4 degrees from the sun

11:03 pm

Hello there! It’s Monday evening here in Pereira; we just got back from Carlos and Martha’s house where we had some Colombian-Chinese take-out food from ‘Restaurant nuevo Kung Fu’ that was pretty much like American-Chinese food but with slightly different colors. It was a little less salty/heavy too and very delicious....I think that tomorrow some of the leftovers will be available for lunch in the field. Lunch is the main meal here and so even though we are working, we take a break and have a pretty good sized spread of things to choose from and create. Carlos is very good about introducing us to all sorts of wild and crazy fruits, flavors, and so on. He’s also a pretty good tour guide when driving around to different sites...

5:46 pm

Oy, I had to go to bed because I was exhausted!! We got a lot done today, 5 whole units, all finished up, bagged, tagged and counted. We are starting to get in to the groove of the excavation, I think, and are doing much better with keeping up with all our paperwork and lab work, so it doesn’t feel like we have all this unfinished business hanging over our heads, which is nice. Jen and Evie mostly excavated while I was their screening slave, meaning I sifted all of the soil they were removing for lithics and ceramics, aka a LOT. It was nice though, because I got in to a groove and just felt good getting so much done and making some good progress in the unit. So we are now done with all of the 30-40 cm units and tomorrow we will begin taking it down lower (to 50 cm) and in to perhaps the preceramic levels, but for now we’re still sort of just on the cusp of it. 

After the long day in the field, we headed over to the lab at UTP (Universidad Tecnologica Pereira) to count some of the perviously collected artifacts from various test pits on the site and were there for quite a while before heading out. It was a long and exhausting day. Jen and I walked back to the apartment since we’re really only 4 blocks from the university to shower and clean up to go over to Carlos and Martha’s for dinner and post-field beers. For those who are unaware of typical archaeologist habits, drinking is a favorite past time ; )

While we were there I was able to copy a few tracks on to my computer from some of the CD’s that we were listening to of traditional Colombian music and am excited to have some new music in my library. It cooled off quite a bit today after some light rain which made for a nice, cool evening.