The Contents of [Katherine] Mary Poppins’s Bag

I hoped to have some of my new pages for the blog up and ready before I left for this trip. Maybe if I would have finished them (or wrote yesterday's entry) before I left I would not need to write this entry. I was a bit distracted before this trip to France and consequently, I forgot some of the little things that make my life easier while traveling. On the upside, a few last minute (and literally an hour before I left for the airport) purchases and unassuming items have really helped on the trip so far!

Things That I Am Sad I Forgot:

1.     Light My Fire Serving Spork

When I am traveling solo or on a budget (so, always), it is unnecessary to go out to eat, but a girl’s gotta eat. Markets and grocery stores provide a nice opportunity to experience local flavors (it is actually quite fun to peruse a foreign grocery store) and it is the most affordable option for long-term travel. I first bought this handy utensil (about $2) for my trip to Europe with Ami to make our eating on the road a bit easier. Unfortunately I had packed both hers and mine in my bag which was lost thanks to the airline. Luckily my bag reappeared magically on my mother’s doorstep unannounced and I was able to finally retrieve and use my handy gadget on future trips. The small, lightweight, and durable plastic ended up being handy for everyday use for my lunches at school; it never left my backpack for three years. Last year while in France I managed to snap it in half while scooping peanut butter (I am not sure exactly how beyond that). Well, I am back in France with my peanut butter but do not have my handy utensil. A fork and knife on one end, a spoon on the other, and an easy to hold curved handle. How I miss you.

2.       Washcloths

You might be thinking, gross, how is she getting clean. I have a scrubby cloth thing that my soap is in, gross I am not. A washcloth though can prove handy for various purposes. Last year I used a washcloth as a clean surface on which to place cups or fruit after washing them, and another for either giving my face a quick scrub or for cleaning up messes in my room. Not essential for some, but I am missing mine today. As I noted in my last post though, this is one of those things I could easily buy if I truly cannot live without it.

3.       Clothes…!

Seriously, WTF was I thinking for this trip. I packed clothes and even made sure I stuck with the same colors to make it easier to mix-and-match/coordinate, but I feel like I really failed this time. I was definitely distracted. It is also difficult to pack when you have museum research, tourism time, excavation dirt, and lounge-around-in-the-evening time to consider. Also with the amount of equipment I had to bring, I had so little room for clothes it was a bit frustrating. I suppose it might be one of those rare trips where I actually buy some clothes here because two t-shirts is not going to cut it for 2 months.

4.       My Updated I-pod

Yes, my I-pod is here, but for whatever reason, it did not update and add all the great TED Talk Videos I downloaded right before I came. As I do not have I-Tunes on my mini-computer I am without. Sad.

Things That Have Already Broke

1.       My USB External Mouse

While not essential, it would have made some activities on this trip a lot easier than the tiny touch pad on my tiny netbook.

2.       The Scale

I needed to bring a scale to weigh some ancient coins. Alas, I plugged her in and she said ‘no’. I am scrambling to figure out another alternative, but nothing has come up so far.

(On the Upside!) Things I Am Thankful to Have With Me

1.       Osprey Meridian ConvertibleBackpack/Wheeled Luggage and Detachable Daypack

While this pack was a hefty investment (even at 30% off like I snagged it), it is really quite worth it. As far as looks go, it is a big awkward and big/bulky. As far as convenience and ease of travel, it is a winner; totally worth hunting down the UPS driver to make sure I got my bag before I left (it’s a long story). Anyway, this bag is great because it is a duffel-style (easy to access everything), a rolling suitcase, but it also has the option to convert to a backpack when the terrain gets rough! In addition to the main bag, there is a detachable daypack that zips on to the front providing extra storage and ultimately, one less bag to pack!

