Day 3 (July 27, 2018):
Last night, I had a beer with Cyrene on my balcony, and I told Shahruz and others that they were welcome to join if they felt like it. When Cyrene decided to go to bed, Shahruz came up, and we talked about American politics with Mathilde, and we were trying to explain the electoral college and voting. It was a very stressful conversation, and I hated having it because I literally want to avoid politics but, apparently, everyone knows how much of a joke the current politicians are, so I guess there was no escaping it. I went to bed shortly after Shahruz left.
Most of the day was taken up by cleaning the square so we could get all of the dirt off of the features. During this, we had to check the dirt in a wheelbarrow and take it to a designated spot and dump it once we were done checking for any missed findings. After the break, we returned, and the workers had taken our wheelbarrows, which was annoying, so we had to wait for them to bring the wheelbarrow back before we really continued.
We all got together to get our field journal done, which was a lot of work and I never feel like I'm doing it right. I keep asking Angela how to do it because it was harder for me to understand a lot of the field journal stuff and how thorough I have to be. Angela keeps it simple, but when I see other people doing their field journal, I get nervous because it isn't as detailed as everyone else is making theirs.
We came back and ate, then I showered and got my bathing suit on and went into the sauna and hot steam room with Cyrene, Nico, Zoe, Shahruz, and Sydney. It was a lot of fun. I didn't know how to do any of it, but Zoe knew how and Nico got the person to unlock the door for us. We were hanging out in the pool while we waited and had some good and interesting conversations. I rinsed off and went to go change into my regular clothes now that I was refreshed.
Earlier that day, I had mentioned how fussy I was about coffee, and Angela suggested I get a white frappe from the bar to try rather than the coffee we have at breakfast. I drank it while I waited for the lecture, but it still wasn't sweet enough. We went to the lecture, and I had some of my frappe left, so I took it with me, and couldn't finish it - it looked really gross at the end of the lecture. I took it back and left it on the bar during our break, and then headed back to see the presentation about the squares we're currently working in. They told us to pay attention because we would be doing a presentation like this at the end of two weeks (those who are here for four weeks present twice), so that's another thing I'm not really looking forward to doing.
I left my door open when I came back because I knew a few people wanted to use the aloe vera I had in my room and I allowed them to do that and eventually a bunch of people ended up in my room. I asked where the others were and I was told the guys were sent out to get alcohol and some chaser. When the boys got back, we - Mathilde, Gena, Zoe, Madeline, Shahruz, Elizabeth, Siyu, Ivan, and I - played a drinking game (during which, Ivan voted for me as the smartest person in the room as part of the drinking game, and I'm not going to lie, that was one of the highlights of my day).
Now I'm tipsy and want to watch The Good Place, so I'll be heading off to bed.
(Spoiler alert: I fell asleep watching The Good Place and went to bed around 1 a.m.)
Day 4 (July 28, 2018):
I'm surprised I didn't have a hangover when I woke up. Even so, I made sure I drank some water and got a quick shower before I got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, which was the usual fare: bacon (?), sausage, bread and butter with water. Spoke with some of the other people at my table. We got up when it was time to go and got our shoes and headed out to the site.
We took out the tools for the dig, loaded up the wheelbarrow with the tools we needed like the pickaxes, spades, and shovels - and I took it to the squares where we were working. We didn't start in our squares today, though. Most of the beginning of the day was spent learning how to draw the whole site at the beginning of our field journal; we had been just drawing the sites we were digging in before, but now we went back to the front of the notebook and made sure we measured out our drawings to scale in comparison with the site, which was extremely frustrating to me.
The drawing is no joke - I figured it wouldn't take us that long; however, every time I thought I was done, I asked Angela, and she asked me to add something or make something more detailed or to resize part of my drawing. Due to the extensive detail you have to include for the drawing of the entire site, it must have taken us an hour and a half to two hours to be completely finished with our drawing. I asked Angela to look over mine one last time, and I was so relieved when she said I was done.
