Heraklion, Crete

Day One
Our first stop was at Gortyn. This was originally an ancient Greek town that was later occupied by the Romans who made it their capital while in Crete. It was steeped in history with evidence of the various occupants excavated over the years. Our second stop was the ancient Minoan palace at Phaistos. This was the 2nd largest Minoan palace, and unlike Knosses, it was substantially not restored. This meant there were very few recognizable structures, however, with the guide we were able to still get quite a bit out of the site. Our final stop of the day was at the sea side town of Matala. This was an interesting village with lots of great shops. As with all other towns in Crete, folks are preparing for the coming avalanche of tourists by painting, repairing and building. For us, it was peaceful and empty relatively speaking. We then returned to the hotel where most of the students were dropped off. I took the briefing team and our computers and followed the grad students to the Hellenic Center for Marine Research. We had planned to practice the presentation at that location and with the equipment we will be using tomorrow.
Day Two
Today was presentation day. We arrived before 0900 at the Hellenci Center for Marine Research and were ushered into the amphitheater (auditorium). They had very nice seating, great sound and projection system, etc. This is where we practiced the previous day. We had an opportunity to run through the presentation. All was well. Throughout the morning we received several official greetings, welcomes, briefing on the NaGISA project and other projects being pursued by the Center. We received a welcome from the local mayor and after the coffee break, our people made their presentation. By the time we made our presentation, the entire auditorium was packed. Everyone from the local school was present as well as several other important folks. Our people were on after the local mayor made his presentation. They performed brilliantly. Our folks had everything memorized and they did not miss a beat. After us, the local Greek school made their presentation on a NaGISA style collection they were able to participate in located in Portugal as part of an invitational European symposium. Their presentation was in English and was a very good manuscript style presentation with a good Power Point. They then did a presentation on Greek culture which was equally good. I was very impressed with our students...not only with their presentation, but also with the professional way they dressed, presented themselves to the Greeks and respectfully listened to several hours of speakers and presenters. They made us proud. After lunch, we had the rest of the day off. A few of us went on to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum to see many of the artifacts we had been hearing about when we traveled to the other sites.
Our first stop was at Gortyn. This was originally an ancient Greek town that was later occupied by the Romans who made it their capital while in Crete. It was steeped in history with evidence of the various occupants excavated over the years. Our second stop was the ancient Minoan palace at Phaistos. This was the 2nd largest Minoan palace, and unlike Knosses, it was substantially not restored. This meant there were very few recognizable structures, however, with the guide we were able to still get quite a bit out of the site. Our final stop of the day was at the sea side town of Matala. This was an interesting village with lots of great shops. As with all other towns in Crete, folks are preparing for the coming avalanche of tourists by painting, repairing and building. For us, it was peaceful and empty relatively speaking. We then returned to the hotel where most of the students were dropped off. I took the briefing team and our computers and followed the grad students to the Hellenic Center for Marine Research. We had planned to practice the presentation at that location and with the equipment we will be using tomorrow.
Day Two
Today was presentation day. We arrived before 0900 at the Hellenci Center for Marine Research and were ushered into the amphitheater (auditorium). They had very nice seating, great sound and projection system, etc. This is where we practiced the previous day. We had an opportunity to run through the presentation. All was well. Throughout the morning we received several official greetings, welcomes, briefing on the NaGISA project and other projects being pursued by the Center. We received a welcome from the local mayor and after the coffee break, our people made their presentation. By the time we made our presentation, the entire auditorium was packed. Everyone from the local school was present as well as several other important folks. Our people were on after the local mayor made his presentation. They performed brilliantly. Our folks had everything memorized and they did not miss a beat. After us, the local Greek school made their presentation on a NaGISA style collection they were able to participate in located in Portugal as part of an invitational European symposium. Their presentation was in English and was a very good manuscript style presentation with a good Power Point. They then did a presentation on Greek culture which was equally good. I was very impressed with our students...not only with their presentation, but also with the professional way they dressed, presented themselves to the Greeks and respectfully listened to several hours of speakers and presenters. They made us proud. After lunch, we had the rest of the day off. A few of us went on to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum to see many of the artifacts we had been hearing about when we traveled to the other sites.