2.       Razor Blades with Built-in Shaving CreamThings

I’ll try to limit details here. I never used these before but razors are one of my mother’s classic stocking stuffers at Christmas. This year she stepped it up with these fancy ones. At first, I was thinking, “Hmmm… I never use anything so fancy, and I only use shaving cream if I’m shaving in the sink… I guess I’ll give ‘em a shot since they were free and all…” Well, I can totally live without these fancy ones at home, but for travel, they are great. The showers at the school where I stay for research and excavations are push-button timed making it nearly impossible to shave in the shower. I typically did it in the sink last year which resulted in lots of cuts. BUT THIS YEAR, I can shave cut-free with the fancy cream-included razors. For those of you that always use shaving cream, you might want to consider this alternative since it would be one less liquid/bottle to pack. Thanks Mom!

3.       JIF Peanut Butter

Everyone laughs, but I have been packing a jar of peanut butter since I started traveling abroad. It is one of those rare things that is difficult to find in the form we know and love in the States. Apparently you can find Skippy in Paris, but I have always been a JIF girl. It is perfect for breakfast, for snacking, or when you just need a taste of home. 

Ok, I am off to Dijon tomorrow to see some good friends. I will start actually discussing my travels instead of my packing issues soon! Have a good weekend all! :)

What to Pack, When You Are Packing (For a Trip, Not Heat)

Some friends and family marvel at the fact that I can pack a bag that will last me for two months. While it does take some planning (i.e. a well thought out list), there are a few things to consider when trying to limit one’s packing:

1.       You have to carry everything you bring with you. Always. Think about your trip. What are you planning to do? What sort of climate will you likely be in? Do you really need that thick wool sweater, or could you get away with a cardigan that will layer well instead? Unless you plan to travel in style via taxis and stay at hotels with bellhops, you will probably have to carry your bag(s) through various terrains (baggage claim; the curb outside the airport; additional transportation to your destination via bus, train, etc.; through city streets to your hotel; and so on). There will be steps, there will be elevators, and there will be bumpy sidewalks and curbs. Do you really want to be dragging that 4’x2’ suitcase behind you and hoisting it up regularly? If you cannot lift it yourself, you need to downsize.

2.       Every item in your bag should serve multiple purposes. I traveled to Germany this spring and rocked this point so hard with the clothes I chose to bring it was amazing even to me! While not every item will do multiple things, it should be a priority for most things going into your bag. As far as clothes are concerned, layering and coordinating is essential.

For example, during my trip to Germany I was attending a conference for a week and being a tourist for almost another two weeks. I needed clothes that would work for both occasions for three weeks in variable spring weather. In my 22” carry-on bag, I packed: a classic cut blue dress, a khaki pencil skirt, black dress pants, a thin purple and black patterned silk skirt, a black cardigan, a thin grey sweater, a thinner purple sweater, a thin blue sweater, a white blouse, a pair of jeans, and 3-4 coordinating t-shirts and camis. Pretty much all of the sweaters and t-shirts I brought could be dressed up or down and accommodated both warm and cool weather and some of the sweaters and the blouse could be worn with both the dress and skirts. This was more than I typically pack for a trip, but I wanted to make sure I had options and backups for my professional debut. Making sure you have clothing that will serve double duty will save you space and will ensure that everything you pack gets worn several times, but not look the same. If you are in to accessories, this is a good opportunity for changing up the same clothes to keep you from getting bored.

As far as other things that should serve multiple purposes… I think I will need another blog entry for that. Stay tuned.

3.       It is worthwhile to invest some money upfront to get items that will save you time, stress and more money in the future. Every year before a big trip I torture myself by looking at things that would make my travel experience easier. I debate whether or not I should drop that money on something I will use once a year, or if I can live without it. Reading product reviews typically helps me decide. Nearly every item that has stuck around in my head for more than a month I end up buying and nor regretting. A good bag can make travel so much easier. A handy coat with tons of pockets, therefore negating a carry-on bag, frees you up a lot. Each traveler is different. If you think you might like something or it would be particularly useful to you, chances are you are right.

