Beyond Worth It: The death of my phone and other endings

We closed our units and finished digging on Thursday with mixed emotions. On the one hand, that may have been the last time I was ever so lucky as to work on a dig, an experience which I loved. On the other, I think I could never see another mosquito or doctor fly again and be more sane for it. Clearly I'm gonna miss this. Even the monkeys came out to say goodbye by throwing poop at us again! They haven't done that since maybe the first week of excavations...

Doing some final excavation work before we began to clean up

Melody mapping. She's not even posing, honest!

So to finish a unit you have to map absolutely everything (which involves more measuring than you thought anyone would ever do) and clean the unit for photos. Once that's done, you're done! We backfill the units to protect anything we've discovered and not removed (like architecture) from the elements, and gather everything up so that we can make sense of all the data and prepare to come back next year. Oh! And you take a unit photo of course.

Op 2! That's Eric (our supervisor) and Bethany in the top row, with Sunaina, Beau, myself, and Melody on the bottom. we're sitting on the stairs we excavated.

On Friday we went to Chaa Creek, the superswanky resort where Sam did his PhD work, and ad a total blast. There were amazing swimming and poolside drinks and snacks for all! And as a treat, we got to canoe back home instead of driving. Fun!!! Even the part where our canoe capsized in a rapid and we floated down a river in the middle of the jungle until the intrepid Ali (a staff member with a penchant for being awesome) saved us. Zena and I both had our bags on us and, despite some ziplocks, my phone, her camera, and both of our notebooks were in serious trouble.
So we spent Friday afternoon with a blowdrier, trying to salvage our field notebooks (which we do turn in for a grade. Ooops!) but it all worked out. And what a good story! Especially when I remember to add the part where there was apparently a crocodile lurking prettymuch exactly where we went overboard that the canoe in front of us saw.

After many goodbyes and hours in transit, I'm back in California! I had such a wonderful time!! Who knew that I five weeks of working in the jungle would make me actually laugh at tourists impressed by a toucan, or see me completely ignoring howler monkeys as they roar? Archaeology was everything I'd hoped it to be and more--we found "cool stuff," I got to dig up part of an ancient building, and I even learned a ton about an ancient culture. Actually, the world might be a better place if everyone tried their hand at archaeology; you have to be so open-minded and flexible as new data makes you change all of your ideas every day and it's wonderful. I'll miss the people most of all. Everyone was so passionate and driven, and so adventurous! Not to mention of course my awesome unit and my amazing roomies!

Cabin 10 with our professors! Dr. Morris on the right with Marisa, Melody, myself, Zena, and Sam.

Still, I'm glad to be back.
Love you!
Elise