(dressed as a wood nymph for a toga-party on Saturday. I wanted to be different.)

So I write this while sitting in a small air-conditioned booth in a Chinese/Western restaurant called Happy Valley Restaurant. It is situated in a very small town called R-, and it is 2 hours South-West of the city. Sometimes I feel very small town and hick in my city, but when I arrived here I felt extremely city girl. It probably doesn't help that K and I are dressed to the nines, in (her) a sparkly, swingy, beaded dress, and (me) in a short ruffled red number. Hair, make up, and heels. I know that this is our Thanksgiving weekend, but it's Joel who's getting married- Joel, as in big, tall, handsome devil who loves to play the hero. Joel who would walk me to my car in the dark every night after work when I was 17, Joel who spent all his student loans on a guitar, Joel who found out I had no grad date for the prom and swept me off my feet at the very last minute. Joel who has stuck by me through thick and thin, eating huge amounts of dinner with my family, and beating me at Guitar Hero even though I had been practicing for months in university. Of course I'm going to his wedding. He's one of my best friends. Even though it's in the middle of freaking NOWHERE. But it's fun. K and I always seem to have the randomest adventures, and we always do it with a sense of humour and openess to experiencing new things that makes these events so memorable.

Life has been busy. It whips by and leaves me startled and bemused at what is happening around me. I'm not going to the university this semester, instead I'm working two jobs- one at my wonderful cafe, and the other at a coffee shop down the street. It is staffed and customered by beautiful, cool, pretentious people. I don't really fit in, but it provides a second income that I desperately need since: I'm going to school in Italy with my sister in January!

Sorry to interrupt this. The wedding last night was a ton o' fun, very small town and welcoming with good homemade food, lots of dancing, and a cute best man (if anything happens further we will call him Prince Harry, since he strongly resembles a better looking version of the British monarch.) to help make the evening memorable. In between the hours of ceremony and reception, K and I bought a bag of candy, a disposable camera, and the October issue of Vogue with which to amuse ourselves. We took wind-blown pictures in our dresses under a stormy and dramatic sky, and with the prairie as our back drop I have no doubt that there will be some hipsterish ones in the lot.

Today I hung out with my cousins who had come up from C-, and this afternoon B and I took our dogs for a long sunny walk in the river valley. B is my new friend. He is a wonderful person, and I feel like I should come up with a better nick-name for him, but I honestly don't know him that well, and I don't know how far I can push things without offending him. In a few minutes he is picking me up again and we are going out to Rob's house for dinner (another co-worker) and I feel slightly nervous because everyone else is so OLD. Like 30+. I am making myself bring forth every ounce of maturity and grace I possess, in order to fit in. But I'll still be me.

Isn't life grand these days?

It's All Golden

Smoking a hookah in Cairo. This is what "dirty travelling" looks like: bare feet, henna tattoo on my face, filthy clothes, a hardened expression.
I fell in love with this man while in Rome. He was an artist. And I've forgotten his name.
It was 50 degrees on this day (that's 122 Fahrenheit). We were wandering around the desert in Aswan, Egypt, checking out these temple ruins. It's crazy: you can climb on them, touch them, something you can't do in Greece, Rome, or any other "Western" country.
This is how you save money on a bed: sleeping in the airport. We took advantage of this quite a few times. You just wear warm clothes (air conditioning is not my friend), put a scarf over your head, and plug in your ipod to block out the constant announcements.
K and I settled on this Greek island of Poros for a week to relax for a bit. We found a very cheap room with a KITCHEN= make your own food= save money! So we ate pasta for lunch and dinner every day, and spent our waking hours on the beach swimming in the disgustingly warm water and chatting up the sexy lifeguard. Oh, the things we did for free food and wine.
Me walking along the Tiber river in Rome. I spent August there, living in a convent and taking a university class in Ancient Roman Architecture and Civillization. I actually got to clean up a bit, and felt like quite the local after a while, dodging traffic while crossing the street, never removing my sunglasses, wearing fabulous shoes, and having my regular 11 a.m. cafe et cornetto.

So I had a glorious golden summer. Truly, it was wonderful. But now I am home and it is chilly and foggy and dark. I am almost over jet-lag, and I have seen all my friends. I sleep in my own bed again. I feel torn: I love love love Europe, and it is where I feel most at home. But this isn't too bad either: all of the sudden my schedule is bursting with parties and movies and drinks and I actually have people I know all over the city and it is so NICE to have a Life. Because travelling you know no one and no one knows you and while it is thrilling to be able to be whoever you want and make new friends, it is also terribly lonely.

I am good with loneliness. I even revel in it sometimes, but after 3 months it is good to be around your own friends again. People who you like even though you don't have to. And when I feel loved, I feel golden.

So yesterday I was driving home from dropping off some rain boots at my friends house, and even though this weather is gross, and the people here ugly, and the architecture worse, I felt a huge bubble of happiness in my stomach. Like overbrimming joy. And I'll be honest, I let out a huge scream in the car, just because I could.

