Okay this was the entry i wrote the other day...i still can't get pictures up...but once I can..i will

Things are getting better now that I have adjusted to more of a routine here. It’s still pretty draining because the director just has us working straight through without any time off. We haven’t really been hiking the mountains as much though…the land we have been covering is flat so the work itself is not nearly as intensive as it had been those first few days. Today we convered 7 square kilometers. That is a lot…ideally you would want to have everyone walking in straight transects through said square kilometer units, but of course this never happens. You find yourself doing all sorts of zig zagging. Today was a perfect example. In the afternoon, the mission seemed simple enough…stay in your transect, walk East until we hit the free way, which is only 3 and a half kilometers away. First of all, the topography was mainly flat, but had green houses all throughout. Everything would have been fine if the green houses were all oriented east west, but of course they are not. Some are north to south, some are diagnally arranged northwest etc. So you find yourself having to compensate for all the green houses you perimeter and go through. Today’s green houses were particularly challenging because a lot of them were fenced in…so I would be following my compass, doin fine, heading east and then realize that I was completely fenced into an area and had to go out of my way in order to get out. Other obstacles, as I have mentioned in the past are dogs. I would say that on about 5 different occasions today, I had to turn around and find an alternative route because I was chased away by a big scary dog. There is also the issue of canals…once you get to a canal you have to move to where there is a place to cross which also takes you out of your transect. With everyone trying to find their transects in such a mess and over such a huge area, getting lost is inevitable, especially if you are me and you are the only one without a handheld GPS. I think the team spends more time looking for me than looking for sites. That’s an exaggeration, I have gotten a lot better…but one of the first things I did learn to say in chines is “I’m lost” “wo mi lu.”

In the past week we have been more successful in locating the extent of bronze age sites throughout the area. The key thing we look for are bronze age pottery sherds, and a specific kind of shell that would have comprised a shell mound site. We found 2 shell mound sites, but the pottery is still pretty scarce.

A lot of the shells can be found in the village houses…the mudbrick of these houses naturally is taken from the fields and you can see all of the shell in the walls of the houses. You also get pottery in the walls too. We have spent the past few days talking to residents about where they have seen shell and pottery.





Last night we had a Hot Pot dinner. In hot pot dinner, there is basically a stove in the center of the table, and there is a huge boiling pot with broth, vegetables and seasonings. Then you order the things you want boiled in the hot pot. We had two, one meat one, and a vegetarian one for me…though I do say vegetarian loosely…I’m pretty sure it was chicken stock, but they had gone out of their way to set it up that I really didn’t have the heart to say anything about it…but my stomach paid for it later. I had discovered that there are two things that I do really really like here in terms of food. One of them is this twisted kind of tofu. The texture is really good. The other is lotus root. I loveee lotus root. I think its hard to come by in the states, but I was told that some specialty asian markets might have it.