift themselves up right. Strangely they were not afraid of us, even though we were less than a meter away! As soon as they began to inch closer we packed everything up and left the field. Hopefully tomorrow there will be more points and fewer snakes…
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