Archaeology Symposium

After my eventful trip to Belize City, I met up with Anna at the Princess, a resort-ish hotel with the only movie theater in the entire country. It's comfortable, but overpriced and sort of run-down. But I was glad to be there because I was sick for the first three days of my trip. I missed the first day of the conference because I was in bed, close to my bathroom. Anna missed it too, actually, since she was madly working on her presentation for the next day.

The conference itself was great, which I honestly wasn't expecting. It's a small conference in an auditorium, where presenters talk one at a time instead of in panels or groups. I liked it because the madness of the bigger conferences is overwhelming sometimes, and means that you're always missing something. They also had more coffee breaks worked into the schedule, which for me made it easier to stick around. Anyways, it was nice to see who's working where, and to meet new people. I reconnected with the folks from the Uxbenka project, which was fun, and met the people that Anna works with over at Chan, among others. It's funny because Anna and I have been in the field together for a couple years now, but there's always people who haven't met us, or who know one of us but not the other, which makes for some interesting twin scenarios.

I've always said that we're about the worst twins ever, because we just have these boring answers when people ask us about being twins. We've never really used it to our advantage, never really switched places or tricked boys (except poor Joe last year; he was a good sport!). So it was kind of interesting at the conference because in this atmosphere where everyone's trying to meet people, make contacts, or just makes themselves memorable with the powers that be, we actually stand out! If you meet one of us you'll recognize the other, which is a nice opening if you want to meet someone new (or if they want to meet you); we've met people on our independent projects as well so it's easy to meet lots of new people in a short period of time. We really took advantage of the twin-ness this time around. A certain government official was fairly interested in the fact that we were twins working in his country for the summer, which can't be a bad thing; you never know when you're going to need him to remember your name and your project!

And what can I say...we're fun to go out dancing with! Here's some pictures from the post-conference cocktail party and the debauchery that followed (inspired by the bottle of rum that Anna swiped from the open bar as it was closing!).

Debauchery participants: Anna and I; Anna and Nick, who does lithics on Anna's project; Willa and Mark who I met in Toledo at the Uxbenka Project; I think that's Jim Garber and an unidentified lady-friend; Anna and her dance partner for the evening, Joshua.