the epic journey comes to an end

I am sitting here in the Belize Airport reminiscing about the last month and the amazing adventure I've had.  It is incredibly bittersweet to be going home, I am really excited to see my Family and Friends, but saying goodbye to my amazing new friends was really tough.  I watched their plane take off and realized that this is the end of my life changing field school.  1 month went by so quickly and I want it to last a little longer.  We had our last group meeting last night with Dr. Powis and all the staff and he asked us if anyone had felt uncomfortable on the trip or felt out of their comfort zone.  I've done so many things I would have never done had I not been on this field school.  I am so thankful for this amazing experience and for the friends I know I'm going to keep for a lifetime.  We couldn't end this field school without an adventure.  We started it with a crazy van ride and we ended it with one.  One of the vans carrying all of our luggage had the tire tread rip off of it and smack into the coolant line which caused it to leak coolant whenever the van was running.  Staffers Brian and Jon who were driving us changed the tire and then we tried to think of clever ways to fix the leak to no avail.  Brian tried driving the van with the heater on to counter the effects of loosing the coolant, but I think he nearly died in the heat and the van nearly did too.  We stopped and decided that I'd stay behind with Brian and my luggage and the van while Jon and everyone else and their luggage piled into the working van.  My flight was 4 hours after everyone else so we'd have plenty of time for Jon to come back and pick me up to go back to the airport.  We said a teary goodbye, but then realized that we could maybe fit me into the van.  I sat on my friend Craig's lap for nearly an hour of a van ride.  I got really queasy and thought I would certainly be sick everywhere, but luckily I held off and we all arrived at the airport safely!  Jessie took her early flight to Houston to catch a connection to Atlanta and I didn't get to say goodbye.  Then everyone else had to board their direct flight to Atlanta.  Needless to say I cried like a baby, these amazing people changed my life in this very short month and I am so thankful I got to meet them!  I LOVE THEM!!  I will also miss Belize, this amazing country that has been my home for a month!  The people here are so welcoming and amazing and I WILL come back here someday!   Thank you Kennesaw State for this amazing experience, thank you mom and dad for sending me, and my friends who made this trip worthwhile, and most of all THANK YOU BELIZE! I LOVE YOU AND I KNOW I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON!  It isn't goodbye, only see you later!  I cannot express with words how I feel about this place, it is truly a new home in my life of many homes!

dwindling days of my month long adventure

We're down to the final stretch, the last few days in San Ignacio, Belize.  Though I am really looking forward to being home and seeing my family and friends, I am going to seriously miss this place and the amazing people I have met here.  It has truly been a life altering experience that has really shown me what I want to do with my life.  YAY for figuring stuff out!  I can truly say that I will leave Belize a new and better person who has actually experienced the real world!  AKA peeing in the jungle multiple times and eating termites.  It's been a crazy time, and I am so thankful for all the memories I have from this place.  Today was our last full day of work, it went by really fast, but I was very thankful to spend it at our site core at Pacbitun.  It is the main part of our project, PRAP (Pacbitun Regional Archaeological Project) so it is nice to finish out the month there.  Tomorrow we have a half day of work and then we're exploring another cave in the afternoon.  Wednesday we have to turn in our field notes for the last time, take our end of field school final, and then pack up the lab.  It is going to be a feat fitting all my stuff back in my suitcases when I pack.  We head to the airport on Thursday morning at 7am and my flight leaves at 3:30, while everyone else leaves around 11, hopefully I'll get some GRE studying done waiting in the airport.  Well tonight we had a lecture from Dr. Linda Howie from Western University in Canada about Ceramics in the Terminal Classic to Spanish Era.  Really interesting lecture even though my interests aren't in ceramics.  Now I'm sitting in the lobby with my roomie Laura writing this blog listening to a lovely Belize rainstorm watching lightning in the Belize Valley.  I can't lie and say I won't miss this place and that I don't love it.  Because I do, I will definitely be experiencing some culture shock when I get home...you mean there are toilets INSIDE the house?  Plantains beans and rice aren't served for every meal?  I don't have to worry about malaria and chagas?  It is going to be weird.  I LOVE BELIZE! I know I will come back here someday...heck maybe I'll even study the Maya, sorry Italian archaeology, you're not as fascinating to me!  See you all in a few days, ADIOS!

