Wow, It feels like it's been forever since I last posted!!!! (Prolly 'cause I've done so much since, considering the length of most of my posting breaks, it really hasn't been all that long :P)!!
hmm.. lesse... Peru was awesome;y amazingly fun! - although digging in the desert at the same site for seven weeks straight did get a little boring/tiring after a while!! as did not having a really shower for the great majority of the time!!! we went in to town a couple of times just to be able to get clean! We were sooooo dirty - I have pictures of me where it looks like I have a mustache!!!!! lol! Needless to say, when a bunch of us stopped in Trujillo the night brfore our flight most of us took about 3 showers in a row... and I woke up early the next morning to have another one!!!!! heehee... We were digging 6 days/week so we didn't have all that much free time, but I did make it up to Casma to see the ruins over there (which are really really cool and awesome btw and involved a crazy moto-taxi ride into the wilds of the northern peruvian desert :D!!!) with a couple of the others!!! and one weekend a bunch climbd this mountain named huasiquito (without any equipment :S and, although it wasn't overly high, it was high enough and rediculously steep/sheer/crumbling that we prolly shouldda died a number of times(eeek!)), so that was amazingly fun *grins like an idiot*!!!!! ... yupyup.. what else... we fund some cool stuff like a stone necklace, 9 baby camelid skeletons (9! -do you know how long those things take to get out of the ground?!?!), a number of pottery shards, a human tooth, caches of spondylus (v. cool!), some scorpions (;D!)... it was pretty cool!!! and, although our site wasn't this magnificent temple or anything that tourists would love, it was really cool archaeologically 'cause it was really strategically placed and had evidence of occupation by nearly all of the cultures in the area from the ealy pre-ceramic on down!!!! and it was HUGE!!!! it covered an entire floodplain! heehee... every day was an adventure too, 'cause we'd have to take a 45min combi (broken down - non shock absorpbant van) ride up valley (before a 30 mins treck into the desert) to get to the site everyday and, not only did you never know what would be riding along with you (live turkeys...), the thing often broke down in exterly entertaining ways (seriously!!! once, not only did the wheel fall off, the entire axel went with it!!!!! I have pictures!!!!) leaving us to push it!!!!! *shakes head* it was great!!!! :D! OOOH!!! and I got to practice my Spanish!!! awww, I'll miss Francisco!!! He was the Peruvian archaeologist (who reminds me of a 46yr old version of my grandfather) that I was digging with in one part of the site for a large part of the trip ... he was awesome!!!!
lol! So yeah, that was Peru... after that, I came home for a week (- and hosted the gifty reunion party the night after getting home :P) *shakes head and grins* It was awesome!!! I'm sooo glad I got to see (almost *glares at Linna especially*) everyone again :D!!!!! I miss all you guys soooo much *sniffsniff* and then spent the majority of the week hanging out in Scarborough (SCAR-BRO!!!) so that I could see everyone and spend time with Em before she left me and headed out to UBC *sniffsniff* and so I could help (or try to) with Megan's wedding. It was great!!! Megan's dress was absolutely beautiful and the wedding was really nice!!! (omg, on another note, I can't beleive Megan is married!!!!!!!!!!)...
After that, it was off to Hawaii!!!!! (oooh! wait, with a night at home to go see the new cirque show KOOZA! which is really good... different from most cirque shows in that the characters often spoke English, but still very, very good. OOOH! And while I was home I went with Nal to see Medeival Times 'cause she worked there and I had never been... so, yeah, that was fun too :D!!! .. oh! and that was the night I found out that Ma and John had changed the keys to the front door and forgotten to tell me... honestly, sometimes I think that they don't love me ;P! And they did it to Nal too!!! *shakes head*)
Yupyup! Hawai'i was AWESOME!!!! We were on Kuai'i, 'the garden island' and we managed to travel all over it and see things from all angles!!! We took a Helicopter ride all around the island and into Mt Wai'ale ale, the collapsed in crater of the old volcano and the wettest spot in the northern hemisphere!!!!, we went to the Waimea (little grand canyon of the pacific) Canyon and Akala'i swamp (the highest swamp in the world) :D, went kayaking on the Wilua River, horseback riding on the North Coast, swiming everywhere... heehee, it was sooooo much fun!!!! I checked out the lava pools and reefs... ooh!!! and we took a Catamaran tour of the Na Pali coast and I went snorkelling and saw a reef shark!!! Oh! And at the cliffs near where we stayed the sea turtles would come right up during hightide to feed!!!! It was sooo great!!!! OOOH!!!! And we went to a luau!!! and made Leis!!! OH!!!! And I learnt how to surf!!!! And got addicted (and burnt my bum, so now it's peeling *pouts*) It was amazing!!! And I learnt how to Hula!!!!I love it so much! I wanna go back and live there for a summer and work in a hotel and learn more Hula (and surfing)!!!! And maybe go see the big island of Hawai'i so I can see an active volcano!!!! :D!!!!
On our way back we stopped in San Francisco for a few days, so that was pretty cool too :)! Nal and I had loads (wayyy too much :D!) fun riding on the cable cars - they're sooooo cool, especially with a of the hugely steep hills in San Fran - it's like a roller coaster!!! And you don't even have to go inside!!! you can just hang on the outside!!!!! So, yeah, we saw all the sites there like the golden gate bridge, lombard street, postcard row, etc... AND we got to go to Alcatraz (at night too :D!!!!) before heading home last week!!!
So yeah... now I'm at home and working at Canadian Tire doing data entry to make some money before I go back to school in a couple of weeks :D! That said, life's not all boring *grins* I just got back from spending the weekend in Northern Quebec for the 10th aniversary celebration of the engineering company where my dad works (translating for the ontario contingent :P). It was great!!!! *shakes head while grinning* I'd forgotten how crazy engineers could be and how much les quebecois like to party!!!! Heehee... we got split into teams and there were a bunch of crazy challenges and games - one of which was to build a boat in 2 hours out of 8 8' planks of wood, 5 40lbs buckets and some nails!!!! We then had to test them on the (very, very cold :P ) lake and see how many ppl the would carry and have races. It was GREAT!!!! :D!!! Even if I did get completely soaked!!! It was beautiful up there too (bloody freezing though!)! It was far enough North that the leaves had already begun to change... and the water was just soo blue!!! and the rolling hills *shakes head* living in Toronto, it's just so easy to forget how beautiful northen Ontario and Quebec can be...
Yupyup! So now it's back to school in a couple of weeks - well... not quite *grins*. Nal's heading over to Paris to study, so I'm gonna go over and join her for a bit next week before heading up to Germany ('cause I've never been - I also don't speek the language, eeeek!) for a couple of days... and then, it's back to school :D! heehee...
*nods* so.. yeah... I guess that's it!
Lot's o' love!