5/31/07 Continued

This is a special post dedicated to Mr. Jay Goldenberg. Tonight I went out to dinner and had the best calamari to date. I told my professor that I needed to have a taste of it here in order to report back to you and he knew just the place to go. You go in and the squid is on ice and you pick the one you want. We had it grilled and it was absolutely wonderful...the best texture, not too chewy, just amazing! So if you decide to visit me next year while i'm here :) I will take you there and this time I will treat!

The restaurant also had amazing grilled eggplant and tahina. Boy do I love the weekends in Egypt.

I took a few photos before going out to dinner of my room. I will take a picture of the balcony tomorrow.

Here is my new big bed, a far cry from the twinner over at the villa:



Here is the closetish thing that im not going to use, because i actually come home in two weeks and don't feel like repacking again! I basically wear the same 2 outfits to work every day and then pajamas when I get home...no need to unpack when i'm leaving in another 14 days.





Here is me before going out to dinner, with the door open to my balcony...again i am being magical and doing the mirror reflection shot, but in order to do this i had to turn off the flash and there wasn't enough light in here so it's kind of a bad picture. I more or less wanted to show off my new scarf that I bought last week though. I love it.





And finally here is my air conditioner and how happy it makes me:





It is more than just savior from the heat. Because I can turn this on i can keep my windows closed which means no dirt and dust can blow in and cover all of my stuff, as it has been the past month, and also no mosquitos can get in.

Another perk to living in the apartment is that it is just me, Richard, and for the next few days this other woman Camilla. While I was told it was okay to walk around the villa in shorts and whatever tank tops if I wanted, i still kind of felt disrespectful since muslim men and women do live and work there. The only time i wore shorts was in my room with the door closed. Now I can wear them and not worry so much, because no one is here.

I am a bit frazzled right now because I know that I will not sleep in very late. Even this morning I woke up at 5:00, 40 minutes before my alarm went off. It is going to be a long day tomorrow if I wake up at 5:00 and have nothing planned to do...although 5 am my time should mean that plenty of you are online to entertain me....so keep that in mind! I can also now leave my computer on more since I don't have to worry about it overheating.

I may actually venture a walk on my own tomorrow to this nearby store, but we'll see how I am feeling.

That will end my post for today.

Thank you to the people who actually go out of their way to keep in touch. It really means a lot when you take the time to see how I am and let me know you are checking up.

5/31/07 Post Move-in

I just finished moving into the apartments and all i can say is, what an upgrade. My room even has its own air conditioner and balcony. I feel extremely spoiled. The bed is HUGE and comfy, and I am a very happy Kelly, although it does take a bit away from the whole gritty archaeologist lifestyle. There's still plenty of dirt for me to deal with on site though, it's nice to be able to retreat to comfort, especially because the heat has been so bad. I will post pictures later on this evening.

In not so happy news, my cough is back and worse than before. If I were to really consider any reasons why I would choose to not come back here or continue work in Egypt it would be because of how it feels for me to breathe...and that's saying a lot. Few archaeologists would turn down work at Giza, but if I knew I had to feel like this for more than a few weeks, it would definitely be a factor in my decision. I find myself even less able to understand smokers if their lungs feel, in any way, the way mine do now....yuck.


Well i'm going to load up on benadryl and take a nap. Then it's shower time and out to dinner. It is the weekend here in egypt..a glorious 36 hours off. There will be no exciting trips tomorrow though. My professor decided that in the interest of my health, that I should stay in and take it easy...it is also for his health too, whatever is in the air gave him an allergy attack as well. So far it seems to only be him and I with all the problems so maybe it's an animal bone thing!

I will post more later, probably bye for now

5/30/07

I was pretty crabby throughout the day and for various reasons. One, I did not sleep well last night since it was so hot. I also managed to break my fan at about 9:30...only I could break my fan on the hottest night of the year in Egypt. Per usual, my professor came to the rescue and made sure i was taken care of. The fan didn't help much though as I laid in bed, heat ridden an sniffley.

Here is the other reason I was irritable today:




I had to sort many of these. These sieves are full of fish bones...thousands of them...literally, i had to count them all.

So I start off with those messes. Organize them by type:






And then I look to our comparative collection, this being one single fish, and actually this is only the skull bones in this picture:




If you can get any sort of idea from these pictures, it is just a lot of very teeny tiny pieces to work with..and like I said, I had to count them all...but I couldn't just count mindlessly because, as you can see in the sieve, there are also plenty of rocks and nonfish elements. These are not to be counted and so, I must count bone, see rock, throw rocks, count more bone. Throw in some hot weather and 7 flies buzzing in and out your ears and you have the perfect formula for a kelly the grouch. I took periodic breaks to make a dent in the fly swarms and then I explained to them that if I had to get up again that they all would be very sorry...they did not listen, and true to my word, they all joined their brothers and sisters in insect afterlife. I imagine that if I were in Dante's inferno, one level of hell for myself would be giant flies with Kelly Swatters.


I was actually by myself for a large portion of the time, with the exception of the security guards...it was actually a little unnerving because if something went wrong I had no means of contacting anyone, plus i don't speak arabic. Richard had gone home early because his allergies were so bad and he did not want them to get worse and then later John had to go take care of some other things- so I was completely alone in the lab for a few hours. But it was okay, i just listened to music, killed some bugs, and counted some bones.


I had to take some pictures for National Geographic on behalf of one of the grants I recieved, so here are some of me working quite hard...although a lot of them are me staging working hard, because there's only so many ways that i can measure a bone for a picture...in fact i am pretty sure the one of me laughing is because I felt so silly staging measurements...some of them are authentic though, like me writing things down.

I compare and make a decision:



I Measure:






I "Measure" and chuckle to myself "hehehe":




I look at measurement and write:







I make any additional notes beyond the measurement:










This one was taken the next day. Richard was talking to Mark, the project director for the Giza Plateau Mapping Project and they were discussing some theoretical issues with excavation and interpretation while I was doing some analysis of cattle. Apparently what I was doing was relavent to a point Mark was trying to make, namely I think the size of cattle, and so he had Richard take a picture.






If you have been paying attention you know that I move tomorrow. If you haven't been paying attention...I'm moving tomorrow...to a lovely air conditioned apartment. It's close by though. But this means I need to pack, but not very much because I started packing last friday and really i just don't have that much stuff, at least not much that I actually use or need to take from my suitcase. Anyways, I am going to end on that note. Happy Hump Day Everyone!

Five/twenty-nine-oh! seven

Geoff has noted that it is funny that I consider 90 degree weather cool at this point...it's not even that I consider it cool...it's that I find those to be beautiful days. Today we actually had a sand storm. It's not as bad as they get, this isn't standard sand storm season, but when they do happen usually you can't see anything except redness from the windblown sand of the sahara. I took a picture from my bedroom window but it didn't do it justice, the haze is incredible...my hair was absolutely filthy though.






