How Blossom got her groove back

Today, after a full week of hiking, shoveling, sifting, and sweating, it finally felt good.

Since I started working here, I've been lethargic and unmotivated for no reason. Getting plenty of rest, eating well, and staying hydrated did nothing to help. Hiking to the sites and doing the heavy work wasn't fun for me like it used to be. I jumped away from ants, gasped at spiders, tried to stay out of the dirt, and gingerly dabbed sweat off my face with a gym towel. I asked others to lift the heavy buckets into the sifter for me and half-assed shoveling the dirt underneath it. Work that used muscles wasn't fun, so it wasn't really fun at all.

I realized it earlier today when I had to admit that I actually couldn't lift the full buckets at all. Something about that admission felt terrible. They were just buckets of dirt, max 20lbs, and I couldn't lift them? My backpack in high school weighed that much. It dawned on me then that I have become a freaking GIRL.

Apparently, realizing this pissed me off so much, I got my mojo back. Suddenly the shovels felt lighter, the dirt felt thinner, and the pit seemed a lot more shallow. I leveled the whole thing, bringing the 4 square meter pit down by 5cm so quickly I had to stop and wait for the sifters because I had filled ALL the buckets on site. The girls in the other pit got mad. One of the women got mad because lifting the full buckets is difficult, and I had filled them completely. She told me I should start lifting them into the sifter if I was gonna to do that, SO I DID.

I felt so great about it. I know it was coming from anger- anger at being the littlest always, anger at having people always taking things and helping me when I don't need it, anger at knowing I'm not as tough as I want to be, or as I used to be. But I got my passion for work back, the excitement of being outside and straining yourself for no good god damn reason. The satisfaction of finally laying down in bed afterwards. Most importantly, I didn't feel TIRED anymore.

This evening I went to the reef in Pago Bay. I sat still in the water so the fish moved around me. I collected hermit crabs in empty oyster shells and watched them crawl in the sand.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone because I am a consumer whore.

First day on site

We got to see the sites we're working on today, and of course I got assigned to the one that's in the sun all day. Dr. B said I could switch to a different one (since I'm burned already) that's all shaded, which I think I will take him up on. All three sites are about 100 feet away from some of the most beautiful beach I've ever seen, so lunch time at any site still means I'll end up in the sun for at least a little while.

On the plus side, I will come back bronze. I think I'm going to actually have to try to not come back from Guam looking like a boot.



Anyway, if I go to the other site (the first latte site) I'll be working on the shallowest excavation. The other one, Casa Real, is the deepest, and also the least interesting in my opinion. It's a Spanish colonial-era building was standing as of the 1970's when the military bulldozed it, so it's a lot less exciting than the other sites. At the two latte sites there are tools and potsherds just laying on the ground out in plain site, which is amazing. And then of course there are the latte stones, some of which are still standing, albeit without the capstones on top.

Ours aren't as big as the ones in that photo I linked; they pillars are about waist-high and the capstones are less than three feet wide. They get much larger. That's from the quarry on Rota, apparently the latte stones around where we are in Ritidian are normally a lot smaller.

Tomorrow we start excavating for real, and at night we're going to get Chamorro food which is exciting because I have no idea what that actually consists of.

I am a consumer whore

My quest for Korean and Japanese cosmetics may be dashed. One of the girls asked the TAs if there was a touristy section of the island, which is exactly where I wanted to go to find that stuff. The overwhelming majority of tourists to Guam are Japanese, so much so that many of the hotels and shopping centers' websites are only in Japanese. Because of this, I've heard that you can find Asia-exclusive products and brands in Guam. The TAs told her that there is, but it's lame and boring so they wouldn't want to take us there. D'aww :( Dior did an Asia-only re-release of the Iridescent Leather quint* and I might not get my hands on it. I am a sad panda.

So today we went and saw all the sites we'll be working on and, despite layering on a bunch of physical-blocking sunscreen, my arms and shoulders are burned to a crisp. I guess reapplied SPF60 isn't good enough, so I'm going to go get some 85 as soon as possible even though it'll have to be a chemical block in that case. I've never seen a physical one over SPF65.

But since I'm already burned, I'll also need some aloe and antioxidant products (both of which I own but didn't bring) and some long-sleeved shirts which I also didn't bring with me. Why do the solutions to all my problems always involve buying things?

* Christian Dior is famous for their eyeshadow quints, a small palette with five sparkly shadows in it. They're probably one of the most popular cosmetic products in the world. For the holidays a few years ago they sold a quint called Iridescent Leather, which was full of cool brown neutrals-- a set of shades that are surprisingly hard to find in high-end makeup. It was a smash hit and sold out everywhere. Now it's one of the most sought-after and hard to find items for makeup enthusiasts like myself. Though the quints usually retail for $50, this one can be sold on Ebay for... Well, let's just say substantially more. If you put an IL quint up for swap (a deal through Makeup Alley where users trade makeup/skincare products they don't want, probably the best way to get discontinued/hard to find products) you could probably get whatever you wanted for it.

