Actions have consequences. That was the title of my ‘lecture’ today as we began week three on site. It was forecast to be the hottest day of the year so far, and after a VERY sunny hot weekend, no one was surprised when temperatures reached around 35/95 degrees by the end of the day Monday. Over the weekend, several people thought it a good idea to spend the day at the beach, in the sun, all day, maybe with a beverage or two. Great fun, but I think some paid for all the fun a bit today while working the trenches. That’s originally what I meant by ‘actions have consequences’ – but there’s also another meaning.

Every year, several of our students make the choice to come to the excavation during the summer and forego their home graduation. It’s a tough choice, especially when they leave behind expectant proud parents who miss out on celebrating their offsprings’ well-earned success and acclaim. To try to make up for missing their formal graduation, we typically have party for those students. This year we were very happy to celebrate a range of graduations: one from high school (Duncan Jones), two from undergraduate (Max MacDonald and David Royce) and one with her MA at UBC (Haley Bertram). Led by Sam Bartlett and Janelle Sadarananda, the party planning committee threw together a great garden party with personalized drink stations for each grad, special gifts and speeches by key members of the team for the individual graduate’s honor. It was a great Friday evening event. 

We are extremely proud of our graduates and wish them the best of luck. Two will be at UVic next year (Duncan and Max). Haley will be entering the PhD program at Cincinnati. While we sometimes look for any reason to host a party on this excavation, the great success and hard work of our students prove that ‘actions’ can have truly great ‘consequences’.

We’ve now started our third week of excavating and things are going very well. We will deal with the heat by starting tomorrow with a 6 am departure. We will consequently reduce our work time in the afternoon by a half hour. It will still be hot, but our work will continue.