I am kind of nervous for what my hairdresser is going to have to do with it in order to make it healthy again. It is so damaged right now from the weather, from not being cut in a while, and from the water here. I figured out that it may also have had a hand in how terrible my skin has been lately. I'm broken out all alround my neck, so now I have a new hair policy...at no point while I'm here is my hair to touch any part of my neck or face. This requires sleeping with it up, which is something that I normally hate, but it really is helping. I don't know if my hair has ever been this long before, and so it makes sense that the oils and dirt from it being all over my face could be clogging my pores more than usual. I also switched to a different shampoo and conditioner at Richard's suggestion. Like I said, so far it is helping a lot.

My work is actually moving along very well...what at first seemed like it was going to be very difficult and daunting, has actually turned out to be not so hard, just tedious and annoying....but it is my job and I do love it. Today i realized one excellent perk of my job...no customers...i never wake up considering how busy or slow etc my day is going to be. It's a job where I just sit and think and figure things out. It's essentially just putting together a big puzzle...which is funny because even when i'm not working i am just doing other puzzles...crosswords, sudokus and others from this big book I have. Everyone makes fun of me for doing them during breakfast and lunch...but I don't know, i like keeping my brain occupied. Plus it's what my dad always did. Another habit I have picked up here, similar to my dad's, is that I started writing in all capitals. It just looks so much neater on my data sheets...my hand writing was getting a little out of control for them, but capital letters slow me down enough and force me to write more legibly. Speaking of data sheets...richard asked me how far along I was in entering mine...at first i was a little embarassed to admit that I had only done like 5.. (no I didn't do any last night like i said i would) he reassured me that i could do it whenever i wanted and that he usually waits until he gets home to enter his...that was a relief. I will probably save it for some bigger computer screens as well as a mouse...this macbook is just too tiny to navigated between 8 different excel spreadsheets.

Today i only had to work untik 3:30. At 4:00 a zooarcharologist from the American University in Cairo came over with a student of hers to go over some material with Richard. She is a delightful woman, very articulate. It was very weird though, to have this cluster of 4 zooarchaeologists discussing at length the differences between horse and donkey molars...but it was actually very neat...I wasn't treated like a student, I was treated like a peer. This also happened yesterday. Richard asked me if i knew what a certain archaeological bone he had was...not because he was trying to test me, but because he wanted to know my opinion...unfortunately i didn't really know...well I kind of knew, by default. It was an unfamiliar looking metapodial, and by default you should always check a pig if it doesn't look right...but when I thought that, I assumed that he operated under the same standard, since he is the one that taught me it, and I assumed he already considered and dismissed pig...i really just should have gone ahead and said it...could have really wowed the crowd.

Because of the high winds, all of the flied are migrating indoors and are worse than usual. Frequently i went on fly patrol with the swatter. I killed two that were having sex...fly and maggot birth control, i just spared us 3000 additional flies.

Also with these high winds, whatever is making me sneeze, wheeze, and sniffle is being blown into my face with much greater intensity. I took two benadryl and its helping, but on that note, I am tired and must lay down. Goooodddnight!

Attention

It is 107 degrees right now....every time I move, I think to myself...heh, I didn't know it was possible to sweat there!

The wind is outrageous blowing sand in my eyes, lungs, and hair.

It hurts to breathe a little bit.

And my allergies are kicking my ass


Sadface

But it's not so bad. The morning went by quick. We are going back to the lab but only for an hour which will be nice.

That is my update...the weather is supposed to drop back down to 91 tomorrow, but that means high winds tonight and possibly some sand storms.

5/28/07

I actually have work sitting right beside me...I will do work tonight, i will do work tonight, i will do work tonight....

Today was a pretty standard day at the lab...actually not so standard, my material just got extremely complicated for myself, but for the most part in a good way...a challenging way. I learned so much today and I'm sure I will learn more in the next few.

In the bathroom at the site there is this gecko that hangs out on the walls (I started using this bathroom after I got my period since there is a waste basket in there...I no longer use the mastaba spot), He is a pale yellow and blends in the the walls. The bathroom there, as I'm sure I mentioned before is just a hole in the floor basically...it's really hard to aim when you're a girl by the way. Anyways...the gecko is in there a lot since there are a lot of flies. He startles me every time I go in there. Today I saw him go for the kill and grab this huge bug with his mouth. I was most intrigued so i watched him wrestle it and prepare his meal. He kept shaking his head violently, bug clenched in his mouth. He then jumps back when he sees me...shakes his head some more and then the next thing I know I have a half alive bug whizzing past my face...yes..the gecko threw the bug at me. When I went inside and explained the story to Richard and John, Richard said that perhaps it was an offering and that the gecko was trying to please me...John agreed adding in that I do spend a lot of time in the bathroom...which is tue, because as most of you know I have the saddest excuse for a bladder, and here I drink 5 bottles of water and about 4-5 cups of coffee...maybe tomorrow I will keep track of how many times I pee...but maybe that is very unnecessary information, if you have spent an afternoon with me, you know how it goes. In fact, my first day here Richard took me aside to check and make sure I wasn't have intestinal/bowel issues already....it was a really awkward an embarassing conversation partly because I think he might not have believed me at first when I just said it was my bladder,,,but now I think he knows I was telling the truth since I'm a pretty consistent pee frequenter...

Oh wow..my entries have regressed into discussion of urination..I need to get out of here...

Another thing that has been bothering me is not being active. I work all day of course, but I just sit at my lab table. I don't do very much walking, I don't get a lot of exercise and I always led a pretty active life before coming here. I can't really do any exercise outside either because it's too hot, and jogging is not something you do in Cairo. Today, I was so desparate to do some sort of exercise activity that I tried to make a jump rope in my room...it didn't work. So instead i turned on some music and danced around my room for a half hour...laugh if you will...but there's nothing wrong with dancing by yourself after a long day's work.

Speaking of long day's work..tomorrow i don't have to work all day! I'm not sure if we are working a half day and finishing at 1:30, or if we are going to return after lunch and work until 3:30. Apparently we are meeting up with another zooarchaeologist that Ricahrd knows.

We are also only working half of the day on Thursday because we are moving out of the Villa and into the large apartment for the rest of the stay. After Thursday we are on our own with laundry and meals. I've been kind of spoiled these past 3 weeks in terms of that. We will probably eat a lot at that one delicious restaurant I write about. The other night between two people there was a plate of falafel, a mashed bean and herb salad called bassara, pita and baba ghanoush, tomatoes and cheese (which i didn't eat of course) and 2 cokes all for under 6 dollars...it's incredible...one of the best restaurants i've ever eaten at, with the best middle eastern food, costs less for two people, than my shampoo and conditioner did...less than 2 boxes of granola bars that I bought...it is unreal.

All in all,..yay for short weeks! It is almost the 29th...which means, only 16 days until I get on a plane! Only two more Fridays of Egyptian excursions.

