work work work

Well tomorrow will be our first opportunity to make a run into town and of course I haven’t written a single word yet. Actually, now I’ve written several. ;) I should have known that I wouldn’t stick with it… oh well. So now I’m going to try to make up for it.
We’ve already started excavation and sifting through all of the ground. This whole process is incredibly tedious. First I swept the entire field trying to figure out the general area of the crash. The crash site has been a field for the last forty years so it’s been plowed over and over. Bits and pieces of the plane have been spread all over the place. Every time I get a hit it has to be dug up to determine if it’s from the crash or naturally occurring metal. Sometimes the metal is so small that it takes ten minutes of sifting through the dirt clods to find it. Of course I’m also looking for anything that could possibly indicate a burial site. I wish I could post a photo of the scene right now. This huge field is just covered in engineer flags of assorted colors. It’s pretty cool though because you can definitely figure out where the crash concentration is. Once everything was marked the anthropologist builds a big old grid and then we start excavating. It consists of clearing all the soil above the clay out of each unit and sifting through it with screens. Oh lordy it is a lengthy process. We’ve only been screening for three days and still nothing substantial.



Before we started screening we put up an MIA/POW flag. I’m sure you’d agree that it’s quite beautiful. Fortunately the wind was cooperating with me when I shot this picture.




This pic is a close up to show the screening process.




Today is "Women’s Day" in Vietnam. I don’t really know what that means but the VNO (Vietnam officials) have been making a huge deal about it and are cooking us a big dinner to include lots of kookaloi. Last night we drank with them too and it didn’t turn out so well for one of the other females. It rocked her little world all day today. So hopefully this little women’s day thing goes well tonight. I am looking forward to going to town tomorrow… the four hours of travel time, not so much.