Nature sucks big eggs

We're going to the dig site tomorrow for the first time, so I'll know what I'm really up against then. I should be used to the humidity by Tuesday, so hopefully being outside will get easier soon. Right now it feels like walking into a wall as soon as I go out of the air conditioning. Now I know what people are talking about when they describe the heat/humidity in Austin. I grew up in that level of crap weather, so Texas & Hawaii feel normal to me. But Guam's humidity is even higher, believe it or not (I didn't believe it until I got here) so even though it's not actually that hot it feels horrible. It's just sticky and wet outside, like the inside of a greenhouse.

There's a beach right next to campus as it turns out, but it's all rocks and reef so I'm too afraid to go in. Reefs scare the crap out of me, since they're full of poisonous things pretending to be harmless. The thing that really killed my desire to go into the water there is the aquariums. Each dorm building here has an aquarium in the common area that is full of fish people caught at that reef. Apparently they catch them, have them in there for a while, let them go, and catch different ones. The tank in my dorm is full of lion fish. Oh hells no. I thought, okay, well they're bright and obvious so maybe I can deal with that. Then someone took me over to the other dorm and showed me the stone fish.

Imagine, if you will, a rock. A lava rock covered in algae that sits on the bottom of the ocean, with a dusting of sand. Then add poison that will cause you to lose your foot. That is a stone fish. When they pointed it out to me in the aquarium I almost said, where, behind that rock? I thought they were playing a joke on me for a good ten minutes before I saw another fish poke it in the eye and it winced.

So anyway, I'm never going in the ocean again.

I guess that's the trade off you get in the Pacific. Sure, you can go hiking and camping without having to worry about venomous snakes, rabies, skunks, big cats, coyotes, bears, etc. But god help you if you want to go swimming. Not only are there poisonous animals, there are plants around Hawaii that you can't even SEE that will get in your suit and give you a painful rash all over. There are also rip currents that will sweep you away, and caves that will suck you in if you get too close. Oh, and there are giant centipedes that sting. Never before did I think a rattlesnake would look appealing... At least you KNOW when one of those is around.

Arrival!

More on Maui will continue over the next few days, as I have not had internet access but I'm now in Guam and I'm SUPER EXCITED.

Well Guam is pretty interesting. It's very, very American in a lot of ways that I was not expecting, so I feel weird. This isn't the US, really, but it is at the same time. The currency and language is the same, which is really throwing me off. You'd think that would make it easier but for some reason it's actually kind of unnerving. I feel like I can't possibly be doing things right, since anywhere else I could possibly go overseas would be different. Even if they spoke English it wouldn't be the same kind of English, and no one else uses American dollars, or has the same tipping culture. They also don't usually drive on the right side of the road, or have the same kinds of traffic signs. It has all the symptoms of being America, but it's also so obviously NOT America that it feels unnatural and strange. It doesn't feel foreign enough, I guess, compared to anywhere else I've been, but it's also not American enough to feel like home. If Dr. Saethre really does give extra credit for a tattoo of the word “liminality” maybe he would also accept a tattoo in the shape of Guam. Maybe I can get extra credit just for proposing this idea (note to self, try this next semester) since a tattoo in the shape of Guam would probably just look like a deformed mole to most people.

The dorms are also liminal as all get out, with much nicer rooms than any of the dorms at UH but with what may be the nastiest bathrooms I've ever had the pleasure of using. There's AC in the rooms but not in the halls or bathrooms, but unlike the halls there are no big open windows to keep air circulating. Imagine, if you will, a toilet/shower room that is full of the most stagnant, humid air you have ever experienced. Imagine that the pipes from the bathroom above are exposed in many places and occasionally they drip what you hope to god is clean water, that there are lizards living in the faucets and behind the trash cans, and that the toilets' flush is so impotent it can't even clear out toilet paper in one try. There are also no shower heads and the water rushes out of pipes in the wall like a garden hose, but that's actually kind of awesome and I'm considering taking the shower head off my own shower at home now. Despite everything else, that shower leaves me feeling nice and clean, probably due to the fact that the water pressure alone is capable of taking off a layer of skin. Ahhh.

The rooms are sweet, though. The two beds are separated by two bureaus, one for each person, down the middle of the room. There's a ceiling fan above that, and a window AC unit on one side. You actually can't hear much of what the other roommate does because the window unit is pretty loud-- there are even two separate lights over each side that can be turned on/off independently. UOG 1, UH 0. I will take your funky steamy toilets any day if it means a cold, private bedroom.

While UH has a surplus of wild cats that roam campus, UOG has wild dogs. The cats at UH will run from you if you go anywhere near them, even if you offer them food. Earlier as my roommate and I were walking back from eating dinner, we passed a stray dog laying next to the building. We looked at her and said hi, and she decided we were her new friends and followed us all the way back to the dorm. She picked up sticks and things and wanted us to throw them for her, and a few times she ran ahead of us because she seemed to know we were going to the university. I even saw her look both ways before she crossed the street. UOG 2, UH 0.