Truth be told, Kate had no clue of what she wanted to do.
She had considered teaching in the past, but she also considered a masters. The prospects of finding stable work as an archaeologist were not good, and Kate was not good with instability. She was a creature of habit, and enjoyed daily routines. She liked to break out of these routines every once in a while, but not all the time. The life of an archaeologist is to always be searching for funding, always pressured to publish, always in between digs. The thought of constantly living with this stress of never knowing whether she would be employed or not was not appealing to Kate. Though she loved the work of an archaeologist, she was unsure if it was worth the risk.
Kate got the opportunity to try her hands at archaeology a little bit more, to find out if it was what she wanted to do, the summer that she graduated. One of her professors sent her an email after she had handed in her final paper. He was impressed by her paper, so he asked if she wanted to help him out with some field work that summer, in Italy. Kate thought about it for about five minutes before replying: yes. Of course she wanted to go to Italy!
2008 London
Jordan went with Kate and the two of them spent two weeks touring around before Kate has to settle in to the castle that would be her home for the next four weeks. Jordan and Kate toured around London, Genoa, Cinque Terre, Florence, Pisa, Venice—this was anything but a relaxing vacation, but the two of them wanted to take in as much as they could while they were so far from home. It was amazing.
2008 Florence
2008 Pisa
2008 Venice
2008 Verona - House of Juliet - Marking my hearts for Jordan
2008 Juliet's balconey
They reached their final destination: Finale Borgo. Jordan and Kate sadly parted, Jordan returning home, and Kate getting down to work. She dug in a cave called Arene Candide for the better part of four weeks, working long days, hiking for half an hour to get to the remote site and back each day, all the while watching the beautiful beach that she hadn’t the time to go swimming at. Of course, they did make the time to go to the beach now and again, but for the most part, it was hard work. It was exciting—Kate found many lithics that had not seen the light of day for 30, 000 years—but it was exhausting nonetheless.
2008 Hiking home from Arene Candide
2008 Lithics and pasta
2008 Beer and gelato
2008 The Trowel of Power
2008 Italian total station, thank you for making this more confusing!
2008 The square meter where I spent a month of my life
This dig was the experience of a lifetime. Kate’s digging companion, Katherine, became a fast friend and they shared many good laughs, a few good cries, and a lot of good gelato together. They learned tidbits of Italian, drank a lot of Morretti, and ate a lot of good food. The two of them travelled back to Genoa together, where a strange man took a liking to Kate’s feet. They were both uncomfortable about that one. Kate experienced a lot of good times, a whole new world, and gained some new outlooks on life in a different culture—but she was nonetheless glad to be home, with her Jordan, her kitties and her friends, at the end of it.
*****
After that summer, Kate was pretty sure that she could not do anything that exhausting for the rest of her life. She took a job at a daycare while she tried to figure out what to do.
That was the worst winter of her life. Usually blessed with a strong immune system and good health, Kate had never experienced being sick for any long period of time. That winter, she caught strep throat, and she simply could not kick it. She was sick for what seemed like forever. It took four rounds of antibiotics to finally sure her, the final one being so harsh that each pill nearly made her throw up, and she needed to take them every six hours. She spent the better part of the winter sickly and drained, and was glad for it to be over.
*****
Kate applied to the Kindergarten/Elementary program at McGill.