5/27/85

Someone please look at the date....don't ask me how I managed to write that it's 22 years ago...ahem:

5/27/07

Today as I was heading downstairs for dinner, Maryann, the ethnobotnist among many other titles, stopped me and asked to have a word with me. Maryann is really sweet and so I was not immediately worried that she was taking me aside, but at the same time I was initially perplexed. She began by saying that she was getting ready to go out with Ana and Mark, two other project leaders to talk about who will and wont be working here next year. My heart sank. Richard and i had already talked about me coming back here next year, but was she pulling me aside to tell me otherwise?...I struggled to piece together the past few weeks at rapid pace, racing through anything I could have possibly done wrong and trying to come up with some sort of response to it. Was someone having a problem with me that I didn't know about? Had I done or said something inappropriate or disrespectful? I keep to myself a lot, so I could not imagine what she was going to say next. Well, it turns out, that that was just the sidenote for why she was talking to me now and not at dinner. She actually just called me in to say very kind, supportive, and encouraging things. She has been a tremendous help while I have been here and I look up to her so much. She constantly tells me how well I am doing and that she thinks that she and I are a lot alike, which is an amazing compliment, because she is so accomplished. She has worked all over, and she teaches in London. I could only hope to be that successful in my endeavors.

****



The weather is getting much hotter. It's the kind of heat that rolls over you, makes you break a sweat and take a long blink. You feel tired, and out of it, with intermissions of light headedness. As much as I want to drink coffee to combat the sleepiness I feel, I know that it is from dehydration and not from lack of sleep, or the need for caffeine. What I have been doing is telling myself that I cannot have coffee until I drink a bottle of water. By the time I down the water, i feel energized again and don't need the coffee, so it works out. It is pretty uncomfortable though. You walk by a window and it feels like you are walking by an oven. In the lab, I will feel like I am fine, but then i will stand up and realize that my clothes are damp from sweat.

My sweat dampened skin traps dirt into every crack and cuticle on my hands. I looked down at them today after I had been working a while. I thought to myself, wow...my dad would be so proud...so proud to know that his little girl followed his footsteps in picking up and seeing the world, living in new places...he would also be proud to know that my dirt crusted hands could rival his own- yes, that's how dirty my hands were today.

Given that the days are filled which so much dirt and sweat...naturally when I get home, I want to get into the shower. So far, I could vouch for the fact that the showers here have been great. The water works, the bathrooms are clean...but of course, that would be a statement spoken much too soon.

Today I got in the shower after work, much like I do most days. I start my shampooing my hair and letting it sit on there for a bit so that I can really get all of the dirt out. Meanwhile I lather up the rest of me, lots and lots and lots of soap. So I am doing this, the way I do everyday...then suddenly, the shower head starts spitting at me..a rush of pressure causes hot water to spout from the hose connected to the head and complete shower chaos ensues. Next, the pressure reduces to the point that only little droplets dribble down, having minimal affect on my sudd covered self. So I try turning the water off and turning it back on. Again I get this spitting response from the shower until it just stops working all together. So here I am, standing the shower, soap all over, shampoo in my hair utterly perplexed...perplexed, but not surprised. Okay,, the soap not a big deal...take a wash cloth and get it off. My hair...there was the challenge. Lucky for me, I am one of those terrible people that constantly has 4 or 5 half filled water bottles in my room. So I wrap myself up in a towel and trot down the hall to my room to grab some bottles...BLAST! Yesterday the cleaning people had taken all of my water bottles! I did have one though, but it was nearly empty. The sink in the bathroom wasn't working either so I couldn't fill it up there, and I did't want to walk downstairs in a towel to get more bottles of water for my hair. Quickly I think to try the sink in my own room. Eureeka! it works...so I start filling up my water bottle..done...scuttle back to the bathroom and rinse out the shampoo...but of course one bottle of water isn't enough, have you seen how long my hair is getting??? So i come back here to repeat- a situation where rinsing and repeating is actually necessary. Only this time, when I fill up the bottle the water looks like this:






I repeat, this water came from my faucet.


Now at this point I am incredibly distraught...I begin thinking...holy geez, how often is the water like this withut me knowing or noticing. Word on the street is that if you put your clothes, after washing them here, into a clean bucket of water, the amount of dirt that bleeds into the water is outrageous. So at this point...I can't even decide if i want the water to start working again knowing that theres a chance that that much dirt could come out.

Of course after a certain amount of time the water did start working again and i just did as I always do and rinsed the rest of my hair out without thinking about how dirty the water could be,,,but this had involved many trips back and forth to the bathroom, in my towel and shampoo saturated hair.

Well that is going to do it for the day in the life of a kelly in cairo. I took some benedryl because my allergies were out of control today. Apparenly date palm is in bloom...and apparently i'm allergic to it! I sound pretty gross...lots of sneezing and lots of snot, and lots of morning post nasal drip mmmmm....

I hope everyone has a good day off tomorrow. I will be working from 7-5 yet again~!

5/26/07

I don't plan on writing very much today.

In my material i found a human skull...this isn't really anything interesting or intriguing to my work, it is actually just an excavation mistake...it should have gone with the osetology specialist. It was still kind of cool to find though.

Today was pretty normal though...although I was startled from my sleep by my buzzing phone at 4:30 am, with a picture text message from my cousin. It was a picture of my brother's toe which is terribly infected and gross looking. I was quite confused. It took me until about mid afternoon to realize it wasn't a dream.

I did find these for your viewing pleasure. Videos of traffic in egypt...this shows them at slow pace though..things get even scarier when speed is involved, Notice all of the honking horns...this is what you hear all the time from everywhere in egypt. This is my "mood music" if you will...some people listen to crashing waves, some the lovely songs of humpback whales, other the chirps of crickets in the night...I listen to horns...and they are only to be outdone by call to prayer. The only time there is not rush hour traffic in egypt is on Friday when everyone is praying at the mosques

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYqhiFnuLSM&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmTIUKaLWBs&mode=related&search=

I think the fact that you can look up insane traffic specifically speaks on its own


Heres one forminside a car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-t6FZujJxM&mode=related&search=

whats hilarious about this last one is it makes it seem like people pull over for an ambulance..,a lot of times the ambulance turns on sirens just to get through traffic...however in my experience no one moves for them...in fact..i was in traffic, stuck next to one with the sirens blaring in my ears...I look over and the driver and the passenger are both laughing and having a cigarette...yes big emergencies.

Here is a clip will call to prayer in the background...it really is amazing how used to it you get...like i said, i sleep through it every night/morning, most people do not. This video does not actually do justice to how poor quality the speaker system is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPrbuHxi1w8&mode=related&search=

5/25: oh it's the 25th already! Oh snap~!

I am doing some massive multi tasking right now, mainly because I can't sit and write this blog while my room is the disaster that it is...so i started organizing my stuff and packing up for the move next week. But at the same time I am just really hyper so I clean a little, and then i come back to the computer and then i move around and eat candy and sugar and ahhh.

I think I have quickly readjusted to living by myself again. The perks of privacy have re-emerged so I am doing well.

