Well, today was just like another day in paradise, but without the paradise.
We spent most of the day working with various aspects of our documentary that is on its way to being finished. Jiachi worked on some awesome 3D maps of the Persian Empire with some animated floating ships -I can’t wait to see the end result. He was waiting for the approval of the professors, who were busy doing their own work and helping others.
Riley showed me a 3D model of a piece of pottery she was painting. It looked pretty cool. You could tell she was putting in a lot of hard work. Mandy was sitting at a table digitally sculpting a piece of marble that belonged at the top of an ancient building. She was making a version of what it looked like back then, which was definitely on point. Sarah was rendering some play blast images of the temple on Despotiko so she could give them to the video team. That’s me! They made me feel like I was traveling back into the past, peering into a window that showed Despotiko as it once was. Wen was hard at work, animating the statue of a terra cotta woman, which is actually Apollo.
Either way, the animation looked great! I hear it is going to be even better than what it already was and my mind is preparing to be blown away.
Sheheryar was in the video room with me editing the A-roll of the main documentary structure. He worked with the research team on the flow of the story and also voiced the narration. He was also struggling to finish the blog he was supposed to have turned in yesterday!
Cynthia had helped Sheheryar with the rough script and helped him with the rough cut of the video. She also had worked on the script with Julia and Sheheryar. Ashley said she did “a big fat nothing”, but actually researched images of Apollo’s temple, which I hadn’t really seen yet so it was sweet. Julia said she worked on the narration of the video edit for me and Sheheryar. 
She also uploaded shots of her GoPro to her Facebook page, which she did yesterday during sunset/moonrise, and I gotta say, they were breathtakingly beautiful. She also stayed ahead of the game by reading the instructions for our final two assignments, which consist of a video interview and a 5 page reflection paper. I also got her to help me write questions for my interview with the infamous local mixologist, Dimitri.
After that, class concluded and we headed back down to the hotel to get ready for our third group dinner. We went to Hibiscus, which is a local restaurant that everyone always talks about being so wonderfully delicious, and it was. Albert’s wife, Joy, and his daughter, Delaney, joined us as we feasted by the seaside. The sunset was breathtakingly beautiful as always which led to questioning if I had died and gone to heaven. 
After getting extremely fat on pizza that I couldn’t finish, the amazing people at Hibiscus brought everyone out a round of shots on the house, which we all couldn’t refuse. Then they made me suffer more by bringing out a free dessert of Greek yogurt with cherry topping. I felt like I had gained 10 pounds after that meal. I managed to save room for some more sweets at the candy store next door. I hobbled my fat self over and looked around for cake pops, which were falsely advertised by the sign out front. I didn’t end up getting anything, but luckily, Sarah got some kind of funky teeth candy, which she used to eat more candy. Can’t wait to see how many cavities that ends up giving her. Tomorrow we go snorkeling, so I hope you enjoy reading that blog more than this uneventful one, but I hope I at least made you laugh 😀
-Ozvaldo Ayala