Friday, June 16, 2006

Captain’s Log: Stardate 2006



My final blog entry. It seems like just yesterday that we started this blog. I will be leaving St. John and the NPS archeology crew Monday for a three-week trip through Central America. I will spend the rest of my summer visiting with friends and family before heading to the University of South Carolina to begin work on my Master’s degree in anthropology.
I’m spending my final few days working with Katie on comparing our paper catalog records to those in the computer. Before throwing away the paper records we want to make sure they are all in the computer database, otherwise, we will lose that information.

On Monday I gave a brief talk about archeology to a very interested group of third graders from St. Thomas.
On Wednesday, Katie and I met with a group from the Coast Guard with their families at VIERS. The group came over from Puerto Rico by boat and is spending the week enjoying the island. We taught them about the history of the Taino occupation of St. John. Puerto Rico has a rich Taino history so our talk was particularly pertinent to them. Both groups kept us on our toes with excellent questions.

Although I’m ready to go home, my time on St. John was very enjoyable. In nine months I went from zero archeological experience to feeling fairly well versed in archeological techniques and Virgin Islands history. This is largely due to Ken and Susanna and their willingness to impart their knowledge on me. Hopefully I will get to work with them in some format again in the future.

(Although it will never be the same, blog updates will continue as Mick moves on to other adventures. Good luck Mick, We'll miss you!)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

great job, Mick. You have really "stretched" your knowledge with the Virgin Island Experience.
Have a message for you from your Dad. Call. Love, Athens

bluepompano said...

Hi Mick, How's Belize?

Anonymous said...

Hey everybody. Central America is going well. We're now in Costa Rica at a friend's condo. It should beats the backpackers haunts we've been staying at. I sent you all a postcard so I hope you got it. In addition to Tikal and Copan we went to an island called Isla de Ometepe on a huge freshwater lake in Nicaragua. The island was formed by 2 volcanos and is larger than St. John. It was inhabited by descendents of the Nahuatl and is loaded with petroglyphs and stone statues. I saw some petroglyphs, which were nothing like the Taino ones. We've been having fun and I've only had 1 hospital visit so so far so good. Talk to you all soon.
Mick