Oh man someone just said enjoy your memorial day weekend....i didn't even know it was memorial day weekend..heh.

I slept so well last night. I woke up delighted, surrounded by a plethora of plushy pillows and a matress that doesn't leave half of my limbs tingling with loss of blood flow. Waking up in comfort put me in an instant good mood.

I also went shopping today. here is me before going into town. I took a picture of me standing in front of the mirror. This shirt is my trick method of adding long sleeves to tank tops!



here are pictures from town. A lot of this is 15th-16th century architecture and it was great to walk through, as I am a pretty big fan of medieval architecture.








I went into one of the mosques and it was absolutey breathtaking. When i came in, I had to take off my shoes and cover my hair. The sunlight ricocheted off the white floor, it was blinding.






This is the gate into town.


These right here were used to hang the heads of enemies in the past. From above we found the area where they would dump hot oil on the enemies as the walked under the passage:



We were able to climb the minerets and get an amazing view of mosque courts and other religious architecture in the hazy distance. In there is also an original piece of the wooden doors that managed to preserve. I also took a picture of the roof tops of peoples houses and sale shops...it's actually for a top secret theory my professor is working on.









This was on display inside the wall and mineret towers. They have been doing a lot to restore it and found these artifacts. I chose this photo op for obvious reasons if you can make out the blurb:


(I realized you can't...they are little coffee cups with an explanation on coffee making)

Here is a picture just of town. This is what most of Cairo looks like. Dirt roads and shop after shop after shop. The quality and range of merchandise is similar to american flea markets, only as my professor noted, these ones actually have fleas too.


I thought for sure I had captured a scene where a local had just defeathered a duck and cut its head off but alas, it was not in my camera...I'm sure you're all devestated.

I did not buy much at the Bazar. I got Marcia's gift and Megan's gift. Megan, I'm sure you know you are getting a snowglobe, because i hate shopping and you asked for one...but oddly enough, I asked my professor about it and he said he had never seen a snowglobe in Egypt. We looked everywhere for them but after a while we gave up and decided to leave. Imagine our surprise when we go to walk out of the Bazar and there is a stand with SNOWGLOBES. The guy really took advantage of me not understanding how egyptian pounds and dollars work. I was not able to haggle the price down by much. But megan let it be known, that my professor is DIGUSTED that someone he knows bought a snowglobe in egypt...I wouldn't be too offended though, he bought his wife lapis beatle earrings.

After the Bazar, we went to the Meridian and got sushi...I really do love getting spoiled on Fridays and eating in fancier places. It is a nice break. Once we finished eating, Richard took me to this store my roommate had reccomended that had fixed prices and higher quality merchandise. I got a lot of gifts out of the way there, including some stuff for me. here are some earrings I purchased:

HOLD IT! I just went to the earrings to take a picture of them and I realized megans snow globe broke... CURSES...no seriously...mummy curses...It was the tackiest snow globe in the world with a deformed Nefratiti- she had a lazy eye, oh blast!




heh I really don't know what i am going to do about that snowglobe...guess you might have to settle for a nicer gift meg, because i am never going to the bazar again haha...that is a place only to be experienced once! I really loved how tacky that thing was. The snowglobe, not the bazar.


Well that is it for today...i will probably proof read this later, but not now. Have a happy memorial day everyone!

5/24/07 updated 5:08

Dear Bloggary,
Today i only had to work a half day! usually the crew gets half of thursday and all of friday off during the excavation season, however now as the season wraps up and everyone frantically finishes analysis and reporting, they find themselves working through to the end of Thursday....but not this one! You would think that I would come home and be productive, but I really wasn't. i cleaned my room a bit and took a shower, and then chatted online.

My stomach was still a little off today...more and more I am growing skeptical of food choices, even though they often taste delicious, you never know how you are going to react to the bacteria here. I soon may find myself only subsisting on rice...However after we move we don't have people cooking the meals anymore and we will have to get them ourselves, so that will be more trustworthy. This morning i was working on my crossword puzzle and drinking my coffee, when I decided i needed more sugar...I left to get some and when I turned around, my good friends the maggots paid me another visit. i turned around and there they were wiggling about on my crossword puzzle (they must be coming from the ceiling). so i went to get a napkin to crush them and get them off the table...and did you know those things can jump? Here he is...he popped in the air after the flash:



Tonight we went into town for dinner. We ate at an Italian place. I just had pasta. Those were three very simple sentences.
I had a really good time and I tried the espresso there which was better than what I had in Zurich, but I also got to drink it out of a fancy glass.

I would like to take this moment to tell you all in Michigan that I do not want to hear you say how hot it is...when it's 88 here I contemplate grabbing a jacket...


Tomorrow is my day off and we are going to the Khan and the Bazarr I believe...the names probably aren't important, the main point is that tomorrow I am shopping. Now, I am not a big fan of shopping in the first place...and these places don't have fixed prices, it's all haggling prices down...because I have such a tremendous impatience for this sort of thing, presents for my close family and friends may not be as well thought out as they have been in previous vacations of mine. I dont even know what to get for boys out here...especially Kirk, that weirdo...I want to try to avoid really hard just giving people stuff that takes up space, but we'll see.

That should take up about half of the day and then i will HOPEFULLY do some work, either on my research design, or my area database. Then it's back to work on Saturday.


ALSO, i took my roommate's bed...it is amazing by comparison...it is amazing by default of being flat... I also now have soft fluffy pillows as opposed to the very uncomfortable one I had before. Finally some beauty sleep!:



Sorry that's such a boob shot...it's just the tank top, Egyptian water didn't give a C cup or anything like that.

Thats it for tonight, I need sleep now!



But lastly, Janel: I got your comment but I am going to keep it unpublished so no one else can read it. Give me your email and I will write you back about it.

Approaching 5/24

Two entries in one night....what is going on you ask?

I was able to pass out in my room around 10:30. My roommate was still packing up her stuff, but since I work in the morning, and worked all day today, I didn't have the energy to stay up with her. Not to mention dinner tonight made me a little ill (I wasn't the only one that's why I know it was dinner and not me being sick). Tally One for adverse throw up reaction towards food served in Egypt.

When I woke up an hour later, it was dark, the other side of the room was empty, and my roommate had left the once always oscillating fan situated with the cool air blowing only on me. She also left me some saltine crackers in case I was feeling sick again. And now here I am unable to fall back asleep. Part of me is sad, part of me is lonely, part of me is a little anxious. I guess i really didn't consider how comforting it was to have someone who every morning and every night is empathizing and relating to the things you are going through. And when I didn't want to go through those things, i could talk to her about something else to distract from the many thoughts driving my introversion. Now it is just silence and isolation and I almost don't know what to do with myself. She wasn't even here most of the time, and when she was she was usually skyping or texting. But all of the little things which helped make this living condition easier are now gone and it is an entirely new adjustment. By the 30th, I will also be packing to move into a different living space entirely.

