Days 5 and 6: There is something seriously wrong with loving a trench this much

Apologies for the sudden merging of day experience, however to me it all feels the same when I am around Bob. He is my little 1 by 1 meter window in the past and has facilitated views into the history of demolition at the Upper House of Brynkir. Bam! New context. Bam! Another one. I felt so overly concentrated on what may come out of the loose soil that everything else just faded. People somewhere keep killing each other, bad things keep happening to good and not so good people and there I was just troweling as if I was troweling for my own life. I wonder if this is not too pretentious, too much over the top for me - to feel so obsessed with a whole in the ground, made by me at that. Jenna was still sat right across the wall, which serves as one of Bob's sides. This experience keeps proving to be very healthy for her, as I can see the amazing progress she has accomplished from day 1. On the far corner of the exterior wall Will kept digging his trench and hit a very compact grayish layer which according to Mark could be late medieval. Day 5 was also the day when I learned how to use the dumpy level. Imagine my total amazement at the fact that I actually now know what to do with that peculiar thingy. I keep talking about archaeological procedures and on-field skills as if they are something magical and unearthly. Of course I know they are not. This is just me, realizing my total merging with a world I have previously felt unreachable. Even though the first year at Cardiff Uni has taught me so much, surely nothing can be compared to this: feeling the dirt in between your fingers, saving the worms from the vicious edge of the trowel and taking little pieces of someone's history out of the soil. Day 6 had a rather sad turn to it for that was the day after which Hannah left Plas Brynkir, Cwm Pennant and 9 Cardiff University students completely adoring her. Sometimes life and the schedule of an archaeological dig do rather surprise us. Towards the end of this day I finally reached a layer in my trench beyond demolition. The rusty color of the soil got me so excited that I was even eager to return to it al day during our day off. Now all that is left for me is to boldly go where no one has gone before.