| It struck me yesterday, I think, as I was sitting at lunch with my friends Jenna and Ali, that I've really been super blessed so far this quarter. I've yet to have a rough day. I remember first day of class - I walked into my Zooarchaeology lab, and there were all my friends from the hell classes last quarter. We laughed and joked, and figured out that we all had at least two classes with everyone else. I'm talking about 20 of us - this year is going to be fabulous. Heck, even my two TAs from last quarter are there  Of course, the IDIOTS from last quarter, Oscar the High and Ian the Loud WOULD just happen to be in my zooarch class, but I guess you take the bad with the good, and shamelessly laugh at them behind their backs. So my classes are utterly fabulous: I have four hours of Zooarch every Mon and Wed, in which I spend my time drawing and articulating bones. We're working on common dogs at the moment. My box contains a large lab, as well as a 13 day old collie which is SO TINY! I'm loving it. Sighting the bones is really easy for me - most people spend their time trying to make tricks to remind them which side the particular bone goes on, I just look at it and can visualize on the skeleton where it would have to go in order to function. It's pretty sweet. Plus if I have nothing to do in the bone box, I can just sit there and sketch, oh darn. Tons of reading, quizzes, and summeries, but I don't mind them. Primate Socio-ecology is awesome as well - again, same group of people plus additional friends from the barn, etc. The lecturer, Sandy Harcourt, is an amazingly entertaining guy from northern England, so not only is he funny but he has an amazing accent. On the downside, there's a minimum fifty pages to write for this class. Eh, no problem. Hominid Evolution class is with The Old Man of the campus, the dear and kindly Dr. McHenry, who I am afraid will put me to sleep in every lecture as his voice is so soothing and it's late in the day. So far it's just a combination of the stuff I taught in ANT 2 at BC and the evolution section of my Hon 7 class. I had my first day at the arch lab with Nicole today - no surprises there, it's a huge storeroom filled with bags and bags of dirt, and boxes of faunal bits and debatage. Basically just like the crap from BCCER-02, with the addition of pottery and some beads. I'm just sorting, counting, and bagging. There's another student interning there, a young asian girl who needs an internship for graduation. She has no archaeology background, so this will be interesting. I mean, it doesn't take much to teach someone to count rocks... but ya know... Nicole also wants to do some flotation with the soil samples of course, and have me do typologies with the tools. I've a stack of reading which will keep me happy for a while I also randomly go out to the barn to clean some private stalls in exchange for pocket cash and food. It's nice to be out there with my old friends, both human and equine. They had to put down two of my old favorites over winter, which was kinda sad, including the pony Spice, who was always a good sport when I would come in. But the guy I'm cleaning now is quite the charecter - Corkey's one weakness is altoids. Yes. Altoids. The boy goes NUTS for 'em. It's pretty cute. All in all, things look to be good for this quarter. I'm content. Last quarter's Induction by Fire is gone and done with, and it's beginning to look like I'm supposed to be here. Being able to just sit here and write this over a steaming cup of tea, eating a hot chicken sandwich and listening to classical music is an added bonus. |
