Field School 3.0 Starts Tomorrow!

It's only been two days since I arrived in Bermuda but it feels more like a month. When the public sees archaeology documentaries of people finding cool stuff, they rarely are told of the many hundreds of prep hours that went into that thirty-second finds shot. With more than twice as many students as participated in past years, the logistics of getting food and housing ready has been pretty challenging, but luckily this year I have a right hand man and left hand woman (or something like that) - Leigh and Jim.

Jim, fetchingly draped against the back of a dump truck
 on the way to collecting our boat. Leigh was wisely inside the cab.

We had a bit of a hiccup arriving due to a new Bermuda Immigration policy and a brief scare regarding having enough housing, but the Director of the Bermuda National Trust moved heaven and earth to get things righted at the eleventh (thirteenth?) hour. Thanks also to the Bermuda Police Service and St. George's Mayor Garth Rothwell for the use of rooms in the St. George's Police Barracks to ease what would have been very crowded quarters!

One of our three houses - on Featherbed Alley

 I did a mammoth shop on Thursday spending a truly prodigious amount on groceries (I think my scooter cost less that the food bill) which completely filled Linda's car - and that was only a week's worth of provisions. Today we inventoried all our field equipment, fixed aging sifters, and collected our work boat from St. David's.

We also briefly stopped off at Smiths Island to see the fairly impressive vegetation growth in the backfill of Oven Site - one allspice tree had grown nearly five feet in the past ten months.
 A bit ago, we went out to Wahoos for gelato to celebrate getting everything in order (except for fixing that broken wheelbarrow) and also Leigh getting a job as a professional archaeologist that starts right after the field school ends.
Now off for an early night - the first seven students arrive tomorrow, seemingly each on a different flight. I see lots of shuttles between the Airport and St. George's in my near future, but I'm really looking forward to meeting many of them for the first time and getting this season started. It's going to be great!