Ladies and gents, start your engines

It's that time again: t minus 9 days!

Now that my list of stuff has been ticked off (get all gradumacated, check; go visit Katie, check; take the FSO, check), I'm focusing everything on Romania and I'm getting really excited. And really nervous. 

Kingston was a huge step for me. Taking time to go with people to Istanbul, and with Bella around Italy, was a giant piece in the what-do-I-do-when-? puzzle. But, excepting Istanbul, the places I've been have felt really...safe. England is England. The UK at large is a comfy-cozy place. Rome and Venice are touristy places. 

But Hungary? Romania? Transylvania? These are places I've read about and daydreamed about, but never really grasped. I could feel London through the pages in books. I could taste Venice through cookbooks and travel memoirs. But I don't know Romania. 

Not to mention the fact that I'm not even there yet and already I feel like a fraud. I do sociolinguistics work and I write papers and I read ethnographies; I don't know that much about archaeology as a whole. I liked being a dirt monkey. I liked listening to the winding stories that function as far-fetched explanations. I loved shaking hands through history. Being the first person in a couple hundred years to touch this musket ball, to roll it around in your palm, heavy and smooth and solid enough to wound; being the first to smooth your fingers over a piece of window glass or a nail, feeling the construction of the fort through your fingertips--that is a fantastic feeling. But I don't know archaeology theory; I don't know much about the area. All I know about Vlad Ţepeș comes from poring over The Historian since I was 14.

And then I remember, this is a field school. I am paying these guys (D. describes A. as the quintessential Romanian archaeologist--all the stereotypes are true) to teach me the ways of archaeology. Let the learning commence!

But first, have some Anthropology Major Fox that is hilarious in its accuracy