Oh, last thing: over the long weekend we had a pig-roast up at our neighbour's cabin. My dad and Hartmoot (neighbour) bought a 100 pound whole pig from the Hudderites, and we spent 2 days stuffing and cleaning and roasting this thing. My brother named it Peggy (cause it's back legs were just stumps) and then on Sunday 70 people came up and helped us eat it. I am not squeamish, so I was the one who got to help ma papa sew it up and stuff. Kind of gross. But I think I am true Albertan now.

It Can Drive a Girl Wild

Cairo- oh! Cairo- is crazy. It can make you crazy. The people, the food, the heat, the smells, the sights the sounds the cars the scams the shopping the river. I stood in the supermarket- and please don't picture a clean white bright light grocery store. Instead, imagine a dark dusty cluttered room with random goods piled to the ceiling- and as I stood there, waiting lethargically to have my bottle of water, can of tuna, and package of peanuts added up on the hand held calculator, I thought to myself how easy it would be to start screaming. To scream loudly, throw my arms over my head and run out into the street, to lay down in a little ball in the filthy gutter and just die...how easy. How simple. It was simplest thing I could do in a city that was anything but.

Of course I didn't.

But when K and I stepped outside on our first walk around, we were scammed within 15 minutes. Come to my shop, he said, while I get my business card for you so if you need any help you can call me.

Ok! said K brightly. Holy cow, people here are so friendly!

Uhhhh, I said, I don't think so. I don't like this. (And of course then I feel terrible for doubting everyone, and for being so negative and wary.)

So we go to his shop. Are coerced into buying "perfume". I refuse, we leave the shop on bad terms after K forks out far too much for the smallest bottle of bath oil possible.

5 minutes after that, a guy comes up to us and asks us what the perfume guy was selling. We get to talking a bit, and since we are terribly lost downtown, he shows us the way back to our hole-in-the-wall pension. He asks if he can see us the next day. I say yes, probably just because I want to have some faith in humanity again.
So we do. We meet him and his friends the next day, and the day after that, and after that. They treat us not so much like princesses as like aliens, weird creatures who need to be shown how to do the simplest thing (crossing the street), and who hold strange views on politics, religion, sex. They feed us regularly, with multiple coffee breaks, and take us to parks, on boat rides, to concerts.
Nothing is too small for us to try, and to get excited about. No fruit stand goes unsampled, and when you say you love the sugar cane juice, then watch out: you are about to have 5 more bought for you and lined up waiting for you to gulp down.

A whirlwind experience. And then K and I went to the desert for a week, and rode camels, swam in the black oily Nile, which made our bodies look greenish brown. We saw-we climbed- we touched some of the oldest monuments of civillization. There was none of the Disneyland tourism that the pyramids/the Aya Sophia/ the Blue Mosque/ Athen's Acropolis/ Vatican City/ Sistine Chapel had. It was just THERE. In the desert. Being turned into the sand that had formed it.
Dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
Everything was hot and empty. Haunted, more likely just slipping into being forgotten. Outside the realm of people whose minds are focused so much on the present's nit-picky details and bright flashing lights, there exists these remains of a time when things- no, people- were bigger and grander.

Bigger, grander, and crazier. More mad. Maybe it's these lasting effects of madness which afflict me in Egypt. They cling to me and won't let me be. More likely I'm just tired of the sun and stares and kind of want to go home.

When a Week is a Lifetime...

SO much can happen in such a short time. I don't have the space, the memory, the words to put down all that has happened since our dig broke up on July 4th and I met K in Athens.
We went to Turkey. We met 4 Swiss boys on the overnight train to Istanbul, and we got to talking, and we found out we were all staying at the same hostel, sleeping for cheap cheap cheap on the roof. Too bad it rained 2 out of the 3 nights we were there. A bit wet we all were. The Swiss boys were our Knights in Shining Armour (sorry Postman, maybe next time) and we hung out like a tangle of puppies every day, galloping around and eating cheap kepab and taking the ferry across and lying exhaustedly on the green shady grass of the university.

We smoked far too much shisha, and got treated to Istanbuli hospitality and a heap of free stuff, and we also got ripped off and scammed and yelled at in the street.
I like Turkey.

Then K and I said a stoic farewell to the boys and Istanbul, and bussed down to Selcuk where we swam in a mandarin orchard below Ephesus, and hitchhiked for the first time. The air is dusty in Turkey, as though curtains of dust and history hang between you and the present. But I felt so solid, so limited by my humaness, yet thrilled at the concreteness of it all. Does that make sense? In Greece it's different, clearer, and more magical. I like Greece too.
The last 2 nights we spent on Samos, getting burnt to a crisp on the beach and luxuriating in the wonderful luck we had in securing our own private kitchen suite with roof top terrace for half price because we had met people who knew the owner. From beggars to princes. And we lay naked on the roof and drank wine and ate chocolate, and laughed at what people might have thought if they were looking but it was dark, and I told K that as long as we knew we weren't lesbians, then everyone else's opinions can go to hell. My skin hurt too much to wear clothes, and so I damn well wasn't going to wear clothes.

