Abortions for some

Dear friends,

    The rest of my first week has been absolutely amazing.  Life in the hostel goes well--it's very hard to have a bad time when you're surrounded by paradise!  For the rest of the week, we finished digging the first site--Glasglow Lodge.  The site was once home to the 18th century international merchant Edward Stiles, and the ruins of his storehouse remain on the site.  In the backyard of this beautiful property, a limestone lined cove opens up to the Bermudian sea.  In the colonial era, this ideally concealed cove would've made a great location for smuggling.  During this time, there was a great demand for French and other international products both in Bermuda and the New World.  Bermuda's many hidden limestone caves and secret coves provided a great place for merchants along the Atlantic trade networks to stop and load and unload goods to be flipped onto ships headed around the world, with havens from the prying eyes of the British trade authority.  It was the Glasglow lodge, the home of known smuggler Edward Stiles, that holds then the evidence of this trade that links Lancaster to the rest of the colonial world.  So far, we've found at least six pieces of ceramics in the French Faience style, which strongly suggests our suspicions about Stiles' shady business dealings to be true.
    We originally though that we would work all the way through til Saturday, but luckily all of us are working so hard that we've dug in more places than we thought we would in only 4 and a half days.  With all the information we've received, its a strong possibility that the success of the first summer may carry on to invite MU crews for later seasons.  On top of that, the present owners of the site are very nice people.  Don, a New Jersey business man who was a real slice of life, is the owner of the property and was very supportive of what we did.  Also, the property's caretaker--a Bermudian with a Portuguese accent--always came around to our pits and was very helpful and curious.  We'll miss them, they treated us well and even gave us beer at lunch on the last day of digging.  They were also nice enough to let us swim in their ocean on lunch breaks, which was a great help from the heat.
    And that hospitality didn't stop outside the site--everyone is incredibly polite.  We take the bus to go everywhere, down winding roads lined with limestone walls and colorful houses, and the locals greet everyone they meet.  Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening are a must to say to anyone you see. 
    On Friday, work got done early, so we decided to venture out to a city on Bermuda--the nearby Hamilton.  Unfortunately, bus rides are long on Bermuda because the streets are narrow and there are few of them.  We arrived in Hamilton after 40 minutes, and we decided to barhop along Front Street, which is like Harrisburg's Front Street but with a beautiful ocean.  A few of the crew and I went to Flanagans, an Irish pub, and I sipped my first Guiness, which is by far my favorite beer so far.  Then we went to a second bar, that was more of a tourist trap, and the third, a local comedy club filled with local rastas and Bermudian polite folks.  Everyone's so talkative, we met the bartender at Flanagans--a funny guy named Lgo who tempted me into buying a pint instead of a half--and Dior, the comedy club bartender who introduced to some locals and asked us to come back anytime.  On the way home on the bus, a few of us had to pee so bad that we stopped off at a gas station bus stop! After relieving ourselves, we were stuck without a bus ride.  Luckily, hitch hiking in Bermuda is safe--a local flower worker named Dorothia took us all the way back to Dockyard for free.
    On Saturday, a few of us went to St. Georges, which is sort of like Colonial Williamsburg, but with more colorful buildings--imagine the setting of Pirates of the Caribbean, in the old colonial town.  We visited St. Peters, the oldest Anglican Church in continuous use in the Western Hemisphere (1712) and walked around the docks.  For lunch, we hiked across the island (only a mile and a half wide) and had lunch at the Blackbeard Hideout restaurant, overlooking historic Fort Catherine.  We dined on fish chowder, watched the crystal clear waves, and spied cannons on the hill, and eavesdropped on the wonderful accents of the locals--imagine British, mixed with islands. 
    On Sunday, we finally made it to the beach.  Horseshoe beach, home of a pinkish sand from coral reef decay, was our destination.  We had a blast, but we couldn't snorkel because the waves blasted sand around and made visibility poor.  Fortunately, we used our time to explore the limestone cliffs and caves that just into the ocean.  It was a great day of relaxing and exploration, and I feel rejuvenated. 
    With all of this excitement, it will be a hard week to top, and it's hard to comprehend that I still have four weeks left here.  I will keep you posted on how things go--tomorrow looks like rain, so we may not get to go out to our new site tomorrow.  Fortunately, there is research to do so we will be kept busy. I miss all of you,

Goodnight,

Miles