arte arte arte

At this point, Carmen has given me so many nicknames I can’t even keep track. It’s hard enough that I have to pay attention to both english and spanish, and respond to any of the following: Thundercat, Flash, Speedy Gonzalez (what can I say, I dig with purpose, like a pro haha), speedy cat, chica picante or spice girl (referring to the fact that I put hot sauce, salsa, peppers on everything- might be my current favorite), jeffa, and on and on....oh, and that I speak Spanish with an Italian accent, but better that than a German one ha!!

Thursday night, Carmen, Luz Marina and I went downtown for an art festival that they have in Pereira the first Thursday of every month. It was pretty interesting to see the work of local people and it’s a cool event because it’s organized by this group of artists themselves. We ran in to Carolina there where she and this other guy were selling little postcard-sized pictures of the region.

We checked out a few of the ‘galleries....’ spaces transformed for the event and then grabbed a slice at the Pizza Factory. We have been to a couple different places here that have surprisingly good eats, the pizza place being one of them. For Jen’s last night we went to this Arabic restaurant for falafel, hummus, and all that good stuff....including a tasty Argentinean malbec; the owner was this cute old man who waited on the tables himself and he was so pleased that we (Americans) had stopped in.

After pizza, we walked around some more and stopped in to some local craft shops, there were different people set up with tables selling jewelry and other things as well. I was beat since we had worked in the day and I had been up since 6, but we stuck around for the traditional Colombian music performance. This crazy violinist in leather pants and a cape went to town, dancing and just going crazy playing that thing. He was really good, though, and it was a fun, theatrical performance that everyone seemed to enjoy. We left after a couple songs, because the three of us were practically falling asleep standing up, said goodbye to Carolina, and grabbed a taxi home. 

122 sherds in a bag, 122 sherds...

The apartment has been very quiet now that both Tony and Jen are gone, but Carmen is staying with us for a few days so it will be nice to have her around. For the first time in a while, it didn’t rain today, which was very nice for working at La Mikela this morning. Carlos and Martha are on vacation for a few days with their boys, so we are on our own here in Pereira, but so far so good. Carmen took the bus in today from Manizales and met Nydia and I at the Panaderia across the street before heading up to the laboratory at the University and on to the field. Carmen and I actually walked both there and back today, which was really quite enjoyable. The site isn’t all that far from the University/our apartment, I’d guess about 2 miles maybe, and the weather was on our side for once so we had a good time walking and talking. 

With Tony, Pat, and Jen gone for good and Martha and Carlos gone for the weekend, the site felt bare as well, but we decided to all work on the large excavation instead of splitting up to work on the various pits; Diego and I digging while Carmen and Juan David screened. I must say it was a very productive arrangement and was some serious spanish emersion for me ; )

We finished off the 75-80 cm level with no more exciting finds. I think that we are really through the preceramic concentration and that things will be pretty much sterile from now on, but Carlos wants to continue taking the unit all the way down even with the floor of the southwest corner of the unit that was previously excavated. I mean I’m not an expert my any means, but it kind of seems like a waste of time to take the entire thing that far, essentially 1.5- 2 meters, but oh well. Although I don’t know how much longer our screens will last in terms of screening all the soil we’re digging up; they’re looking pretty sorry at this point and we’ve been having at least one casualty daily (my hands are looking real rough between the blisters, rips, and cuts).

Since we were on our own today we packed light and decided to grab lunch in town after a morning in the field. We ended up working until about 1 and met up with Nydia after walking back to town to grab some traditional Almuerzo fare; it was delicious and extremely plentiful for only $4,000 pesos, about $2 USD, each! It started with a light potato soup, the main dish was a choice of meat (I got grilled pork) with rice, beans, cole slaw, and plantain accompanied by pineapple juice with water, a small cup of jello and a banana for desert!! Definitely got our money’s worth!

Headed back to the lab afterwards to get some work done, including counting the contents of various artifact bags so Nydia could input them in to the massive catalog she’s working on, and other odds and ends stuff. Javier stopped by the lab today to do some things and Susanna, a botanist, has been in Pereira yesterday and today collecting samples from the gardens on campus, so we got to see them and say goodbye (until next year, I hope, haha!)