Sweaty we arrived in Athens today, flying out to Cairo tomorrow. The ferry was 9 hours long, in the sun... I feel like I have been hung out to dry, but first all the liquid in me must be evaporated, painfully, by burning. We walked through a police protest in Syntagma Square to get to this internet cafe. So thrilling. I love love love life on the move. We have met many cool people. And this is only the first week.

It Rained

Today it rained on the mountain, and drove my trench members and I into hiding under a tarp that was covering a pile of rocks. I looked and Lyle and Arthur crouching there in the mud beside me, shivering, and we giggled. We pulled the edge of the tarp all the way to the ground so that we were completely invisible to sight and waited silently for Our Fearless Leader`s yell of annoyance. Which isn`t quite fair, since Tristan is the best trench leader I could ask for. But we have never had rain before, and it makes the dirt quite impossible to work with.
This is what I`ve learned so far: everything is screwed up. Rocks are more important than people, and I can now read very much into very little. I can wash pottery, and spend an entire day sweeping dirt off of dirt. It is like the book Holes, where you spend the day digging in the hot sun without really knowing why, and when you find something unusual you are rewarded with a treat, like a cold beer.
But I love it. I love it`s backwardness, the dirtiness, the thought of finding something cool.

Saturday night is our night off. We started at 4 in the afternoon with sangria on the steps of the school in the sun, laughing and singing to ABBA, and waving to the farmers driving by in their tractors. And flagging down the shepherds and giving them a glass of wine with fruit. After dinner I really wanted a moped ride, so Arthur talked one of the village boys into driving me around in the dark, and I laughed at the wind in my hair and the wild dogs chasing after us. Then we all went to the soccer field and we played a wild, Dioynicitc game of chase and soccer and dancing all in one. And we lay in a heap and star-gazed, and Our Fearless Leader was there too and that`s why he is the best.

I love swimming. Us girls swam for hours and lay on the rocks, and the Albanian boys thought we were AUstralian, haha. The water is almost too warm, and the rocks burnt the soles of our bare feet, and our tan lines are hilarious. We picked garbage out of the Aegean Sea and closed our eyes and pretended to be dead, and the salt dried in waves on our backs and legs and then we were mermaids with seaweed and a wild look in our eyes.

Narthaki

Ahhh the first time I get internet and I hungrily devour all connection with my past life. Here, I'll run you through a quick schedule of my days:
5:00 a.m. wake up and crawl out from underneath the mosquito net and sleepily pull on my long pants and boots, and sunscreen up.

5:20 we load into the vans, and drive for 15 minutes as far as we can out of the village and up this mountain. Then we hike in the semi-darkness for 30 minutes up the rest of the mountain- when we reach the top we have a quick breakfast of coffee and spinach pastries- and down the other side, to where the site is.

6:00 a.m. we start digging. my first day i uncovered a nail, some big bones, lots of pottery and roof-tile, an astragalis (knuckle bone used for games), some melted lead and such. My trench leader, Tristan, was impressed with my haul because normally its nothing so exciting. I was thrilled all day long. Every day after that has been less and less stuff I've found, and today my coolest thing was a bit of moulded outerware which had some dolphins and leaves on it: i wanted to pocket it but thought maybe that wasnt so cool.

8: break, reapplication of sunscreen

8: 10 back to the trenches

11 another break

11:10 back to the trenches

1 we clean up, and haul everything back up and down the mountain.
then lunch when we get back to the village.

5:30 we meet with our trench teams and discuss what we found, etc.

8 dinner

10 we are mostly asleep.
thats all i have time for. the people are nice, and the food is excellent. i am well, not too burnt, but its very hot and sunny every day. we are filthy by the time we descend since the dust and dirt we are digging blows and sticks to the sweat and sunscreen.
oh, and the young boys in this interent gaming spot are trying to get justine and mine's attention by shouting every random english word they know in our direction. a little distracting!

Athens

I like this place as much as it likes me. Still adjusting to the heat, but it is glorious to sweat again. Wandering around with new ami Cain, and it is nice to have a boy because I get bothered less. Lay in a park today from 2-4, and actually slept and it was like a dream...green, hushed, damp, warm. When it was a bit cooler (or so we thought) we climbed to the top of Lykavittos hill: we were too cheap to take the funicular, so we climbed the many stone steps.
It was hot, very hot still, and I had a lovely cherry red complexion by the time we got to the top.
Cain: "You look a bit, I don't know, sweaty. And red." (He is Mexican)
Me: "Yeah, I know."
Cain, a little concerned: "Want some water? Here, have my seat. You should sit down. And you should drink some water."
Me: "I'm fine! Seriously, honestly, I'm good..."
"Are you sure? You are very red."
"Yes, I'm sure. Ok fine, I'll drink some water."
But the views were beautiful of the city and the Acropolis, and there was a cool breeze.
Tommorow we are going to the Sounis, close to the ocean, and seeing the Temple of Poseidon. And the next day I take my train out to Thessaly.
Eating much Greek food, and drinking lots of retsina. When I am enthusiastic about things, they give them to me for free. It's nice.