It's life on the go, job in a suitcase, time spent alone, but it's still apart of a dream I want, and am still grateful for having received so far.

This entry was more so just meant to help me re-unwind and get sleepy again.

Didn't work much so I will read.

5/23/07

Sorry I missed the entry yesterday...I'm sure you were all devestated! I had to babysit after I got off of work and before I went over there I had to call my mom and wish her a very happy birthday. She is going through some hard times right now, though she is in good spirits which makes me glad. She sounded happy to hear from me. I actually had called her a few nights before in tears, so she considered her birthday present from me a "I'm feeling better" phone call.

That said, you should all know, that for various, not to be overly detailed reasons, I am doing much better here and I anticipate it to last throughout the rest of my trip. So hopefully no more downer entries- but still insightful ones! I also have pictures to post today, yay!

I suppose I will start with recapping yesterday. One of the professors here had to give a lecture. He has adorable kids that needed to be looked after while he and most of the GPMP members attended. My roommate had originally asked jokingly if I would help and I said that I would actually love to help. First of all, it's one of her last nights here so i wanted to hang out with her, plus I want to get in as much socializing as I can before she and her team leaves. Once they are gone, it is just Richard and I pretty much, After a week or so, John, the guy I babysat for, will come back and keep working in the lab with us, only he works on something else.

My roommate, whose name I never mentioned before, Ally, went over to John's around 3:45. I wasn't done working until 5:00 and then I called my mom afterwards. This means, that in order for me to babysit, I had to walk to John's...alone. That's right...I walked somewhere in Egypt for the first time, by myself. It wasnt icredibly far away or anything...maybe like a quarter mile. I made sure I was covered, my arms, my hair, my eyes...despite the fact that I was hidden under these layers of clothing in the 90 degree evening, I cannot begin to tell you guys how liberating it was to be able to walk down the street by myself. Of course I can never blend in completely here...the white skin still visible on my face, and the western apparel still brought on the attention of drivers who honked and hollered...but it was nothing that made me too uncomfortable, nor did it take away from how great it felt to just walk down the street.

Once I got to the apartments standard babysitting routine ensued. We watched Madagascar. I wasn't able to pay much attention to it. John's children are 2 and 4, and another woman who excavates here, Ana, her daughter was over as well. The kids were a handful so I only caught bits and pieces of madacascar. Alex, the 2 year old is in that "What's that?" phase. I told him that the shiny thing he could see in the street was a butterfly balloon, at least 37 times. Additionally, he still wants to be held constantly and any attempt you make to try and put him down is countered with exorcism qualitity body contortions. Rosie, the 4 year old, just had a lot of energy and was pretty much impossible to please ha! She made Ally pick out every tiny sliver of basil in her spaghetti. Then she wanted grape juice-but once you got it for her, she wanted tea- and then grape juice again. I made her a picture with her name on it which she hung on the door.

Babysitting was definitely tiring but I had fun. I am glad i helped, I have no idea how Ally would have done it alone with that little alex not having anything to do with being put down. It was also just a good way for me to feel more apart of the team. Alex had his birthday party tonight too, and the kids came up and hugged me...it's like being apart of another family out here, it is nice. Again, too bad everyone is leaving!

Oh man this entry is getting super long and that's without the pictures!

From time to time I remember that there are things i have been meaning to mention and haven't. As i sit here, itching, I think..boy what were those things...itching..ah hah! oh yes. So you heard me complain about mosquitos. Well let me tell you about this wonderful game we have here called- Guess the Bug Bite...this of course is because there are multiple bugs that bite you out here. If you have bites on your feet, they are from fleas. It's funny....I have never been the type of person to really prefer walking around barefoot. Sure in the summer I will sport some flip flops, but as soon as i'm walking around my room or house, I want socks. You would think I would be far more insistent on wearing socks here since everything is so dirty...at least to me that seems like the most forward logic...but I also only have so many socks here, and I don't like getting my laundry ready every other day...after working in the field, when i come home, the sweaty, sandy gross socks have to go. Afterwards I just never put socks back on. I usually hate wearing pants with socks...but now i do it all the time...which of course means, I have little flea bites on my feet. I know for some people, that feeling would be awful...knowing there are flea infested carpets and that they are snacking on your toes...I myself, just got over it...because wait until you hear what else we have....I will call upon a sweet nightly nothing:

"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite"

Bed Bugs...yep we got 'em, and yep they bite us. Ally and I frequently spray down the beds with water and euclyptus oil which is supposed to help. It also makes the sheets a little damp which works out on the hot nights. You may be thinking..sleeping in damp sheets?? Yes...the theme of my travels is, adjust quickly, or lose your sanity. Wet sheets and bed bugs,,,and I swear to you, I've never slept better.

On the topic of bugs check out these guys:




These are flesh eating beatles. Remember my photos of the comparative collection of skeletons? The ones we use to compare the bones from the site to. Well...this is how we get the comparative collection. We get dead animals, either kill them, hunt them, fish them, or we get road kill. Our fish collection is quite small...so we have been doing this the past few days:





The beatles are floating in the water


mmmmm chow down beatles!


Then they dry out:






This all happens right outside of the lab. Did I get grossed out by the smell? No..we poured ammonia in there so it helped a bit, but it did smell kind of bad.



Today I finished week 4 material and started week 5. Keep in mind I haven't even worked 3 weeks yet, so this is very good news, I am doing quite well. Unfortunately I am not very caught up on data entry, or my reading...they are just very hard to focus on...it will get done though.

My cough here has actually gotten worse. I don't feel ill otherwise, just a bad cough. My chest is really tight, and last night it was actually kind of hard to breathe. I've been keeping my professor informed so that it doesn't get bad. He went and bought me cough drops today. This morning I coughed up mucus that actually had dirt and sand in it...it was pretty gross. I am starting to understand how my professor wound up with lung cancer without ever having smoked a cigarette in his life...simply working here for 20 years.

With that, I leave you with another photo of the Giza skyline...look at the beautiful haze.



and here are some more shots of tombs and pyramids...you know i nearly forget that I live and work here. The last photo is of the lab. The tent is where the little coffee making set up is.







byeeee everyone!

5/21/07

Another day in paradise.


It's a very odd thing living abroad. No matter how much time passes, things never seem to get less stressful. I'm not losing my mind or anything like that, but the underlying notion that everything is still so unpredictable when you are in a new place will always impart a certain stress and pressure both emotionally and physically. On the uplifting side of things, I was very productive at work today. I am almost done with my 4th crate (which i was supposed to have done by the 4th week and I haven't even been working 3 weeks yet). This last bag I am sorting though is loaded and should really take me the next couple of days to get through. i am getting really good at dental analysis though. So, it still appears as though I will get done early and will get to work half days at the lab, and the rest at the apartments (which will be really nice because of the air conditioning).

