... and we're done. Ross is in the final stages of drawing the last artifact of the season. It's a hideously ugly, extremely large bowl (Ross is mutteringto himself as he draws it, "muy feo, muy feo" - yes, it's that ugly). But it's the last one, so I felt I should commemorate it.

To get to thispoint, I spent half a day with sticky, glue covered fingers as I did a series of 3D puzzles, aka I put broken pots back together. It was both frustrating and exhilarating all at once. Just like a jigsaw puzzle (and yes, to quote the Simpsons - as I know you are, Laura - you can call me Langdon Alger, who's "very quiet and likes puzzles").

Now comes the pack up and the storage seeking. According to Ross, putting the artifacts into storage is likely to involve a fair bit of bureaucratic paper work and wait time. We may very well not actually get to move the artifacts until Monday. We may move them tomorrow. It's that unpredictable.

Jim is cooking dinner now. He's making some Sambuca prawns. It think it'll be good.

***

So, I'm a littlle drunk right now. Jim's meal was excellent and we drank a few bottles of wine, some rum, and some scotch. It's been a bit of a celebration of finishing. {illegible drunken scrawl}. The conversation was interesting. Jim's friend, Alain, came over for dinner and he was a fountain of information. We learned the various ways of killing a guinea pig (cuy), one method of which he demonstrated on me (I survived... this time). Apparently, José-Luis does a great impression of a murdered guinea pig, but he refuses to do it for us. The conversation logically went to the ways of killing a variety of other animals, from turkeys to horses, to strange foods served regionally, from horse in Loja to mixing human remains into chicha locally. Strangely, none of us were disturned by that. Blame it on archaeology, I guess.

After that, Alain explained to us a variety of phrases in Quechua (pronounced Kichwa, as the language has only three vowels - i [ee], u [oo], and a [ah]). Most of the phrases he told us wouldn't be appropriate to publish or translate here. Plus, I don't remember most of them, but Jim wrote them down in his notebook).

***

This house is really treacherous. It's all tile and marble annd coated in a fine dust due to the wind, lack of moisture, and volcanic eruptions (plus some lacklustre cleaning efforts on our part). Thus, walking in bare feet (as I just did to refill my water) is quite dangerous, especially as I'm on the third floor, the drinking water is on the first, it's dark, and I'm drunk. I made it, though.