School...

So I've officially been enrolled in school. There is no escaping. I have cashed the loan checks and gotten my student ID card. Monday we had to go in at 9am and listen to a bunch of induction lectures. Most were quite useless, but at least a whole bunch of us were in it together. That afternoon we actually enrolled. That entailed standing in endless lines, getting a photo taken, having to show all of my qualifications again and showing my passport and visa. Then they gave me my counsel tax exemption form (which I'm not sure what I have to do with) and my student ID. Very exciting. Then we met with our program leaders. My leader is Ellie Hambleton, who is a zooarchaeologist. She is very nice and I've been communicating with her since January or so when I was first accepted. We were also introduced to Mark Maltby, another zooarchaeologist and Martin Smith, a forensic archaeologist/human osteoarchaeologist. They told us a bit about the program and what to expect from classes and the codes to some of the bone rooms so that we could go in on our own time to work. We then were assigned our personal tutors. Mine was Mark and I was a bit trepidatious because he seemed a bit gruff. But then I had a one on one meeting with him on Tuesday afternoon and he actually turned out to be quite nice. Although I think he's a bit worried about my lack of experience writing research papers since undergrads here have to write a big paper to graduate. Ah well, I'll show him that I can do it :)

Tuesday I had more lectures in the morning and then hung around in the library and computer lab waiting for my meeting with Mark. I ended up reading an article in Latin American Antiquity. Woo! The library is crazy because, while they have an elevator, it says its reserved for handicapped people. So since archaeology is on the 4th floor, I have a lot of walking to do. Especially because floors here go: ground, 1st, 2nd, etc. Crazy Europeans!

Then Wednesday was our osteoarchaeology trip to Stonehenge. I'd been there before, but it was cool to get to see it again and hear about it from people who really know the archaeology of the area and aren't going to spread crazy conspiracy theories about it. We also walked out to the area beyond the henge and looked at the barrows where people were being buried about concurrently with Stonehenge. Some of them are earlier though. There is also a huge mound back there that is 100 meters across and I think about 1.5 km long. It was built before stonehenge and no one knows what it would have been used for. Very odd, but very cool. Then we went to Woodhenge, which is a lesser known henge a few km from stonehenge. There is also a huge earthen ring there which must have been about .5 miles in diameter in which they are finding neolithic house structures. Which apparently is unheard of in Britain, so its pretty cool. They are also finding a ton of pig bone, which is again odd because cows were the main animal in Britain at the time. This is all being done by the Stonehenge Riverside Project, so they are also excavating by the river Avon (?) and have found evidence of people being down there as well. They hypothesize that people where living within the circle near woodhenge (wood representing the living) and then going to stonehenge for ceremonies and to bury the dead (stone representing death). They would have been making this trek via the river and a pathway that connects stonehenge to the river. I've seen a show on discovery or history about it, so you may have seen it as well. Woodhenge itself is very odd. After excavating and finding where the postholes that would have held the wooden pole were, they put in short cement posts to represent them. It makes for quite the odd spectacle. There was also a burial of a child found in the center of the circles, but not directly in the center. It is undetermined if the child was buried before or after the rings were built. After all that we went to the museum in Salisbury where many Stonehenge artifacts are kept. We got to see some of the human skeletons that have been excavated over the years from the area and talked to another guys who has worked in the area, but also works for commercial companies doing archaeology. So that was quite cool. Then we finally went home and everyone was exhausted. It was a long, but very informative and exciting day.

Today I had the entire day off, so I slept in a bit and then got my laundry done. Thank god, because I've been wearing semi dirty clothes for days. Then I went out with my Canadian friend Danielle to get her a cell phone. When we got down to the high street there was an entire farmer's market going on all up and down the street it was amazing. So after we got her a phone we bought sausages with cheese and then moved on to jacket potatoes. The sausages were basically just hotdogs with a slice of cheese in the bun. Pretty good, but nothing spectacular. The jacket potatoes were backed potatoes broken open and covered with chili. The I added coleslaw to mine and Danielle had cheese on hers. They were really good, but I couldn't eat the whole thing having already eaten the sausage. Apparently this fair is every Thursday and Saturday, so we'll definitely be back. They also had things besides food, but since we're both waiting for loan money we didn't shop much.

After we got home I decided to try to track down the package that I had mailed to myself before I left. The tracking number said that it had arrived in Poole, but I never got a slip telling me where to pick it up. So I asked at the front desk and they told me to try the post office or the sorting office. I went to the sorting office first, but it was closed already, so I tried the post office. The lady there told me that I had to contact the USPS and find out where the package was. She also gave me the name of another company that does shipping in the UK. So I checked that website and found my package. I thought it was at a location about 2 miles away, so I scheduled a redelivery. But then a woman from that company called and said that the package was at the post office just down the street. So I had to go back there again. The first woman apologized for making me do all that, but she didn't know. So thankfully I now have all my office supplies, shoes and running clothes. Its about time.

And that has been my week thus far. Tomorrow I have more lectures and Monday starts actual class. Although I only have 2 classes and they only meet on Monday and Tuesday, so it won't exactly be hardcore, but I think I will be spending a lot of time in the library and bone labs, so I'll be on campus much more often than that. I'll let you know how it goes. Later!