Some not so great stuff...I am coming down with a cough. Everyone around here has been sick and it really is only a matter of time before I fall victim to the germ spread. However it is hard to tell whether or not it is a sickness cough or if it is what my professor calls, "The Cairo Cough" a natural body reaction to the air pollution. Cairo is the most polluted city in Africa, and one of the most polluted cities in the world. The traffic is one factor....when at any given point in time the streets are packed with running vehicles (except during Fridays when people are at the mosques) one can only imagine how much exhaust is filling the air. Additionally there aren't any regulations in terms of garbage burning and what not. Air pollution to this degree is really something that should be expected overall in a city housing 25 million. So again, my cough could really just be my body telling me how unhappy it is that I am putting it through such unhappy times. There's not a whole lot I can really do about it though, just tough it out.

Other not so fun stuff. This morning I was drinking coffee and doing my crossword puzzle, ignoring the flies that buzz around me, trying to get access to any moist part of my skin or eyes. So nonchalantly, one of the grad students, Foy says, "What do you think this one is?" And I look...a pale belly dancing bug twisting itself about the table. I felt myself grow just as pale...I knew what it was...I just didn't want to be right. Someone voices, "Oh is it just some sort of worm?"....Disgusted still I can't look away, I find myself trying not to squirm and mock its very motions...Worm..yes a worm, please let it be a worm...Richard walks by and takes a look, and verifies what I knew the whole time, "Ohh yeah, that's a maggot." Glance around the table and there's another one....I look at my coffee cup and make sure it's clear, Richard mentioned something about them coming from the ceiling...I tossed out the coffee either way...he then went through the fruit bowl which sits as the centerpiece of the table and got rid of a molded out peach that had been sitting there. He said that that could have been why they were there. So add that to the list....I now don't eat the fruit here. Maggots...yes that one I am still trying to get over. I was glad I had decided not to eat anything for breakfast otherwise I probably would have felt very ill. But I'm still gonna go down to dinner, and just put it out of mind. I wonder if my dad accidently ever consumed maggots during his travels. Richard has many stories about maggot infested foods.

If only I were this guy:



tomorrow is my roommate's last night here. The professor she works with is giving a lecture on his dissertation work. She is going to be baysitting for his kids while he does that and I told her I would help. I suppose i could go to the lecture...but half of it is going to be in japanese with a translator...and I think I would rather just hang out with my roommate and watch some cinderella. Tuesday nights are usually movie nights around here, though I doubt that will keep up since everyone is pretty much leaving this week. Last week we watched layer cake, a movie I enjoyed a lot. the week before we watched Lucky number Slevin, which was also good, but I was able to figure out a lot of it well before the end.

I'm hoping to get some reading done tonight. I haven't been good about doing more work in the evening mainly because I hate being at my computer, and I hate reading this text book. Every day I toy with the idea of putting my computer away and abstaining from it completely but I know it helps for you to all read this, and most days it helps me too.

I leave you with a picture of this contemplative archaeologist:


Have a good day everyone. Will someone please tell me if my brother is alive? It occured to me the other day that I don't think I have seen him since january, and that's absurd. that cutiepie actually told Cedar point that he couldn't work until after May 12th because he had to see me before I left, but unfortunately I wound up leaving much earlier and he wasn't done with school yet. Man I love that kid...sometimes...no all the time.

Thank you to those that e-mail me and message me, it really helps to get personal responses and support while I am here.

5/20/07

Today was definitely better than yesterday in terms of how the time passed, and I think it has a lot to do with my quasi theory posed yesterday. You see today, I had to sort much more challenging material and therefore only managed to get through 3 bags, and 3 data sheets....in other words, I only wrote the date 3 times today. Also, Richard didn't come out this morning and so I was alone. Since I was alone, I listened to my cd player (YES I STILL LISTEN TO A CD PLAYER...i am not to be trusted with ipodishmp3ness). I usually don't listen to music because I don't want to seem rude...I know that part of my role here is a student and I don't feel that at moments when Richard decides to ask me questions or teach me something new that he should have to wait for me to take out my head phones, or turn down the volume...however...the time goes by sooo much faster with the music. he also didn't seem to mind that i was listening to it once he came back. I think tomorrow I will just ask him if he would prefer I not listen to music. i think he will want me to because, at some point I think he probably would rather have the excuse for us to not talk, or make side comments, especially once everyone else leaves and we are the only two left working at the lab...not that I think he doesn't enjoy teaching me or that I think he finds me annoying, but between working together all day, living together and having meals together...you probably just don't want to keep talking about what a hyomandibular looks like across various taxa of fish more than you have to.

The tables have turned with my roommate and I. My first 2 weeks here I always fell asleep while she stayed up on her computer and here i am typing away with the lamp on as she sleeps. Before she fell asleep she was making shadow puppets on the wall...a clear indication that she has been here for too long. She leaves on Wednesday. I am going to be pretty wonewee without her. It's going to be a whole lot of kelly thinking time. I could do a lot of data entry, unfortunately, I just really hate doing it on such a small screen. I have to have like 6 different excel spreadsheets opened at once and i am going back and forther between them all, it really wears on my patience, I lose interest quickly. Instead, I have just being doing a lot of crossword puzzles when I'm sick of sitting at my computer, which happens often and within a short time frame. Since I am getting through my area material ahead of schedule, Richard says that after I finish it, if I do so before the 14th, I can start coming to work for half days, and begin working on an area that doesn't pertain to my thesis, and then after lunch, i can stay at the villa and do my data entry/start writing. that sounds like a good plan to me and is more motivation to get through things quickly...although only doinig 3 bags today did not do much for that, but there are reasons why the bags were so challenging today...so, all I can do is work my hardest and the learn the most i can.

Like i said the roommate is trying to sleep now so I should go...sorry for slacking on pictures you guys...I will..uh..work on it?

Night!

5/19/07

Last night marked the 2nd in a row, post midnight slumber and tonight is not shaping up to be any different. It is already 11:00 p.m. and apparently in their Egyptian glory, this is a privy hour upon which to start doing jack hammer construction in the lot right next to the villa. Add that to the gang banging Kitties, and a night breeze which is unsuccessfully trying to compensate for the 105 degree day, and you have 3, of many contributing factors as to why sleep is not soon in sight.

I'm really starting to hit a plateau in terms of my eagerness to be here. It's not as though I'm not having a good time, or that things have become intolerable or anything...just at some point you want off the the ride...the ups, the downs, the loops...eventually you want yourself on familiar ground. While 17 days has certainly gone by fast, I still have 27 to go, and I feel the pace of things slowing down each second. I think a lot of it has to do with numbers. Let's start with hours of work. I have come to realize, that no matter how much you love your job, where you are or who you are with, 10 hours of doing the same thing, for 6 days a week will always get old, it will always lose its gleam. Particular to my 60 hours a week are more numbers...counting bones, weighing bones, measuring bones, aging bones...numbers numbers numbers. For every bag I sort, I write all of these numbers down on their own sheets which are headlined by..you guessed it, more numbers, feature numbers, bag numbers, the date the bones were bagged numbers...and in the right hand corner of this page I write the day's date. I probably write out about 20-30 data sheets every day....this means that in one day, I am reminded 20-30 times what day it is...for 10 hours I keep telling myself, today is May 19th, May 19th, May 19th.....how can I not transition from that to, 31-19= 12 +14= 26 days until I leave....or 19-2=17 days I have been here...and then my stomach starts to grumble, or my eyes start to get heavy and I look at my clock, 4 hours til lunch break, 7 hours until the day is over....and it's the same thing every day.

