Sorry about falling off the blogging grid for the last several weeks. Below you will find a post that will fill you all in on the last few weeks of 2011.
Week 12
It was the final week in the fall semester so there was a lot of wrapping up going on. Nothing too crazy in the form of exams or anything, just the ending of courses. I finished the Bioculteral and Mortuary Theory courses. I will now have to write an essay for each of those classes. They aren't due until mid/late January. I am going to be continuing to take the anatomy, osteology, and statistics courses in the next semester. I will also be adding a course in paleopathology and eventually a course in archaeogenetics. Week 12 ended with a little lunch party for the Osteo class. This included a few of the PhD students and our professor. It was mostly finger food and alcohol, mostly alcohol. Nice little party, was good to be able to talk to everyone (professor and PhDs) in a relaxed social environment. The party ended around 5:00pm and everyone had a bit of a buzz. As it was too early to head out on a Friday night, we decided to all go to one of my classmate's house, and continue drinking there. Our plan of going out never formed and we just continued to drink at the house. By midnight, everyone was calling it quits and heading home. 12 hours of drinking takes a lot out of you. Fitting close to the first semester.
Week 13
This was my first official week off. However, it did not start out as such. I had an assignment that I still needed to finish that was due on Tuesday. It wasn't anything exciting and, in fact, I had been putting it off for at least a week already. For this project I had to measure the lengths and thickness of the upper limbs from about 3 dozen skeletons as well as record the presence of musculoskeletal stress markers. It was a lot of boring data collection. But, it was a graded assignment and I will need the data again in the course so there was no more putting it off. I was happy to see that all my other classmates were in the lab as well and in a similar situation as myself. After I finished that assignment, I was officially done with classes until the next term in the new year.
On Wednesday evening, the Archaeology Department held its Christmas Party. They rented out a medium sized room above one of the pubs in town for the small private party. Most of the faculty and staff was in attendance as well as a lot of PhD students and pot-docs that I had never seen before. Our Master's group tends to stick together so we had our own mini little party. After that party came to an end, most of the students decided to carry the party to another pub. The night was fun and it was the last time I would see most of my classmates as they would all be returning home to their families.
The week ended with both of my house mates returning home and leaving me entirely alone in the apartment. It has been a long time since I truly lived on my own. It was nice to be able to blast my music and not have to worry about being considerate of others in the house.
Week 14
Nothing much to report for this week. Spending my time reading about ancient Egyptian magic and religion. Trying to complete as much background research as I can to prepare myself for the onslaught of research I am going to have to conduct in the new year. I am also trying to begin writing my essays that will be due in January. I have decided upon the topics I will be discussing in my papers; now it is just a matter of translating the ideas in my head onto paper. So far, this has not been an easy task. Hopefully I will be able to get some work done over the next few weeks.
Week 15
Well, Christmas was Sunday. First time I have not been with family for the holiday. It was an odd feeling. It was much like all my previous days here on this break. Spent most of the day reading, playing computer games, and watching TV. Later in the afternoon, I was able to Skype with everyone back home. Got to talk to Grandma and Grandpa, Ashleigh and Mom. Also had a very brief conversation with my dad, but internet connection problems prevented us from having a conversation longer then 30 seconds. Later in the evening, a friend came over and we watched a movie together. She was alone for Christmas as well, so we decided that we should at lease see each other so we weren't totally alone for the holiday.
Cork was an interesting place over the Christmas weekend. It was virtually a ghost town. All the shops, stores, and pubs we closed down. The streets were empty except for the rare family out for a stroll. The weather was fairly warm, in the upper 40s. This is quite a departure from last year where the temperature was about 15 degrees. Only have had one 5 minute episode of snow, if you can call it that.
The rest of the week was filled with rain and crappy weather. Spent most of my time doing my normal routine of reading, trying to write, failing at writing, watching TV, and playing computer games.
Well that's it for my end of the year summary. I will post some picture from around the city after this post and should be back on tract and up to date with my post in the coming days. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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