Day Three
Today was presentation day. We arrived before 0900 at the Hellenci Center for Marine Research and were ushered into the amphitheater (auditorium). They had very nice seating, great sound and projection system, etc. This is where we practiced the previous day. We had an opportunity to run through the presentation. All was well. Throughout the morning we received several official greetings, welcomes, briefing on the NaGISA project and other projects being pursued by the Center. We received a welcome from the local mayor and after the coffee break, our people made their presentation. By the time we made our presentation, the entire auditorium was packed. Everyone from the local school was present as well as several other important folks. Our people were on after the local mayor made his presentation. They performed brilliantly. Our folks had everything memorized and they did not miss a beat. After us, the local Greek school made their presentation on a NaGISA style collection they were able to participate in located in Portugal as part of an invitational European symposium. Their presentation was in English and was a very good manuscript style presentation with a good Power Point. They then did a presentation on Greek culture which was equally good. I was very impressed with our students...not only with their presentation, but also with the professional way they dressed, presented themselves to the Greeks and respectfully listened to several hours of speakers and presenters. They made us proud. After lunch, we had the rest of the day off. A few of us went on to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum to see many of the artifacts we had been hearing about when we traveled to the other sites.
Day Four
We had a 0900 show time at the Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR) and we then departed for the dive site at the Elounda Beach Hotel. By the way, I am told that this is the most expensive hotel in the world. There are a couple villas that go for 45,000 Euros per night (over $63,000!!!). Rest assured, we did not decide to move our hotel to that location! The villa has its own private dock and power boat. We took pictures. This time the Greek students were not in attendance since the whole day was devoted to dive and they do not do that. Our non-dive students were excused for the day and they explored the nearby town of Agios Nikolas. The first dive was 20 meters. The collection went absolutely perfectly. We had one diver get cold and one diver, Cyndi, hit her head on a scuba tank, but all was well. After the first dive the boat returned to the dock for the scheduled lunch and rest break. The next dive was ten meters and one meter. The dive was perfect and the collection was very fast and very efficient. This time we had two divers get cold and they were again properly warmed up and all was well. These two dive days have given us some extraordinary experience in dive procedures and many improvements that we can incorporate into our own operation. They had some techniques for dealing with the cold water that was particularly effective which should help us make our dives even safer than they are now. The HCMR personnel were extremely impressed with our students. We performed exponentially greater than their wildest expectations. Independently, I have had everyone one of their researchers come up to me throughout the day telling me how much they like working with our students, how serious our students were about the work and how professional they performed. There is no question that the NHS NaGISA team will have left a lasting positive impression of not only our school but our state and country. I know we have surprised just about everyone we have met by how great our students are and how mature they act. I could never be prouder of all of them. Tomorrow we move into the lab. This is what we have all been waiting for since the beginning of the trip. This is where we stand to learn the most and after our performance during the dive and beach portion of the exercise, there is no question that these professional researchers will take our students seriously and will teach them everything. We have set the stage for an on-going relationship with the Hellenic Center for Marine Research and the School of the Arts. At this point our only limitation to almost anything we could want to do would be the money to do it. As of this time, virtually any door we wish will be open if we only had the money to walk through it. We have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have the ability to do the work...we just need the means to be able to do it.
Day Five
Today was the first of the two analysis days. Again, it was very productive. Some of the Greek students arrived today on their weekend and between them and our students they were divided into the five teams that we used for the beach collection with some minor modifications to compensate for those Greek students that did not show up today. Two of the groups started by processing the samples from yesterday's two dive collections. The other three teams went into the lab to start the analysis of the processed specimens. They were given an opportunity to separate some of the samples into the four major grouping which will then be further subdivided tomorrow into the more fine tuned identification. The valuable part was the techniques, the exposure to better sorting equipment and the information on better taxonomic guides. We found that a couple of the perfect guides are only in German. Fortunately, Mrs. Gaskin is fluent in German so we will be able to use them with her translation of the important parts. Periodically all the teams were shifted into all the positions so that all had the experience of working with each of the researchers. In the early afternoon, everyone walked to the nearby exhibition hall of the local community where we were able to see a traveling exhibition of copies of Leonardo Da Vinci's work and models of his inventions. It was extremely interesting. After that we were done for the day. While the students were working in the lab, my job was to take everyone's camera and copy their pictures onto my computer so we would have a central source of all pictures. This will enable the students to have a chance to get all the pictures when we return to Niceville. So far there are over 10.5 gigabytes of pictures (over 8 thousand). I continued the picture project when we returned to the hotel. I told all the students to start the packing process because we may not have much time tomorrow night and we need to depart VERY early in the morning on Monday.