Well, seeing as though Saturdays are our days back after having Friday off, Saturday is the Egyptian Monday, and perhaps I just had a case of the Mondays and tomorrow will be better. But it cannot be so great unless I fall asleep...but it is still hot and there is still jack hammering outside.

I hope everyone else has a good weekend


Oh yeah and per my list, I have decided to remove coffee and subsitute it for slurpee for when I get home. The coffee really isnt that bad here, but not a slurpee for miles...they should have them though, i bet they would make a fortune!

5/18/07 Part Two: A Day's End

The night is winding down and it is around 8:00 p.m. here, 1:04 p.m. in Michigan. As mentioned in previous entries, today I went to the Cairo Museum. It actually wasn't too bad today, it was a little crowded in certain areas, but for the most part since I was just with one other person it was pretty easy to get through. They had a lot of tour groups going on though, all speaking different languages which was a little bit of a distraction, but everything was just so eye catching and unbelievable that the tourists and their guides easily faded into the background.

I have had my fair share of museum browsing experiences but I wouldn't even know where to start describing everything I saw today. The museum is just loaded with so much stuff, had most of these Egyptian tombs and areas not been looted from I don't know what they would do with it all...not that I encourage looting for the sake of cataloging convenience by any means. The museum is divided into Old, Middle, and New Kingdom stuff, as well as a huge exhibit on King Tut. Everything is so extravagant. I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the museum, and even if I could have, I assure you photo's would never do the collections justice. There were statues, stelae, chariots, beds, royal mummies, sickle blades, projectiles, dice, mummified animals, jewelry...the museum is 2 stories and is fairly large. It really needs to be renovated and more extensive measures to preserve the artifacts really need to be implemented, but I am grateful that I was able to see everything now. Some of my favorite things were the Mummy portraits from the Fayum, wooden models which depicted everyday work life in fishing, bread making, animal slaughtering, beer making, and granary movement from the Middle Kingdom. Also, the exhibit on Ahkenaten was something I particularly enjoyed. The exhibit on King Tut was "brilliant" haha for lack of a better American idiom...again extravagance to an unbelieveable degree. The exhibit on King Tut, for those that do not know, is of particular significance because it was buried under another Pharoah's tomb and therefore was not looted. In other words, it is one of the most complete collection for an Egyptian King that we have, though it is not indicative of him being more powerful than other dynastic rulers.

I was rather surprised at how much I really enjoyed looking at the jewlery throughout the museum. I myself have never been a girl in high demand for lavish things...I wear one necklace from time to time, though I think here I've worn it every day, and even then it is a simple one that I made. I also wear my class ring which I have had now for about 7 years, the only ring I have really ever worn, simple, with an aquamarine center (yay march!) . I own one pair of earrings which I'm pretty sure cost no more than 4 dollars, and actually broke in my back pack on my trip here, go figure. Tiffanys is a place to have breakfast, and diamonds are a fun suit to order up in Euchre...a slight window into my regard and appreciation for jewelry...but maybe if I were alive during dynastic Egypt my feelings would have been different. The craftsmanshift, the colors, its all gorgeous. I say we bring back the days of Cleopatra! In fact, if I ever get married or engaged, forget diamonds, I think lapis lazuli or turquois are beautiful. What can i say...I'm a cheap date. Also the faience beads and necklaces were gorgeous...but maybe I was just some sort of Egyptian queen in a past life....perhaps Hatshepsut, the woman Pharaoh herself! One can daydream..


After my trip in the museum, Richard and I went to eat at the Nile Hilton...it was definitely a nice break from the dirt-under-my-fingernails lunches that interrupt my work days here at the Villa. We didn't have Egyptian cuisine though, it was an Italian restaurant. I had risotto for the first time, and I loved it...you know I tell you what, rice is really starting to grow on me..and not because I work near our ethnobotany collection in the lab...but the actual taste for it has (even I have to admit that was terrible...I'm sure none of you even questioned for a second what I meant by "rice is starting to grow on me"). Anyways, moving on...I am always one to admit when I'm wrong- even if I really really despise doing so, and I have always maintained that rice is incredibly unnecessary, that is has zero flavor and just doesn't belong on my plate...but recently I have ventured out in to taste testing the different varieties of rice available here and some of them are, in fact, loaded with flavor. True to my health nut nature though, I am partial to the whole grain and borwn, and still say that white rice is pretty unnecessary- except the sweetend sticky kind surrounding sushi. I really miss sushi...not really something I trust to dine on here.

I am already thinking about of list of things I would like immediately available for me when I get back to the states (Marcia get your pen ready!) They include:

Tuna Salad
Peanut Butter M&Ms
A Big Cup of Coffee (their cups here are so little! Curse you American Portion Distortion!)
Tropical Twist Trident Gum
Kirk- though I know this will be harder to get since he is working hard at Cedar Point

Thanks in advance!

I'm sure there will be more things I will come to miss by the end of my stay, but those are it for now.

My phone started doing an "Inactivated Smart Chip" thing today, which I fixed by just turning it on and off today, but when it was in that mode I was unable to receive text messages...but once I fixed it I got ones I had missed all day so I don't think I missed any...so if it seems like I don't respond to your text message, chances are I didn't get them, I will always respond to them. Also, in the case of emergency, my cell phone does work here...but international rates are really expensive, so unless I really think it will be an emergency I probably wont pick up. E-mail is always good and still welcome (I still owe you a reply Michele! I didn't forget).

The rest of my day today was pretty laid back...I finally was able to just relax,..I took a 2 hour nap and it was very comforting..though I'm unsure of what that will do for my sleeping schedule now. Thursday Night I was up until midnight, which is indicative of a few things, one that I am finally getting comfortable enough here, and social enough with the people around me that I don't prefer sleeping as opposed to being awake, and two, I am out of melatonin. Funny story, not to be fully elaborated on here, but maybe to some of you a bit closer to me, particular atypical things led me to some googling where I wound up stumbling across some effects of melatonin that I had no idea about. they aren't negative ones or anything, just perplexing ones...well, hopefully they are actually attributed to the melatonin, otherwise they are still perplexing until further notice.

Another loooonnng day of el worko tomorrow, so I'm off for now. Good night everyone, and warm thoughts to those who may need it in these days.

