End of the Trip and Update on Life

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Hiya folks,

Sorry I haven't been writing so often.. I have been so busy and so exhausted that blogging is the last thing on my mind.  I'm writing this on the plane on the way back to Canada.  We are about 5.5 hours in, 2.5 hours to go.  Sitting this long is not good for the fibro, and I havent been able to sleep on the plane.  My back is sore from the last day of digging which is making the flight more difficult, there was a point about an hour ago i thought I was goig to have an anxiety attack because I couldn't make it through the flight.  Its since past.  I can do this. Little mantra.  Ive started fantasizing about getting to customs and then to arrivals to my family.  And then home to my pets!!  (And decent food)

It has been a whirlwind of six weeks.  For those of you that dont know I was participating in an archaeological field school at Bader International Study Centre in the UK.  Its a castle.  Pretty neat, I know.  We studied and ate in the castle but lived on property in a residence building.  All the archaeology digging was done on site at the castle.  We found things as from back far as the neolithic period.  

What I am really interested in is Roman Archaeology which is what the first half of my program focused on.  We had some in class days, some field trips to visit important roman sites, and then a week of really experience in the field.  Down in the dirt.  Trowels, maddocks, and spades.  Some of the students in my program even found roman pottery!  

The second half was all about Medieval Archaeology, so we had some in class days, some field trip days and a week of digging at the end.  

It was exhausting.  I amazingly got through all the field trip days, which were usually long wwith 3-4 tours in a day.  The digging was the most tough for me.  I really over did it the first couple weeks... not taking enough rest time.  I have yet to figure out my limits.  So by the time dig week rolled around I was worn out.  I managed to get through half the day most days before my joints would begin to ache.  A few days I got extremely nauseous and lightheaded and missed most of the day.  For those of you with fibro or know someone with it, pacing yourself is sooooo important!  

I am still figuring it out.  And an 8 hour flight probably isnt the best  way to do it.  But I am taking the rest of the summer to work on me and my illness.  

I wont be going back to university in the fall.  I don't think I'm ready.  I had a very hard time focusing in class these past several weeks and I cring to think about the marks I got.  I will be taking online courses, I'm not sure if they will be college or university or a mix of both.  I'm not thrilled with my major and would really like to switch to psychology but my marks are not high enough because of how rough the depression and the undiagnosed fibro were during my first year.  I will have lots of emailing and planning to do when aI finally do get home.  School is just a very daunting thing for me because I have no idea what I am going to do or where I can go from here.  Really, I'd like to go to law school, but my marks are not nearly high enough and I don't know if I can beat the "Fibro fog" to take the LSATS.  

Lately my anxiety has been really bad.  Currently I am worried about my luggage getting lost. But I worry about anything from my brother losing my cat to my mom not answering my text because she's been in a car crash.  Both are highly unlikely but have been keeping me up at night.  

Thants all for now, thanks for reading

xoxo, 

Jess 

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