It All Comes Together

Today was the day we all were to present our findings at Kualoa Ranch for everyone, the archaeology field school, and assorted interested people. I woke up at 8 and started cleaning up my products. I realized I was going to have to shorten my presentation because we had to fit our talk into a 10 minute time slot, so I reduced it by 7 or 8 slides. Reading over the paper I had almost finished last night was hilarious- I had been writing stream of consciousness style and switched between four different tenses. I cleaned it up and added my figures, tables, and appendices, and finally it was all done. The last little thing to do was to clean up all my data so that the professors could review our process.  It was a huge weight off my shoulders to finally have every assignment completed.

At around 1 ‘o clock we loaded up into the vans and drove over to Kualoa. We assembled in the dining hall that serves meals to tourists and guests of the Ranch, and there was a projector set up at one end. As we settled down and Dr. Lipo gave an introduction of the program, I began to feel the anxiety that accompanies every public speech or presentation. The presentations were organized by general focus, and the progression went vegetation, hydrology, terrain, and finally archaeology. It was really exciting to see what everyone had been up to and hear a formal presentation of their findings. Everyone did a really awesome job with their presentations and it was impressive to sit back and see what we had all accomplished in just 3 weeks of work (imagine what we could have done with a whole summer).

At around 5, the last of the presentations wrapped up and we took the obligatory group photo outside the building. After a few minutes of hanging around we took a drive south to a fancy restaurant. Cole managed to drop his flash drive in the water in this landscaped pond/garden outside the restaurant, which was funny. I ate some delicious fried calamari and a tomato based fish stew which was equally tasty. After dinner we headed back to Tradewinds and celebrated in proper fashion with each other. I can’t believe it’s all over!