5/18/07 Part One

Sorry I didn't write yesterday, especially after an entry that seemed to catch me on the downside. Thursday night is like our Friday/Saturday. I went out to dinner with two of the grad students here since they don't serve dinner Thursday nights. We went to that really tasty place I mentioned the other night. It was good to sit down with them and talk and get to know them better, I really enjoyed it. Afterwards we came back to the villa and talked some more. Later on my roommate came home and we stayed up until around midnight talking. I haven't had good experiences with roommates in the past, but this has definitely been one change my perspective. It is really nice to have someone ask you first thing in the morning, how you slept, or to laugh with someone right before you go to bed (though usually I just pass out early on while she is skyping). It is really nice to have someone go and pick up a variety of chewing gum for you, just because they thought of you. I knew that it wouldn't be hard adjusting to a roommate, especially since it is only for a short amount of time, but I didn't realize that I would go so far as to really enjoy having one. It is very different compared to my last 3 years at the dorms living by myself. I still don't mind the idea of living by myself, I don't think I will ever not prefer it, but having a roommate here, especiially one that is actually a lot like me in various ways, has been awesome. I think things were a little hypersensitive on my part for a little bit, just because I get really self conscious about whether or not I am bothering someone or getting on someone's nerves, and I didn't know how it was affecting someone like her who stays up keeping her contacts, while I pass out at 8:00 with every light on and every noise imaginable. i was always so exhausted that I didn't care what she would do, chances are I would sleep through it, but I know that if I were on the other end of the dynamic, it might make me feel a little uncomfortable if I felt as though i had to be overly quiet in my own room starting at a ridiculous hour like 8:00...but she doesn't seem to mind anything, she does her thing, and I do mine, and we've had a lot of good conversations in between. She told me I was welcome to visit her and stay if I was ever looking into the University of Chicago for grad school...though i don't think that is where I will want to go...It is a very very good school in the states for anthropology/archaeology, but it is very competitive, especially at the graduate level, from what I hear. Not that I am one to cower in the face of competition...but I know how easily I can be turned off from experiences if they are negative and make me unhappy, and I can't imagine finding happiness when I would have to constantly question my ability and rank it against others...i just want to do what I love, I don't even have to be the best at it. I just want to be able to travel, write, and teach, and really I would rather be the best at teaching over discovering, or being in high demand for the field. We'll see what happens though, i could go to grad school, and...hate it! Or i could finish here and decide, no way jose.


That's about what you all get for now. It's a quarter to 8 here. I woke up at 6:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. I am going to the Cairo Museum at around 9...which, silly me, I thought was going to be something really toned down, and neat and clean...but I am already hearing stories about how hectic and unorganized it is...wish me luck, good night everyone, i will post more later.

5/16/07

I had an idea about what to write about earlier today, but I have forgotten it by now. I know a lot of you aren't really in direct contact with me, or don't IM me, but a few of you do. I'm pretty sure most anyone that has, has experienced some brunt of a bad mood of mine...sometimes it's deserved, and sometimes it really is not...but sometimes it really, truly is. I want to apologize now, and in advance for any instance in which I get short or grouchy with people. I know you all just miss talking to me and really just want to hear about everything going on here, but please try and be understanding and patient for the situation I am in, even at it's most basic level. While the stress I am under here is very different from what I am under at school, they are still stressful circumstances nonetheless, which I'm sure is obvious. Try to remember that I work 10 hour days in very hot weather, in very uncomfortable conditions, and that sometimes when I get home, I don't want to relive that entire 10 hour day, or that every weekend, that 60 hour week. Try to remember that my work is all a part of a huge learning process...I can never feel like I am the best person for the job, or I never feel satisfied, wholly with my abillities, I struggle with that fact that I have to keep trying to do it better and better (which is probably true of everyone, it's just something I want to point out). Try to remember that I only get 1 day off a week, and that so far, I have only had one of those and it was spent traveling all day. I know that sometimes I even start or initiate the conversation oriented around what I'm going through and that I can grow irritible at the flip of switch and just not want to talk anymore- again I ask that people be patient. For the most part you are all pretty understanding which helps, the last thing I need is to try and take in and deconstruct this experience and then, at the same time, worry or feel guilty at how my processing of all of this manifests itself in a bad mood. And if I am coming to you to talk, or vent, please realize that that's what I need from you, someone to listen. I don't need someone to try and make me look at things from a different perpspective, I'm trying to understand the perspective I have- not lose it or let it go. I don't need my feelings validated or invalidated, sometimes i just need to put them somewhere else besides my own mind and heart. If I snap at you because you don't understand, I'm sorry, that's not fair- but try and be thoughtful and considerate of the position I am in; irrespective of the the fact that it is my choice to be here.

If you couldn't tell today was a harder day. It was fine for a while, but at some point in the day I just really lost my energy and good spirit. I couldn't tell if I felt ill, or sad, or tired...I just floated in this ambiguous state of not feeling my best. It's like this entire experience just crashes and recedes like waves. It can take your breath away in good and bad ways. The fact that I am here,and that I am happy here, fills me with life and a hunger for more knowledge and worldly exploration...it makes me feel like I am ready for the next challenge, any challenge (though I'll pass on anything in the form of poor health whilst here). It makes me hopeful and optimistic about everything I can still accomplish, because here I am, only 22 and I am living in Egypt, If this is where I am at 22, who knows what I could see or do in the next 5 years.

But for every up, there is a down, and this experience is the epitome of mania. It is all so much at once that when you fall from that peak of optimism, that high from the quick pace of a new, eye opening experience, it seems like nothing, at all, makes sense. You feel guilty for what you have, you feel conflicted about what to do with what you learn, you are drained of all of your energy and suddenly putting on a smile seems to be the next challenge you face.

Everything is so complicated and so simple all at once and that only scratches the surface of the things running through my mind. I'm still trying to deal with all of the same questions and problems that everyone is dealing with back at home. Questions about my future, questions about the disappointments of the past, regret, mistakes, making changes, making decisions, making progress, and at the same time, trying to relax.

I don't want anyone to worry about me, I'm still doing great. I'm still a hopeful girl with an intense curiosity about the world, and I'm going to continue to embrace every highlight and every pitfall with the same attitude.

I'm sorry if this entry seems more like a downer...I guess I'll try and conclude with a funny snippet that occured today:

Richard: Oh Kelly, as soon as you fill up a box with the identified material, close it and make sure you write EOG and "done"
Kelly: Okay
Richard: Oh and the year...
Kelly: This year?
Richard: yes
Kelly: OR 4th DYNASTY??

..........prolonged silence to note Kelly being a smartass.....

that very well could have been a "you had to be there" moment.

There was also the point in the day where I created a new verb:

sheepgoat (v): to look at one of 9 reliable, anatomical differences between sheep and goat bones and successfully distinguish between the two

Example sentence/discussion that took place:

Kelly: Oh look an entire calcanium
Richard: yes, Kelly, very nice (I don't even think he was paying any attention to me at this point!)
Kelly: You know what that means? It means I can sheepgoat it
Richard: Yes it does....and you created a new verb too, excellent.

I hope everyone has a happy hump day...though for me wednesday is actually over the hump..so I get a different hump day alltogether.