Remembering/Forgetting AKA I can't wear that on the French Riviera!

This week I've been thinking about the smell of guavas, the enjoyment of an outdoor toilet, the fallacy of hope, where peanuts come from, the planets in the sky, how a person can fit into a plastic bag, honesty with strangers, shoes washing up with feet in them and how sharks die if they stop moving forward.

In no particular order, here are some excerpts from life at Amarna this week.

So on Monday I was sitting on my bed, reading a book, and I saw a black speck crawling on me. I tried to squash it but it jumped really high, and then jumped again and again and disappeared. And I felt itchy-shivery from me head down to my toes and was overwhelmed with repulsion because it was a FLEA! A flea in my bed!! Who knows how many others there were?? And how do you get rid of them?? These are things I've never considered before, but I did find out several things about fleas from my fellow archaeologists that I'm now going to share with you all.

1) A good way to catch them is by wetting a bar of soap (apparently a red one, but I'm not sure why or where you'd find such a colour?) and then mashing them into it so they're trapped.

2) When you catch them you have to roll them quickly between your fingers to moosh their legs off, if you try and just squash them it doesn't work. Their legs are their power, like Samson's hair.

3) Once you've rolled their legs off you have to pinch them with your fingernail and they make a crack noise. That's how you know they're dead.

Now I like to think I'm not that freaked out by creepy-crawlies or wrigglies, but there's just something about fleas, and lice and other bitey bloodsuckery things that Freaks. Me. Out. My brother had a book on insects when he was a kid and there was this one picture of a man's head in it, and his hair was just BEADED with lice eggs. And that's making me itchy-shivery just thinking about that grossness. So I attribute some of my reaction to this photo.

I ended up getting a can of very noxious smelling Egyptian insect spray, of which the instructions include putting a wet rag over your mouth, and not to use when pregnant, and I sprayed the hell out of my mattress and pillow. I changed all my sheets, got rid of the suspicious woolen blanket and then borrowed someone's fan because I would probably die if I went to sleep breathing that air. And I'm choosing to believe I was successful, since I don't appear to have any bites or any more unwelcome visitors (knock wood). Mum says my first world problems are becoming second to possibly third world problems, which I thought was quite funny and in some ways true.

On Wednesday morning I couldn't sleep so I got up at 5.30, when the sky was just beginning to change from night to day. And so I was shown Venus, Jupiter and a very faint Mars by one of the other people here. I've actually never had planets pointed out to me in the sky before and to me it was incredible. The planets stayed in my mind the rest of the day. Do you think after walking on the moon, and seeing the earth rise in space, that astronauts find it difficult to fit into normal life again?

When we were returning to the house after a day on site, we passed a donkey cart piled high with green bushes. As we all sit in the back of the truck, some of the workmen grabbed a bunch of plants and it turns out that they were peanut bushes with fresh peanuts attached to the roots. I've never eaten a new peanut before, and I have to say it wasn't that nice. Sort of bitter and starchy. But it was this glorious pink colour, and I was surprised at how often I've eaten these things without ever thinking of how the began.

Do you know what I really like? When people are honest with you and share their thoughts even when they don't really know you. It feels real. Like an actual real interaction with another person. And when it happens I think you realise how rare these sort of connections are.

Lastly, I've been thinking about sharks, and how if some species stop moving forward they die. They need to pump the water over their gills to extract oxygen or something. I've been thinking, maybe I'm a lot like these types of sharks? My thesis burnt me out, in a way it ostracised me from people I care about, it made me sad and scared, it overwhelmed me, it often made me doubt myself. I was very ready to hand in a half-arsed job, just so it would be gone. I thought 'when I'm done, that's that! I'll earn some money (still important, still high on the priority list!), move out again (again, still important!), see friends, eat out, go to concerts, travel for fun. Live guilt-free. I'm done with academia and Egypt and everything else'.

But being here, it's reminded me that archaeology and Egypt and yes, even thesis writing, it's me. It's who I am. And that there is so much more to being an archaeologist than writing a thesis. And that a thesis is but a tool to, in some ways, allow you access to working and studying sites that you've only dreamed about. And that a thesis is an avenue for you to think and engage and analyse and explore. It can be you, if by the end you remember who you are!

If I stop moving forward, maybe the part of me that's passionate, that got excited about holding a pot sherd in first year uni, who saw a picture of a dig in Egypt and thought 'that would be incredible - people who get to do that are so lucky', who genuinely enjoyed studying knots for a year, that part will die.

I don't know if a shark gets tired from the constant moving, if sometimes it just wants to hold its breath and float. But eventually the need to move forward kicks in again, and fresh air circulates its body. And that might be, in a way, like me.

Phew heavy stuff for only week two! This is what happens when you neglect to bring duty-free alcohol.

Lots of love to everyone, and I apologise for my self-indulgent ramblings. I miss you all incredibly xxxx