Day 4- Moving backdirt/ "This rain is fire"

Note about last night: after I posted I went to have supper, at the time I thought supper was-730pm.  As it turned out, I had thought that because I went to supper when my computer said it was 730 (and it was actually 630 Belize time.  So, I was utterly mistaken and therefore an hour late for supper and, on top of missing supper, also missed the first little bit of Lisa's lecture.  But, that, and other things, made me want to go to bed as soon as we were dismissed from the lecture, so, I ended up getting tons of sleep :)

This morning, our alarm went off at 530 and I wasn't lazy and actually got up to shut off my own alarm myself (it is set in such a way that it is supposed to be a communal alarm clock).  Unfortunately, I noticed after I had shut it off that the other girls stayed in bed.  Not wanting to disturb them in case they were just spending a few extra minutes in bed, I let them be and just went about my normal activities (a little louder than I normally would have if I had really thought them to be sleeping on purpose, but, I didn't know what other ploy to do to help them wake up).

We got to Mrs. Chocs to eat (the picture of the huts and the house is hers, and the stove is also hers).  We had fried bread, eggs, and bean mash.  Again, very delicious.  Although, Steve did comment on slightly missing Frosted Flakes.  By now, people have assumed that Steve is my brother, especially with last night's comment from my own Mom about taking care of Steve.  He asked if that meant that Dan (who I claim as my little brother) also had to be his brother.  While walking through San Ignacio, Steve stayed behind to take pictures while I walked on, causing the other people to comment "where's Colleen, I don't see her walking with Steve!" when I was standing right next to them.  Apparently, we are always together, except when we are not.  Steve also has a bit of trouble looking awake in the morning, which causes us no end of teasing.  He opened his mouth only when we were talking about Wii and only to comment the Japanese are crazy.  I called him racist, which caused him to speak again, and pronounce his connection to Pokemon and say that they weren't all that bad.

We actually went to Yalbac and worked today!  When we got there, we were not allowed to enter until Lisa agreed to go back and get forms for those people who did not have visitors passes.  Those without visitors passes were not allowed to stay inside of the gates of Yalbac and had to leave with Lisa- since all of the boys had handed back their passes, we were left with only the girls to provide manual labor.  Elle and Molly taught (and refreshed my memory) on how to set up an excavation unit.  It was a bit different than what I remember from Pauketat's field school, but, that's ok.

We packed stuff back to the actual site and set up a tent.  Then, Lisa and co. arrived around 900 and we started clearing away backdirt from 2008, after finishing our tour that was interrupted the day before.  We worked on that until almost 1030 when we went to investigate another interesting point with some debatage around a tree.  Hopefully, that means something important!  I worked next to Steve and helped him out a bit- at one point said "hold your hand out" and piled chert flakes into his palm.

We at lunch at 1100- again from Mrs. Choc- and it was rice and beans with different seasonings and chicken (which I still cannot pawn off to anyone!).  We went back to digging and scraping around 1130 and some people, who only had 1 water bottle, returned to the truck for a refill from the communal water.  We worked until 230, when we all headed home.  Today, I finally got a chance to ride up front in the air conditioning and no funny conversation.  It was lucky because, on the way home, we encountered a torrential downpour, soaking everyone in the back!  And, it is now time to do something productive: like either check Facebook, read my new book "Trees of Belize" or go swimming!!!!!