I come home in less than 3 weeks! Count down 20 days. I tried thinking about what kind of food I am really craving or missing these days. For the most part I really just miss having a variety of fresh vegetables. The only fresh vegetable we are served here is cucumber. Everything else is boiled to death to kill anything that could make people sick. Things like lettuce are fertilized using human fecal matter…not sure how common this in other places and that no one really talks about it, but since it is known here, people seem to avoid eating it. Though not a vegetable, we are also served fresh tomatoes, which I don’t even like, but I eat only when I am out here…however the other night I stared in disgust at my plate and said, “I am so sick of freakin tomatoes.” It generated a good laugh around the dinner table as I continue to radiate my negative, I-hate-everything attitude…at least everyone seems to find it charming and not obnoxious. Standard response is, “Kelly doesn’t like it..what a surprise.” Yesterday I found myself really craving avocados but I don’t know how in season they will be upon my return to the states. Part of me misses real, good coffee as I have been only drinking instant nescafe the entire time here. However, I have been drinking so much nescafe that really coffee does not appeal to me any form. I’ll have to think about it all a little bit more as I am sure my Aunt Marcia will start asking me what kind of dinner I will want when coming home…or perhaps I am being presumptuous and she has no intentions on feeding me at all and instead wants to lock me away in a dungeon with nothing but more cucumbers, tomatoes, and nescafe.

One thing that I realized I do miss a lot right now is rain. I miss cool, breezy, rainy mornings. The big bubble drops that hit the rooftops and windows with a soothing rhythm. I miss the smell of soaked grass and damp tree bark, and making the choice to sit inside a watch movies all day with cat naps in between. I don’t miss the snow though…the snow can clear out and stay away for my arrival.

I have been working overtime to get through as much excavation paper and computer work as possible so that I can get right into the lab and begin work on lithics. One of the girls that is supposed to be sharing the work load with me, left for 4 days to go to the Red Sea. There really has been an issue with me baring a much larger workload than others, but I know that it doesn’t matter because I get to start doing new interesting things, and they will have to work well into May at the office. I, however, will be exempt from anymore office work once I finish the database, which hopefully wont take me longer than Saturday and Sunday. If it does, then I am going to just start doing data entry in the evenings and going to the lab during the day anyway. That’s what I’m willing to do in order to maximize the amount of time I can spend learning a new trade in this field.

Because of the work I have done and the networking I’ve been able to do I have some exciting prospects in terms of work for the next year as well. I am going to be given the contact information to work at a site called Catalhoyuk in Turkey. A lot of people working here work there every year and said that I should go and that they would recommend me. Catalhoyuk is a very very important archaeological site, the earliest known of the neolithic or stone age. It has a very large international team as well, I think as many as 100 working there at a time. I have worked on fauna from there before and the preservation is excellent. Superb preservation of artifacts is another thing the site is most well known for. It would be an amazing opportunity. In addition to that, Marina, the girl who will be teaching me lithics who also works at Catal, works on the lithics in Greece and I might ask her if she has contact information for there as well. This year Marina is finishing up at the end of May, then going to Greece until July, and then going to Turkey. If accepted I could potentially follow that same iternerary next year, probably even right along with her. Nothing is set yet though and there would be a lot of factors to consider. That much traveling might actually bring me to decide to postpone grad school for another year, or to at least defer any where I may get accepted to. I am most definitely eager to get back into school, but I also have no desire to commit to anything that will hold me back from seeing the world….being able to travel was a major reason as to why I chose this career in the first place…while academia and teaching are things I also want to pursue, I may not be able to travel nearly as much once I am locked down into a program with the constant pressure of having to finish my dissertation (not to mention all other exams and writing for grad school). To even admit that I would think about taking more time off is shock to myself…it’s as though I am standing beside myself listening to a stranger say it…not only am I listening to a stranger say it, but I am tilting my head at them with perpetual confusion, as though they are speaking another language entirely. ‘What do you mean? What is this another year off you speak of?’ It’s difficult to separate myself from this idea that there is this timeline to follow in pursuing a career, a product of the current educational system. I constantly have to remind myself that there is no rush, that there is no real finish line any more, that my course is not linear. This dialogue offers me both comfort and anxiety…comfort because I do have freedom and opportunities, endless ones….anxiety because it is a complete absense of the structure I have come to know and rely on for so long.



How appropriate…that break represents me getting up to boil water. Just as I completed a thought on how life does not need to follow one single linear path, that it is unpredictable, I walk into the other room and have a near death experience. We have a gas stove in the kitchen, one that I have used plenty of times to boil water for my tea and coffee. Today however, I went to use a different burner than the one I normally use. I turned on the gas, lit the match and all you hear is “BOOM.” Before my very eyes a ball of fire appears and catches my shirt. It went out quickly though leaving only a bad smell and burn marks and soot on my clothing. This may have permanently traumatized me from using gas stoves. I swear I am never going to make it out of this country alive…