The next thing we had to do was to take pictures of the site with the date, the square number, the measuring sticks, and an arrow pointing to the North. We all rotated who would be taking the pictures, and each person changed the measuring sticks and little board with the date and square number depending on the angle of the picture. Angela told us once we were done with that that we would be using the total station to learn how to read levels manually from far away. She said there was another tool that gets all the accurate information rather quickly, but it is important for us to use the manual one first and learn how to use it because you never know if your other equipment might malfunction or be forgotten, etc.
We measured with a meter stick in the squares and the others looked through the total station to get the readings. Because everything is in centimeters, and although I know it sounds intuitive, I wanted to be sure I was doing it right, and I asked how to add centimeters and meters. Siyu laughed, and I was really embarrassed, but I told him I'm sorry, I'm American, I want to make sure I'm doing it right (albeit the way I said it started with a very snippy "Don't laugh, I'm American because everyone else in my square is originally from or currently lives in a country that uses the metric system). I was honestly really upset about it - not at Siyu, but at myself for not know the metric system. Ivan even asked me "how do you add feet, then?" and because I was flustered, I said, "you just...add them together." Later, I clarified that twelve inches is a foot in America. So, that was embarrassing, and I wanted to sink into the square and never emerge again.
After taking the levels, we went on break and continued taking the levels when we came back. We didn't start digging until around noon about ten centimeters into the dirt to get the next layer up. We scraped it back until it was time to fill out our field journal for the day. Once we had finished, we headed back, and everyone else was doing their field journal at the barrack tables. I helped put stuff away because I was finished mine and then got on the bus to head back for lunch.
I showered after lunch and then ended up hanging out with people a little later in the evening on the back patio, but there were heavy winds that made it cold and the thunder and lightning pushed us inside. We played some games together again, and I went back to my room pretty wonky, especially because I had spilled a lot of drinks on myself, so I got into the shower first and then crawled into bed. Honestly, I don't usually drink, but I don't want to be left out.
Yay, anxiety!
Last night, I had a beer with Cyrene on my balcony, and I told Shahruz and others that they were welcome to join if they felt like it. When Cyrene decided to go to bed, Shahruz came up, and we talked about American politics with Mathilde, and we were trying to explain the electoral college and voting. It was a very stressful conversation, and I hated having it because I literally want to avoid politics but, apparently, everyone knows how much of a joke the current politicians are, so I guess there was no escaping it. I went to bed shortly after Shahruz left.
Most of the day was taken up by cleaning the square so we could get all of the dirt off of the features. During this, we had to check the dirt in a wheelbarrow and take it to a designated spot and dump it once we were done checking for any missed findings. After the break, we returned, and the workers had taken our wheelbarrows, which was annoying, so we had to wait for them to bring the wheelbarrow back before we really continued.
We all got together to get our field journal done, which was a lot of work and I never feel like I'm doing it right. I keep asking Angela how to do it because it was harder for me to understand a lot of the field journal stuff and how thorough I have to be. Angela keeps it simple, but when I see other people doing their field journal, I get nervous because it isn't as detailed as everyone else is making theirs.
We came back and ate, then I showered and got my bathing suit on and went into the sauna and hot steam room with Cyrene, Nico, Zoe, Shahruz, and Sydney. It was a lot of fun. I didn't know how to do any of it, but Zoe knew how and Nico got the person to unlock the door for us. We were hanging out in the pool while we waited and had some good and interesting conversations. I rinsed off and went to go change into my regular clothes now that I was refreshed.
Earlier that day, I had mentioned how fussy I was about coffee, and Angela suggested I get a white frappe from the bar to try rather than the coffee we have at breakfast. I drank it while I waited for the lecture, but it still wasn't sweet enough. We went to the lecture, and I had some of my frappe left, so I took it with me, and couldn't finish it - it looked really gross at the end of the lecture. I took it back and left it on the bar during our break, and then headed back to see the presentation about the squares we're currently working in. They told us to pay attention because we would be doing a presentation like this at the end of two weeks (those who are here for four weeks present twice), so that's another thing I'm not really looking forward to doing.