4.       Bring things you are ok abandoning for something better or will use up before the end of the trip. I have a box which contains clothes specifically designated for travel. These are things that are travel specific (e.g. a desert climate) or are old clothes that I do not feel like donating yet. I bring these along every trip with the idea that if I find something here that I really want, I will always have room in my suitcase to bring it home. If you like to shop, this might be a nice option to consider. If I want to keep myself from shopping, I bring clothes that I wear regularly to remind myself I do not need anything new now.

I also bring products that I will probably use up or nearly use up before coming home. I could not bring myself to throw away a bottle of something that was still half full, but if there is about a quarter or an eighth left, I do not feel bad leaving it behind so that I might fit a great souvenir in my bag instead. Simply keep track of how quickly you go through your toiletries at home to gauge how much you will need for your trip, or if you have a bottle that is almost gone and you are going for a week, take it along.

5.       And remember, most things we have at home can be found in other countries. As a girl who has been without a bag more than once, compliments of efficient airlines, I know that nearly everything I have at home I can find while traveling. If you forget something, or perhaps you do not want to deal with liquids in your carry-on at security, you have options when you arrive. Another part of the travel experience is trying new things. Last year while in France I bought shampoo and conditioner that was made in a local region from honey. It was a treat to take in these new smells every morning and to see the cute icon on the bottle to remind me where I was.

Alright, that is enough for now. I will maybe plan to share some of my favorite travel products in my next entry. But for now, I will just say that both my bag and I arrived safely in France this year and while I have already been faced with a few surprises and challenges, it looks to be a promising summer!

My New Year Began in the Fall

As a 27-year-old student, it seems a bit childish to still be measuring my life according to the school year calendar. Even when I am finished as a student, my life will continued to be measured this way as I will hopefully have a career in higher education with life beginning each Fall and ending each Spring (with a nice long limbo period in the Summer months). This approach also makes more sense to me as I have a Fall birthday, so looking at a new year beginning every November simply works well!

The thought of aging crosses my mind, but it seems so far away that I do not pay it much mind. I think about my parents and family aging, and that is more unsettling and real. Television shows always have that character who realizes their parent or co-worker is developing Alzheimer's or dementia. These stories break my heart, not for the characters, but for fear that it may happen to someone I know. We get hung up on the negative and ugly side of aging instead of accepting that it is a natural and inevitable part of life that can sometimes be beautiful.

I stumbled across an article about a photographer who is struggling with accepting her mother's dementia. She found that by capturing the lives of older animals on her camera, it helped her be at peace with the aging process and her own fears of developing such an illness. Some of these images are quite touching. They show age and decay, yes, but they also show experience, tenderness, and an unappreciated beauty in wrinkles and wear that our society deems negative. While these photos do not take away the fear completely, they do show that aging is not always something bad, but can be a marker of pride illustrating the fullness to which a life can be lived.

If you do not wish to read the article, here is a direct link to her website: Elderly Animals


**Addition 4/19/12**
Another sort of interesting article connected to aging and death came across my path recently titled, "Top Five Regrets of the Dying." As I have realized on many of my travels, it is not about the destination, but the journey and all the mayhem along the way that really creates the experience and the memories you take away from it. We often forget that, and, for those at death's door, realize it too late in life to do anything about it. So, check something off your bucket list, take a vacation with your family, call a friend, and take some time each day to do something that makes you truly happy.

C’est Fini

As I am heading back to the States on Tuesday for my Ami’s wedding, this will be my final post for this trip. The last week of excavations at Vix (last week for me that is) was by far the best for me. I was talking to one of our field supervisors last Saturday night when I mentioned I have had quite a bit of experience in the field and was a trench supervisor at my last excavation. I also tried to phrase, in the most polite way possible, how much I hate cleaning postholes. My supervisor was quite pleased with this knowledge and said on Monday I would be working with the documentation team come Monday.