It's Getting Hurricanatic Up in Here

We went to Caye Caulker last weekend for our long weekend off of work.  It was really beautiful, until it started raining.  It rained all 3 days we were there, and there was a lot of it!  There was apparently a tropical wave coming from a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico so we all thought we were going to die on Friday night.  I was also sick on Saturday from being exhausted and dehydrated so I took the day to recuperate. I did have fun there though, but if I go back I'll definitely take more time there and plan to do more there.  Then on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I worked my 3 days in the lab.  At first I hated it, because I am not a fan of ceramic analysis, but luckily the 2nd day we had Dr. Linda Howie from the University of Western Ontario come and show us a new system for categorizing sherds based on function rather than flipping through hundreds of pages of a book that is terribly unorganized to find what type it is.  We had a lot of fun listening to music and joking around so it made the usually tedious lab work go by a lot faster.  I talked to a few people about different graduate programs, and I think I'll be applying to some programs in Canada, because they sound really amazing and the don't require a GRE score...YES PLEASE! Tomorrow I am going to the site core at Pacbitun which I am excited about, since that is the main hub creating all the excavations I've worked on.  Tonight we have lecture which will hopefully be quicker than the 2 hour one we had the other night, because I am super sleepy today and need to work on my field notes!  8 days and I leave Belize and I'm trying to have as much fun as possible before I leave, but it is difficult when everyday is filled with a ton of work and you just want to pass out in bed when you get back home aka our hotel room.  I miss the family a lot and can't wait to see them when I get home, but for now I will try to post again on Friday! LOVE YOU GUYS

The Crystal Skull Goes Eccentric

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been keeping up with my blog this week! It has been an exhausting week full of a lot of work!  I finished up working at the caves after 5 days in them and the day after I switched they found 2 whole bowls in the unit I had set up with Brandi.  I was pretty bummed I didn't get to see them, but I was really excited for the girls who found it.  I really liked the caves but I'm kind of glad I got to switch because it was kind of difficult working in the dark for so long.  Now I am working at a new site, on Monday I worked at a Sacbe Intersection (ancient Mayan road) it is really cool to see the technology they had and how it must have connected people like highways connect us.  Then today I got to work at a Mound near a Cave.  Today George from Chicago found a spear point made out of quartzite, it was really exciting! Dr. Powis said it was an eccentric and probably wasn't used for hunting.  Over the weekend we went out to the casino and I lost $5 belizian dollars on the slot machines.  It was fun.  On Sunday we went to the ATM Cave and had the BEST TIME EVER!  It was such an adventure, and so cool!  The cave is mostly in water so it was a trek to get to the inside.  There are a lot of untouched whole pots and even some skeletal remains that were cool to see.  Tomorrow I'll be working at the Mound again probably and then this weekend we have 3 days off and a lot of us will be going to the Keys to see the Beach and relax after 2 full weeks of work!  Love and miss you guys!

eau d'actun

Such an amazing week so far in Belize! Saturday we went to check out a Cave and then we went to our Main site of Pacbitun.  The Cave was amazing and though I was a little scared of spiders and getting stuck, I went in and I had an amazing time!  It was so cool to explore and be in something that huge with just a little light.  Jon the PhD student who is a caver had us turn off our lights for a minute to see what total darkness is like.  It was slightly creepy, but kind of calming.  After the caves we went to Pacbitun and walked around.  It was covered in jungle and Dr. Powis said that the trees are only 25 years old because they had chopped the jungle in the 80s.  It started raining hard and I was the only one who remembered to bring my poncho so I was walking around visiting everyone that was hiding under trees from the rain.  Saturday night a few of us went out to a bar called the Blue Angels to have a few drinks and play pool.  It was SO LOUD again since we had gone there the other day.  Me and Matt (a KSU student) went on a wild goose chase throughout San Ignacio to find the rest of the group who had gone out to a different bar, only to find that they had left a long time before we got there.  We had to take a taxi to the bar and then a different taxi back to the hotel.  It was an adventure, but pretty hilarious finding out they'd been at the hotel for about an hour.  I was finally glad to get back to the hotel and get to sleep! 

Sunday I felt awful even though I hadn't drank much.  But luckily Sunday was a pretty simple day which involved going to the Belize Zoo and the Blue Hole (not the ocean one).  The Zoo was really nice and had a bunch of different animals.  My favorite was April the Tapir, you could pet her and it was really cool.  We even got to go into a cage in the Jaguar pit and got to pet and have my head licked by Junior the Jaguar who was raised at the zoo.  It was WEIRD!  After the zoo, we went to the Blue Hole, which is a natural spring that you can swim in, it was COLD which was an amazing feeling to have in the jungle of Belize.  It was also nice to swim around.

Monday we started on our excavations.  Everyone was split into groups to work on different sites, and I got to work in the caves with KSU students Tammy, Craig, and Michael.  It was cool to learn how to set up a unit and learn the process of doing an excavation, because I'd never done one before.  The hike up to the cave was so muddy and I am so glad I got my ugly hiking boots.  They came in handy since it had rained the night before.  

