Let’s see lets see. Once again I am writing this entry at about 9:00 pm from my apartment (which is still without internet grrrr) which means I wont post this until around 6 amish…which is still the middle of the night for you all so I suppose it matters not.

So this is me reflecting on Tuesday. Monday night I did not sleep very well so I was pretty tired throughout most of today. It seems impossible to dress comfortably for the weather here….like I said the sun makes all the difference…well mid seventies has been quite cool on site especially because it has been so windy…so when the weather said it was going to be 77 I layered up….except I failed to notce that there would not be a cloud in the sky….I wound up being really warm, but it was easy enough to delayer. However, my body could not seem to stay hydrated. Between the dry heat and the wind I just felt like all energy was draining from me. I kept drinking bottle after bottle of water, but trying not to chug it all at once since it will just go straight through your system if you do that. By noon I had drank around 6 bottles and still would feel faint when I stood up. People have been saying that I look tired, but that it’s a content tired...I dug out more and more of my feature today. I should finish it by tomorrow…I know have bagged over 250 liters of ashy deposits to be analyzed. My entire upper body is pretty sore from just carving away to the bottom of this room…which I was thinking didn’t have a bottom for a while! But I have reached the limstone floor throughout most of it now and like I said, should be done with it tomorrow (Wednesday).

I managed to get even dirtier today than I did yesterday! When I came to site I looked at the bags that I had filled and saw that the pyramid dogs had peed on them…you could see the yellow pooled into the folds of the bags…that’s when I looked at the rest of my square that I have bee excavating and realized that dogs, among other animals I’m sure, probably peed in there too…keep in mind that I sit in this thing all day long, digging and digging and digging. I tried not to think about it beyond that and when I was talking to Amelia later she said the real thing you need to worry about is areas where rats are a problem….rat piss can give you all sorts of nasty diseases. Mental note made.

At lunch I got back to the villa and took off my sunglasses only the see that I was a raccoon! Not from tan lines or anything, but simply because the circles around my eyes were the only clean parts of my face. A dust bunny as my Aunt Marcia so cutely struggled to post :) Sorry I published every post you made Marcia...but i thought it was really funny that you tried so many times!

Not just my face, but all over my arms and into every cranny and crease of my fingers…my hair looked about two shades lighter from all of the dust. So…imagine how thrilled I was when I come back to the villa only to find out the water isn’t working…the same was true for the apartments. Luckily the water was working at the hotel, which I have a membership at so that I can use the pool and spa facilities whenever I want…so I just went over there and took a shower…it really had to be done there was no way I could go without showering….our water was turned back on later.

That was about it in terms of work….7 am -1:30 pm straight up digging. After lunch I didn’t go back to site because no one else was going, they were all going to do paper work. I didn’t want to be by myself for the rest of the afternoon so I just helped with paperwork. It was boring but at least I didn’t have to worry about being in the sun any longer.


Other quirky things worth noting I suppose are…at first I was nervous again about being too heavily influenced by british accents and slang…sometimes they really have their own language…they never say pants, always trousers, it cracks me up…but when we were at the pool the other day, a guy came up to me and new that I was from midwestern US just from me talking…it was good to know I am still nasally as ever, but it was annoying because he really felt like he was welcome to converse with me further…which he was not. Additionally comical were the looks I was given when I would mention how close I am with my “ants” instead of my “awnts”….

Also, in Luxor, I learned that Europeans use their silverware differently than Americans do. Americans cut up their food with a fork and knife, and then switch the hand they hold their fork with and eat that way. Europeans always have a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and keep them in the same hands the entire time…it really did seem like such a hassel to cut and switch…so I started eating like everyone else around me…I like it better…but sometimes I still switch fork hands out of habit. This sounds confusing now that I’ve written it out because now imthinking about it too much, but its really noticeable when you’re the only one at the table not eating this way…even Richard eats his food like a European since he lived in Europe for so long.

Me the lone silly American…wearin my “pants”, with my illogical utensil habits, nasally accent, non metric system, and degrees farenheit.

Also my boogers are black.

I have no shame haha.