I’m sure after reading my post about cataloguing artifacts many of you realized how much tedium and organizing I can endure. Documenting a site is quite similar to this. You must make notes about every unique feature discovered on site, such as a posthole or a pit for example. Information collected varies, but often includes color of the soil, placement in the site and relationship to other features, a list of objects discovered there, soil composition, etc. as well as sketches of the feature from above and in profile or section. This is the sort of thing I have been doing for the past week. The first part of the week, myself and two to three others who also had previous excavation experience worked on documenting and measuring profiles of all of the postholes we had been cleaning. We did at least forty in one area alone and probably another twenty at least in another area of the site. I coordinated the work and did the official measurements of these features. After we finished this toward the end of the week, another student and I started the documentation for a group of new postholes discovered recently that had not yet been noted. Despite some rain and a few issues with a compass that didn’t point north (think ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’) the work moved along quite efficiently and I enjoyed helping to keep it all running smoothly.

I noticed I was in a much more cheerful mood doing this sort of work. I love excavating, but I don’t feel like I accomplish anything when I move maybe twenty buckets of dirt a day – this is much less than I am used to, but the site isn’t that deep meaning there isn’t as much dirt to move. I had a strong sense of accomplishment doing this work that others don’t like or can’t do quickly. The two supervisors I was assisting by doing this work appreciated it as well. They would like me to come back next year in a more official role on the documenting team, which would be fantastic for many reasons. This has to be discussed first with the site directors, but if they are ok with it, then I shall return to Vix again next summer!

Not much to share about the rest of the week. I’ve been trying to enjoy the time I have left with my new friends. While I hate having public co-ed toilets and showers, living with a large group of guys and girls my own age makes me feel like I’m back in freshman year at college. We do silly things, such as chasing each other around with mattresses, breaking into each other’s rooms in the night to tickle-and-dash, or hug mobs when someone looks like they need one. It’s all silly and fun and makes me forget I’m a grown up for a little while. Despite the language differences, we generally all understand one another and have shared so many laughs I can’t believe it. We are here in a different world for a short time without responsibilities and a fair amount of time on our hands to do what we want whenever we like. Many people here say they come to excavate at Vix as their vacation and I’m starting to understand why. There are great people here and unlike any other excavation I have been on, there is no drama – everyone just wants to have a good time eating, drinking, talking, and laughing with one another. I’m hoping I can bring some of these good feelings home with me and that I take time out to enjoy myself a little more, especially when life starts stressing me out. Aside from the many useful archaeological contacts and friends I’ve made, I think the best part of this trip for me has been retreaving some of my silliness and ability to relax and not take myself so seriously all the time. I see now that I can still get things done even if I take some time to enjoy life and the people I share it with.

Thanks for following along this summer! If all goes well, I will be reporting to you all again around the same time next year!

"Allez la France!"

Excavations continued this week with a little less rain finally, though we’ve still had to start and stop several times because of the weather. It has been quite cold too, which is surprising. I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat which has been going around the French-German team. I’m hoping it’s just because I went to bed late last night and not that I’ll actually have a cold for my last week of excavation…

The excavation itself has been a little under-whelming much to my surprise. Instead of moving many wheel-barrows full of dirt each day, I fill maybe twenty buckets of dirt in an entire day. I’ve been digging post-holes (the holes which held the framing for a house) for two weeks now and am bored to tears with it as are most of the others working at the site. These post-holes are cut into the natural soil, which is rock. I clean the dirt (mostly mud with the rain) and debris out of these to make them ready for photographing. 

It’s the same thing every day, though sometimes I get to “spice it up a bit” by cleaning a ditch instead. Some graves were found, but they are early medieval and only a few people have been excavating these. It has been quite difficult to go from being the person in charge/responsible for an area and all of its data collection and paperwork back to a person who is merely there to move dirt. I feel no connection to the site as I don’t know what is even going on here. I expressed these feelings to one of the supervisors who is responsible for all of the note-taking and it sounds like he may put me to work this week with more of the mental work, which would be a nice change. Here’s hoping. 