I left my door open when I came back because I knew a few people wanted to use the aloe vera I had in my room and I allowed them to do that and eventually a bunch of people ended up in my room. I asked where the others were and I was told the guys were sent out to get alcohol and some chaser. When the boys got back, we - Mathilde, Gena, Zoe, Madeline, Shahruz, Elizabeth, Siyu, Ivan, and I - played a drinking game (during which, Ivan voted for me as the smartest person in the room as part of the drinking game, and I'm not going to lie, that was one of the highlights of my day).
Now I'm tipsy and want to watch The Good Place, so I'll be heading off to bed.
(Spoiler alert: I fell asleep watching The Good Place and went to bed around 1 a.m.)
Day 4 (July 28, 2018):
I'm surprised I didn't have a hangover when I woke up. Even so, I made sure I drank some water and got a quick shower before I got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast, which was the usual fare: bacon (?), sausage, bread and butter with water. Spoke with some of the other people at my table. We got up when it was time to go and got our shoes and headed out to the site.
We took out the tools for the dig, loaded up the wheelbarrow with the tools we needed like the pickaxes, spades, and shovels - and I took it to the squares where we were working. We didn't start in our squares today, though. Most of the beginning of the day was spent learning how to draw the whole site at the beginning of our field journal; we had been just drawing the sites we were digging in before, but now we went back to the front of the notebook and made sure we measured out our drawings to scale in comparison with the site, which was extremely frustrating to me.
The drawing is no joke - I figured it wouldn't take us that long; however, every time I thought I was done, I asked Angela, and she asked me to add something or make something more detailed or to resize part of my drawing. Due to the extensive detail you have to include for the drawing of the entire site, it must have taken us an hour and a half to two hours to be completely finished with our drawing. I asked Angela to look over mine one last time, and I was so relieved when she said I was done.
The next thing we had to do was to take pictures of the site with the date, the square number, the measuring sticks, and an arrow pointing to the North. We all rotated who would be taking the pictures, and each person changed the measuring sticks and little board with the date and square number depending on the angle of the picture. Angela told us once we were done with that that we would be using the total station to learn how to read levels manually from far away. She said there was another tool that gets all the accurate information rather quickly, but it is important for us to use the manual one first and learn how to use it because you never know if your other equipment might malfunction or be forgotten, etc.
We measured with a meter stick in the squares and the others looked through the total station to get the readings. Because everything is in centimeters, and although I know it sounds intuitive, I wanted to be sure I was doing it right, and I asked how to add centimeters and meters. Siyu laughed, and I was really embarrassed, but I told him I'm sorry, I'm American, I want to make sure I'm doing it right (albeit the way I said it started with a very snippy "Don't laugh, I'm American because everyone else in my square is originally from or currently lives in a country that uses the metric system). I was honestly really upset about it - not at Siyu, but at myself for not know the metric system. Ivan even asked me "how do you add feet, then?" and because I was flustered, I said, "you just...add them together." Later, I clarified that twelve inches is a foot in America. So, that was embarrassing, and I wanted to sink into the square and never emerge again.
After taking the levels, we went on break and continued taking the levels when we came back. We didn't start digging until around noon about ten centimeters into the dirt to get the next layer up. We scraped it back until it was time to fill out our field journal for the day. Once we had finished, we headed back, and everyone else was doing their field journal at the barrack tables. I helped put stuff away because I was finished mine and then got on the bus to head back for lunch.
I showered after lunch and then ended up hanging out with people a little later in the evening on the back patio, but there were heavy winds that made it cold and the thunder and lightning pushed us inside. We played some games together again, and I went back to my room pretty wonky, especially because I had spilled a lot of drinks on myself, so I got into the shower first and then crawled into bed. Honestly, I don't usually drink, but I don't want to be left out.
Yay, anxiety!
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