june 17th

oh, we uncovered her and she was beautiful. ill have to get some pictures up in the next couple of days. she was in great preservation, with every single vertibrae, all her teeth (and notched too! another sign of eliteness!) it was amazing getting her out. i have decided vertibrae are my favoite part because they all fit together so perfectly, just like a little puzzle. dawn, the expert reassembled her in the lab, and has decided she is 19-29 years of age, good health except for the healed wound on her head. i have a fantasy that she is me a thousand years ago, since she is about my height. so, we got this body out, but while we were finding all her bones in place, we realized there were some doubles. and a huge honking foot that didnt match a nice petite female. aka two bodies. the second we left and focused on her. today i was supposed to take out number two, but it poured all night, and when we left to the field in the morning the first sign of failure was that the vans got stuck about a mile and a half from the entrance to our half mile trek through the jungle. optimistically we decided to go on, hoping it would clear. we finally got to our sight, mud caked and soaked, only to find that all the tarps were weighted down with about a foot of water, and most were leaking. we frantically tried to fix everything, and the san filipeans even built me a shelter to try to get the second body out, but the rain was too hard and we just had to cover everything and hope for a better day tomorrow. meanwhile, we all showed up back at camp, bedraggled, and grumpy. we dried off, did a bit of lab work, and had lunch. after lunch, a couple people had to go to orange walk (second biggest town in belize, an hour away) to renew passports, so we made a mini trip of it. it poured the whole time we were there, and walking around the town i soaked another set of clothes, but i really liked it. weirdly enough the town is largely chinese, with most of the stores being like china town clothes and knicknack shops. i bought a shirt and a skirt for a couple bucks, then wandered and figured out where im supposed to catch the bus to meet jon on sunday. also, i found a cheap pair of galoshes, pretty sure those will highly improve my mood for the next few rainy days. we made it back fairly well, though the rivers are quickly rising, and the limestone roads became so slick that at one point we made a 360 spin out. it stopped raining around dinnertime, and hopefully tomorrow will be clear enough to at least get a couple things done. oh, and jason left this morning back to the states... so. only 3 workdays left!!!