Despite the monotonous work, I am enjoying myself over all. We get coffee breaks and ice cream breaks which is nice. I can listen to my French lessons or music on my iPod if I like, which helps the day pass a little more quickly. If I’m actually working near others, we have entertaining conversations while we work. We were all so miserable on Friday that we wrote a song about being miserable in our ditch and it turned out quite good!

I’m not sure why, but we had the excavation party in the second week of excavations and also on a Thursday night. I haven’t been drinking much at all this excavation, probably because there is so much drinking going on around me all the time, but the others more than made up for it that night. We were divided into teams based on country (German, Austrian, Swiss, and the French legionaries which included me, some Germans and the actual French because there weren’t enough for a full team) and had to play archaeological games such as tossing a trowel into a bucket, a blindfolded girl pushing a wheel-barrow with a boy inside around a series of obstacles, and a pick-axe toss. I didn’t even want to participate, but got stuck doing the trowel toss – and no, I didn’t make any into the bucket.

After this was the wheel-barrow race. We needed three girls from each team to participate and a quick count revealed we only had two girls on the French team and I was one of them. I finally agreed to do it one minute before the race began and quickly threw on some sneakers which looked pretty funny with my dress. I got up to the wheel-barrow and got ready to start when they told me I had to be blindfolded. I was in the first race, so I didn’t know this was coming and all of the directions for the games were only given in German leaving the French team quite clueless about most of the rules. I managed to get around and back, though it’s a bit difficult when the person giving you directions speaks only French… I was thankfully finished with the games after that race. We were still short a girl and they wouldn’t let our other girl go twice, so we dressed up one of the French guys in a skirt and sweater and he played for us – we had no other options! We ended up tieing with the Austrians for third place, which was fine with us since we really didn’t care that much. We just cheered a lot and waved our baguettes, French flags and pirate flags while shouting ‘Allez la France!’ (Let’s go France!).

 Last Saturday a group of us went to Bibracte, an important archaeological site for Gallo-Roman history. We decided to change it up this week and go to the medieval city of Troyes. Before we left, The Hobbit, the French girl, our blonde German boy, and I went to the Douix and had a picnic breakfast with croissant, homemade jam, baguette, juice, and fruit. It was quite lovely and there were ducks there that day too, so they enjoyed some breakfast as well. We usually have the same breakfast every day in the cafeteria making this a nice change.

After this, we hopped into the Red Fox (a car) and were joined by our driver who looks like Sigmund Freud’s twin. We made our way through the hilly countryside to the city and spent the day walking around. As it is a medieval city, there are a lot of old buildings, many of which look like they might tip over if you leaned against them – they are very tilted and sagging, but still standing! We had some Lebanese food for lunch since there was a vegetarian with us and it seemed like the best option for all. We ate in a small park next to a fountain and then met up with another group which included TSP, another really nice German girl who I like and a few others. We visited the cathedral and after the museum which has some regional archaeological finds on display. The other group left after the museum, but our car walked around for a bit, visited some shops, and had some ice cream. It was a really perfect day from start to finish with a lot of laughing and joking, good music in the car, and perfect sunny weather. It certainly rates up there as one of my favorite days I hope to remember always. The rest of the night was pretty quiet and I got caught up in conversation with some friends until about 5AM. Overall, it was a very perfect day!

This morning was a bit rough because we were getting up early to go to another flea market. I was in the Red Fox again with ‘Freud’, TSP and the French girl. We were following the car that had the map and was supposed to know where this place was, but they somehow managed to get us lost in the woods and countryside making the drive about 45 minutes long. After we arrived, everyone walked around really quickly and wanted to leave about 15 minutes later. This happened last weekend to the French girl and I who are slow and like to look. We hide when we notice them waiting for us so that we can take a bit longer. This flea market was too small to hide for long and we reluctantly left shortly after. The drive home took only 15 minutes because we saw that it should have been a direct line between the cities – oh well.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I napped for about 3 hours, ate dinner, and then went to visit a local cemetery at night. I am in the home-stretch so-to-speak, and finish my time at Vix this week. Hopefully it will be a more interesting week for me and the others! So long, for now!