Today was presentation day. We arrived before 0900 at the Hellenci Center for Marine Research and were ushered into the amphitheater (auditorium). They had very nice seating, great sound and projection system, etc. This is where we practiced the previous day. We had an opportunity to run through the presentation. All was well. Throughout the morning we received several official greetings, welcomes, briefing on the NaGISA project and other projects being pursued by the Center. We received a welcome from the local mayor and after the coffee break, our people made their presentation. By the time we made our presentation, the entire auditorium was packed. Everyone from the local school was present as well as several other important folks. Our people were on after the local mayor made his presentation. They performed brilliantly. Our folks had everything memorized and they did not miss a beat. After us, the local Greek school made their presentation on a NaGISA style collection they were able to participate in located in Portugal as part of an invitational European symposium. Their presentation was in English and was a very good manuscript style presentation with a good Power Point. They then did a presentation on Greek culture which was equally good. I was very impressed with our students...not only with their presentation, but also with the professional way they dressed, presented themselves to the Greeks and respectfully listened to several hours of speakers and presenters. They made us proud. After lunch, we had the rest of the day off. A few of us went on to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum to see many of the artifacts we had been hearing about when we traveled to the other sites.
Day Four
We had a 0900 show time at the Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR) and we then departed for the dive site at the Elounda Beach Hotel. By the way, I am told that this is the most expensive hotel in the world. There are a couple villas that go for 45,000 Euros per night (over $63,000!!!). Rest assured, we did not decide to move our hotel to that location! The villa has its own private dock and power boat. We took pictures. This time the Greek students were not in attendance since the whole day was devoted to dive and they do not do that. Our non-dive students were excused for the day and they explored the nearby town of Agios Nikolas. The first dive was 20 meters. The collection went absolutely perfectly. We had one diver get cold and one diver, Cyndi, hit her head on a scuba tank, but all was well. After the first dive the boat returned to the dock for the scheduled lunch and rest break. The next dive was ten meters and one meter. The dive was perfect and the collection was very fast and very efficient. This time we had two divers get cold and they were again properly warmed up and all was well. These two dive days have given us some extraordinary experience in dive procedures and many improvements that we can incorporate into our own operation. They had some techniques for dealing with the cold water that was particularly effective which should help us make our dives even safer than they are now. The HCMR personnel were extremely impressed with our students. We performed exponentially greater than their wildest expectations. Independently, I have had everyone one of their researchers come up to me throughout the day telling me how much they like working with our students, how serious our students were about the work and how professional they performed. There is no question that the NHS NaGISA team will have left a lasting positive impression of not only our school but our state and country. I know we have surprised just about everyone we have met by how great our students are and how mature they act. I could never be prouder of all of them. Tomorrow we move into the lab. This is what we have all been waiting for since the beginning of the trip. This is where we stand to learn the most and after our performance during the dive and beach portion of the exercise, there is no question that these professional researchers will take our students seriously and will teach them everything. We have set the stage for an on-going relationship with the Hellenic Center for Marine Research and the School of the Arts. At this point our only limitation to almost anything we could want to do would be the money to do it. As of this time, virtually any door we wish will be open if we only had the money to walk through it. We have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have the ability to do the work...we just need the means to be able to do it.
Day Five
Today was the first of the two analysis days. Again, it was very productive. Some of the Greek students arrived today on their weekend and between them and our students they were divided into the five teams that we used for the beach collection with some minor modifications to compensate for those Greek students that did not show up today. Two of the groups started by processing the samples from yesterday's two dive collections. The other three teams went into the lab to start the analysis of the processed specimens. They were given an opportunity to separate some of the samples into the four major grouping which will then be further subdivided tomorrow into the more fine tuned identification. The valuable part was the techniques, the exposure to better sorting equipment and the information on better taxonomic guides. We found that a couple of the perfect guides are only in German. Fortunately, Mrs. Gaskin is fluent in German so we will be able to use them with her translation of the important parts. Periodically all the teams were shifted into all the positions so that all had the experience of working with each of the researchers. In the early afternoon, everyone walked to the nearby exhibition hall of the local community where we were able to see a traveling exhibition of copies of Leonardo Da Vinci's work and models of his inventions. It was extremely interesting. After that we were done for the day. While the students were working in the lab, my job was to take everyone's camera and copy their pictures onto my computer so we would have a central source of all pictures. This will enable the students to have a chance to get all the pictures when we return to Niceville. So far there are over 10.5 gigabytes of pictures (over 8 thousand). I continued the picture project when we returned to the hotel. I told all the students to start the packing process because we may not have much time tomorrow night and we need to depart VERY early in the morning on Monday.