English Breakfasts

So an English Breakfast is much larger than what I'm used to eating in the morning. I had a full plate of beans with scrambled eggs and a few pieces of toast. Betty seems to be very concerned about me getting enough to eat on a vegetarian diet and keeps suggesting things to add to my breakfast, while I'm sitting there stuffed to the gills.

We were a bit worried about finding the site, so we ordered a cab and had Betty and Christ give us directions, since they've been there before. The directions were apparently confusing, and we ended up a bit lost. Alice called Betty and then related her instructions to the driver, which was still confusing, so after some cajoling I convinced her to call Betty back and have her tell the driver herself where to go. Thankfully we had set out early enough that we still got to the site early.

We walked down to where everyone else seemed to be congregating and waited for instructions. David Rudling picked us out immediately as the American students(I suppose we must've stuck out...) and tells us we'll be working with other volunteers on the site and sends us over to meet Clive, our supervisor. There weren't very many volunteers, and over two-thirds of the group were there for the training course, which had to be split into two groups.

Clive set us to cleaning the site, meaning using our trowels to clear the area of plant growth. An older man was working next to me and struck up this rather odd conversation with me;

"So you're an American?"

"Yes, I'm from Washington State."

"Then why don't you have a disgusting American accent?"

At this point I start to wonder in my head which American accents count as the disgusting ones, and he continues on.

"It's really quite pleasant to listen to you speak." He then begins a long explanation of how British English has gone downhill and most people are now speaking Estuary English which he consideres base and I sort of tune out.

Once the site is suitably clear of weeds, Clive puts Alice and I on a wall that needs cleaning up. Never having worked on an archaeological site before, we are understandably nervous and begin out timidly. Within seconds of starting, Clive comes back over and exclaims "Oh my GOd, what are you doing?!" at which point I have a mild heart attack and drop my trowel, convinced I have just destroyed something priceless. He laughs and says "Oh, the old jokes are still good..." and walks away. What a jerk.

The next time he examines our work he informs us we need to be more aggressive, as we are "lovingly trowelling around" mortar and clumps of dirt that just need to be ripped out, which he proceeds to do with gusto. Alice and I are a bit perplexed, since we have mostly studied how to excavate human remains which requires a much more delicate touch. He then informs us that the correct level of aggression for us beginners is somewhere between what we were doing and what he has just done, tells us to "keep your field tidy and your loose cleaned up!", flashes a smile and thumbs up, and walks away. We exchange a look and set about to figuring out what we're doing here in the first place, and then remember that Dr. Keller refused to sign our graduation applications unless we agreed to participate in conferences and other extracurricular activities.

We don't really get to talk to everyone until the mid-morning break. The other volunteers working with us are Jack(from Scotland), Jan(who makes sure everyone wears enough sun cream), Fran(an older woman who really knows what she's doing on this site), Rachael(a young newlywed), and Guy(the old man who approved of my accent).

After the break, we're back to digging, and we start to find "finds"; nice things that need to be set aside. Alice found a snail shell, and I found a small innominate(pelvis) bone that is probably a rodent.

We entertained everyone at lunch with our tales of getting lost in Heathrow, then lost un the underground, then lost on the way to the site. We still don't know exactly where we are in relation to the B&B, which is a little uncomfortable for me. We should be able to walk from the B&B to the site, but definitely not via the route we took there in the cab this morning. We weren't quite sure how to get back at the end of the day, either, but luckily Fran gave us a lift in her car and took us along the short way we could walk, which was incredibly helpful.

After a shower and a change of clothes(Roman bathhouses are dirty places, after all), we had dinner at the Royal Oak. This time I had a veggie sandwich with goat cheese, roasted veggies, and rocket lettuce, which was very good. Alice decided to be "thoroughly British" and have the fish and chips, but was surprised when the fish turned out to be haddock instead of cod.

It was an exhausting day, but a lot of fun, and very informative.