We’ve added 2 members to the team:
Auralie is an excavator from Switzerland who has been part of the group for several years. She arrived Thursday and will be with us for 3 weeks. Currently, she’s helping dig a really important Second Intermediate Period area and helping us sieve for seal impressions.
Valerie arrived just a few hours ago. She’s from France and is here to study the Old Kingdom pottery we have. I’m really excited to learn what I can from her before she leaves us.
The only problem with these new additions (aside from the fact that we now have 9 people using 1 bathroom) is that it brings out French-speaking contingent up to 4. When Susan leaves on Saturday, we’ll be tied. Another French-speaker will be joining us after Thanksgiving and us American-speakers will be out-numbered! Greg (who is French), Nadine (who is technically German, but also speaks at least French, Hungarian, English and Arabic) and Auralie all speak English quite well, though they prefer to speak to each other in French. Valerie apparently is super shy about speaking French and I have yet to hear her say more than “hello” in English. So learning from her might be difficult.
I’m still drawing. Tasha looked over my stuff yesterday and aside from 2 sherds whose diameters need to be tweaked, she says I’m doing a really good job! And she’s a very tough critic. There really is no “good enough” with drawings for her, especially since most are being used for her dissertation! So that made me feel good. I have a new job in the afternoon scanning all the drawings we’ve been doing. Apparently, Tasha normally spends about a week at the scanner once back in Chicago scanning everything, so hopefully I can save her some time.
- Non-French Speaker
PS. Our main internet stick bit the dust yesterday. So we’re down to a stick that is pay-as-you-go, and uploading pictures can be expensive. Unless we can get the stick working, it’s going to be text-only posts for a while. When I get to Luxor for Thanksgiving, I’ll try to upload a ton onto my blogger account and try to make up for lost time.
