So i finally got internet to work at here...the wireless at the hotel was a pain to set up because apparently no one in china uses macs....

Things have been

very


very


very


difficult

I absolutely hate the food here....its loaded with salt and oil that just rocks my stomach...I just can't handle it.

My allergies are terrible...I'm sneezing and weezing and post nasal dripping all over the place

And I hate surveying...They place you in the middle of a mountain and tell you to start walking in a certain direction while looking at the ground for bronze age pottery sherds, or any other indicators of a site being below the surface...I have no sense of direction, so more often than not I wind up lost in the middle of a mountain range, or a rice pattie field, or a terrace of tall grass...as I hike through trying to find my way, trying to find any one within the 1 square km they are supposed to be in...I find myself tangled in spider webs and face to face with swollen bodied spiders you hope only to see in national geographic...there are also big dogs roaming many of these fields...how do we deal with them...a bamboo stick and a fucking prayer

none of this really tops my day yesterday when I fell into a canal and smashed my face on some poisonous plant....this of course happened while I was lost and others were looking for me...when i finally found my director, I tried to act like nothing really happened while I was missing (despite the fact that my face was burning and I was completely soaked). I fought back tears when she and our chinese collaborator looked up at me and said, "oh my god what happened to your face?"

It was then that they rushed me back to the hotel....My face was pretty red and puffy and swollen...its gone down, and now just has some scratches...Today was better once they taught me how to use the GPS unit and how to use the satellite maps...now I always know where I am, even if where I am is really unpleasant. The higher altitude for where we are walking and searching for these sites is problematic too...I have a harder time keeping hydrated here than i do in Egypt despite the fact that temps max out at 70 degrees.

I'm trying trying trying to have a better attitude, I just had no idea what survey worked entailed. We cover 8-10 miles a day and while we were supposed to have the weekends off...it is looking like that is not going to happen these first two weeks. Ugh

Fortunately enough for me, it turns out that they have fauna from some surrounding shell mound sites separate from this project that they want me to identify...this means that tomorrow, I will have a lab day instead of surveying. This is also great because it gets my foot in the door for compiling research that hasn't been done yet here.

Lots of downs...but some ups

I don't know about China...when i worked my first season in Egypt and was asked about coming back the next year, I agreed without hesitation....this place... don't know that I would exert the same enthusiasm. It might be that I hate the surveying work though...maybe things would be different if we were in the same spot every day, excavating as opposed to walking the fields and hills of rural China. Also here, no one speaks English except my director, but when the whole team is together she speaks chinese with all of them..so I'm just the odd one out...it's a different experience.

Per usual with my field work, I am super exhausted every day...AND NO ONE DRINKS COFFEE HERE....we packed some of our own (us Americans) and all they ever tell us is how bad it is for us (this while they eat the fattiest fried grossness you can imagine). Our dinner table the other night had fried duck intestines....dont even get me started on the types of entrees I have staring me in the face...literally staring me in the face...chicken and fowl heads.. things of this nature...I get chills whenever I see the meat products...its enough to reaffirm my stance as a vegetarian and even leave me wanting to eliminate more animal products from my diet...I'm sure a lot of the foods they tell me are vegetarian are not...i'm sure they are made with some kind of animal stock, or lard, or grease that animal was fried in which is probably another reason my stomach is never happy.

Okay that is my rant for now...all things considered I am okay...just not the happiest camper...but, I'm sure I will find my niche and things will get better. I have learned a lot, and I'm sure the work will get more exciting as soon as we find more sites...so far we haven't found much in our survey.

Have a good day/night everyone. I will try to stay in touch.