I've been here two days and no word in the English language is good enough to describe my experiences so far. But I'll try with an assortment of words and hopefully it works.

My flight was short and very easy. It was a tad uncomfortable when I had to wait 5 hours at Heathrow Airport in London for my connection to Newcastle, which is a nearby city to Durham. But it was worth it. 

I met the other participants and so far they are amazing people. Smart, practical, calm, and fun. There are five others and I can't believe I connect with them so well! We are all very different, yet somehow we get along perfectly. I won't go into a description about each of them, since it will be much more interesting to read about my day-to-day experiences with them. (: 

We didn't get to do much on Sunday since three of us (Adam and Linda) arrived around 7 pm. However, we did go to a nearby pub called Market Tavern and I tried a Strongbow, which is a cider. And it's really, really good! At the pub, I also watched a Euro Cup match between Italy and Spain, in which Spain totally beat Italy. I'm not that interested in soccer, but it was nice to see how passionate people in the UK are about the game. They are almost as bad as the football fans in the US. 

Two Beds for One

At night, I was a bit lonely as my room is a double with no roommate. I have two beds! I did feel a little homesick especially since I left my cellphone at home and my internet was not working at the moment. But it got better, especially the next day!

We had an early breakfast at 7:45, which was hard to get used to since I'm used to sleeping in. But I did wake up in time and surprisingly, jet lag did not get to me. So today, we went out to the site, which we will help excavate for the next four weeks. Initially, I was a little nervous about this whole trip. I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist, but I was in doubt since many of the descriptions given by my professors and others sounded unpleasant. Dirt, digging, and not finding anything valuable? It sounds scary to a city girl like me. 

Before, I go on to describe my archaeological adventure today, I think its only fair to describe the site first. It is called Binchester and it has two main sites: a military fort, and a town. The fort inhabited the Roman Army about two thousand years ago!  There were different trenches dug up as the fort housed both soldiers and civilians. I participated in the trench that encompassed the barracks. Here is a link to the blog for the site if you want to know more: http://binchester.blogspot.co.uk/

I had so much fun! But my reaction sounds ridiculous when I give the actual details. We dug alot! We cleared rocks in one section and then we worked within a trash pit to find the different layers of context. I found many discarded animal bones and between me and the other two diggers, we found some small founds, which were quickly recorded. I loved seeing how organization and and recording are important in an excavation. Most importantly, it was really cool to touch something that existed two thousand years ago! 

 I won't lie. It was hard work and my whole body will be beyond sore tomorrow. But I loved that I was learning new techniques and experiencing techniques discussed in my classes at Binghamton. I think for now, I will stick to archaeology. But let's give it a few days, and maybe I'll know for sure. But the best part of the excavation was that I got a trowel!!! Every archaeologist has one! I included a picture below. 

My Trowel

After we got back from the site (we spent 7 hours there), I went exploring with three of the participants or more appropriately known as my new friends: Sarah, Linda, and Kelsey. Adam, the only boy on the trip, was very tired and poor Erin was sick and exhausted from allergies.

To begin, the town of Durham is very medieval. As an aspiring medievalist, this place just sends flurries of excitement through me. I especially love the cathedral. It's old and just beautiful. And we're going to get a tour tomorrow, so I'll take my camera and post some pictures soon. 

We walked for more than an hour in the paths around the town and the most exciting part of our mini-trip was this cottage. When we first passed by it, we didn't really think much of it. But then we passed by it a second time and one of us noticed that half of the front door was burned. Naturally, we became curious. Sarah, flipped open the mail slot on one of the doors and she still smelled smoke. So we assumed it was a recent accident. 

Then Kelsey climbed up a small side wall to look in the side windows or even at the back of the cottage. I joined her. We couldn't see through the windows because it was so dark! But then near the back of the house, in the branches of the neighboring trees, there were books. Judging by their faint but not destructive burn marks, we imagine that someone threw them out the window during the fire. There were five of them, but we took four for ourselves as souvenirs. Fortunately, they were all books by Charles Dickens. I took Little Dorrit, which is my second favorite book of his (there wasn't a Tale of Two Cities). 

After this unique excitement, we walked back around the cathedral and Linda told us that some of the Harry Potter scenes were shot here. More specifically, the first transfiguration class from the first movie took place in one of the rooms in the cathedral. Also, there were some familiar looking windows, that may have been included as outside shots of Hogwarts in the movie. We definitely experienced the finest British Literature on our informal tour in some way or another! 

Finally, we all went back to our quaint little house (I will post pictures of it tomorrow or soon) to clean up since it was raining and we went through some muddy areas. Then all of four of us played UNO, drank hot chocolate, and just talked! It was a fun but peaceful ending to hectic but pleasant day. 

If anyone has questions or would like me to clarify something just FB message me and I could talk more about whatever it is you want to know. I hope I wasn't too boring because I'm definitely having an interesting time so far! Until next time ;)