Tuesday I didn't feel to good again from something I ate, the ride to the Caves is very bumpy so it was a little painful.  The walk up to the cave was a little slower than Monday but I made it and I think I sweat out all the ick.  I finished my first level of my Unit and I found A LOT of pottery.  11 bags of artifacts total, 6 big ones total.  I felt bad since we have to clean the artifacts we find everyday when we get back form the site.  I was so excited to be digging and be in the caves finding things and learning about the Maya and their use of caves.  It was exciting and interesting!  I was kind of slow excavating my unit, but Jon the PhD student said that is better and allows you to find more.  A LOT MORE!  The only problem with more is that we have to carry it back down the hill.  I got to work with a local man named John who knows a TON more about archaeology than I do and helped me a ton sifting through artifacts while I dug.  

I am having an amazing time here in Belize and I am excited for day 3 of digging in the cave and hope I find even more interesting stuff in my unit before I have to switch to working on a different site!  Sorry I haven't updated since Friday, I've been super busy and super tired.  But my trainer Jamie would be proud because I have to walk about 1.5 km to get to my site everyday and I've been sweating the whole time.  We smell awful the whole time, but that is okay since we all have the same stench.  I've never sweat so much in my life, which leads to the explanation of the blog title...actun is cave in Mayan, and the smell of caves is potent!  I'll update again soon and I love you guys!  Hope you all are enjoying your air conditioning during the day and not crawling around in the mud!  Because I'm enjoying my time here!  LOVE YOU GUYS!

the obligatory tourism of amateur archaeologists

Been in Belize for 3 days and it is AMAZING.  Yesterday we went to the sites of Cahel Pech and Xunantunich (try saying that).  These both were so amazing and Cahel Pech is only a 2 minutes walk from our hotel.  Xunantunich was a little farther down the road and is really close to the Guatemala border and we could see it from the highest point at the site called the Castillo.  It was a very high hike up, but it was so worth it! We could see all the way back to our hotel and see a huge distance in every direction.  IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!  Then afterwards we had a free afternoon and me and a few other students went into town to explore.  We came across the Blue Angels Bar and heard music all the way down the in the street.  It was so loud in there that we couldn't hear ourselves think.  We all had a few drinks and one of the girls Brandy discovered a drink called the Panty Ripper...coconut rum and pineapple juice with some grenadine.  HELLO HEAVEN.  I got one too and it was delicious.  It was really nice to hang out with a few people from the group and relax.  Then today we visited the site of Caracol and saw the highest man-made structure in Belize called Caana.  It was quite the hike and yet again, totally worth it.  We had an awesome tour guide named Selmo who knew a lot about the Maya of Caracol.  Chancy and I walked down a path that was a little safer then the way we went up and Selmo found a termite nest on the tree...he then offered us some to eat.  Hey you only live once, so WE TRIED THEM.  Surprisingly they weren't awful, they had a minty taste which was a surprise.  Then everyone decided to try them after they heard we had.  After Caracol and our termite adventure we went to the Rio On Pools.  These are a series of little pools created by a river flowing over some rocks that then pool under each other.  It was stunning and I was so glad I was able to see it.  We swam for a while and it was really refreshing after a day filled with hiking and sweating.  Tonight a few of us are going into town again to hang out with Dr. Powis (head of field school) and a few of the Masters and PhD students.  Should be fun!  Tomorrow we're going to a few caves to explore and then to our site of Pacbitun to see where we'll be digging the rest of this month.  I am really excited to go caving and experience what it is like.  I'll probably post again on Sunday night!  LOVE Y'ALL

almost paradise

So after a flight cancellation and a massive email effort to get in touch with my group to let them know, I FINALLY made it to Belize.  Luckily they had figured out that my flight had been moved and they patiently waited for me at the airport!  This led to a 2 hour car ride to our hotel in Cahel Pech.  I rode in the car with 6 other people who were all really cool.  On the ride over I made friends with Chancy and Tammy who are hilarious and we had a lot of laughs about our impending doom in the car ride. Our driver was Alwin, a native of Belize and probably 80 years old.   We almost died about 30 times, I didn't think we'd make it to the hotel in one piece.  We almost side swiped a bunch of cars and then we had to go up a very steep hill to get to our hotel...we almost didn't make it, the car puttered a few times and almost rolled backwards.  Luckily we made it to the hotel, and thank goodness for that, because it is gorgeous.  We are definitely getting spoiled on this field school.  There is an amazing view and a POOL with a waterfall.  We are roughing it...  Everyone has been amazing and definitely welcomed me into the group.  I am rooming with Laura, a fellow non-KSU student from Minnesota.  We both think it's crazy that we'll be in this paradise for a month and that we actually got to unpack our bags.  We have our orientation in about 15 minutes and then tomorrow we've got a day trip to El Pilar.  I'll try and blog again tomorrow night about the days adventures.  Love and miss you guys!  So thankful that I got put with such a great group of people on this field school and it is going to be a great adventure!!  See you tomorrow!!