Last First Day of School

You read that correctly. We have officially passed the last first day of school ever in my academic career! Now to get that actual career going... *prods Congress* As for the day itself, there was nothing to report. As one of my fellow student-friends reported, it was long, uneventful, and uninformative. This however, its to be somewhat expected. The first week of class is add-drop period, so the class make up often is still fluctuating. Professors then spend most of the first class going over the syllabus. What time is left is spent painting the scenery of necessary background information for the course with a street sweeper.

Of far greater entertainment value is the Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor exhibit at the National Geographic museum. As a brief history lesson, the Chinese have known for some time the location of the burial mound of the first emperor of China. For reasons of cultural respect, they have never excavated the mound. What the Chinese didn't know until 1974 was that the mound wasn't the only thing the Emperor built as part of his tomb. Turns out that in the Emperor's time, the belief was that after death, the dead must be nourished or whither away; and rulers had to counsel and negotiate for their kingdom's continued good fortune with the spirits that controlled nature and other things. To be effective in his role in the afterlife, the emperor needed ceremonial representations of his earthly affects to defend himself and impress the spirits.

Fast forward to 1974. Farmers were digging a well for water 3/4 of a mile from the burial mound when they broke through the roof of a cavern containing broken terracotta statues of soldiers. They reported the find to the authorities, who took a deep interest in artifacts of the first emperor. Excavation began and 30 years later they are still finding more of the burial complex! In the area of the first discovery, archeologists have estimated that the emperor created an army of 7,000 men and horses and placed them in the most likely place for an attack in the afterlife--3/4 of a mile to the east of his burial mound, ready for orders.

Around his mound, archeologists have uncovered two defensive walls. Inside the outer ring of walls are offices for his empire's administration--including terracotta bureaucrats--stables for his army's horses, a smithy, entertainment halls and lodging for musicians, acrobats, and strongmen, and a special armory for his personal bodyguard. This armory is different because unlike the lacquered leather armor for the infantry, or the iron plates for the officers, these soldiers were armored in stone. The stone is believed to protect against spiritual attack, and would not decay like the other forms of armor.

The statues themselves are each a work of art. Archeologists have determined the probable method of construction as well as the fact that there were 8 facial templates for the soldiers, which the artisans then modified for each soldier to give each one its own unique face. The bodies themselves are in several positions to reflect the varying poses for the varied weapons and positions of the soldiers. There was a small modern fiberglass relief of the believed method of construction (solid legs, coiled terracotta for the chest and arms, and a separate head that was fitted into the neck after firing in a kiln), and a wall about the evolution of the reconstruction techniques since the 70s. Where the first warrior took months to complete as a giant, fragile, irreplaceable and priceless jigsaw puzzle; today the warriors' reconstruction is done first by a 3-D reassembly program on computer, greatly reducing the amount of time required.

The work continues for the excavation of the burial complex, and each recovery/discovery sheds greater and greater light on the world of the first emperor of China.

-Pete

Holiday Blitz Post-Game Show

Wowza what a chunk of time its been. In the three (3!) weeks that have gone by, it feels to us like two days. We've celebrated Christmas, rung in the new year, and have gone down to see the family and watch the best three and a half hours in television--the BCS Championship. Lets break it down, shall we?

Christmas Eve was topped with a fantastic celebration of church at the "midnight" service. For those not in the know, that's the service that starts around 11:00PM on the 24th and concludes with much fanfare and to-do shortly after midnight on the 25th with the celebration of the birth of a whee baby Jesus. And as only the Episcopalians can do it, there was a champagne toast after the service. The service itself was a blast, but even as two hard-core music nerds, the stuffing of four choral masses' worth of song into a singular service was a touch intense. Never let it be said that we didn't do a thorough job. On a side note, I would dearly love to be at a Christmas or Easter service where the sermon's main drift was "where have you been all year?" One of our priest friends joked about doing it, but he chickened out at the end.

Christmas Day was nice and low-key. We also technically had a white Christmas! No, it did not snow on the 25th, but remember the snow storm from the week before? it was all still around. We got some shots of the "dreaming of a white Christmas" scene, and followed it up with my parody "dreaming of a dismal, grey Christmas" in front of a sludge plowed drift. Good Times.

Then came New Year's Eve. We had a flight on New Year's Day from Baltimore--don't laugh, its crazy cheap and easy to get there--but that meant we really couldn't go very far out to celebrate. We even had to turn down an awesome party with our friends out in West Falls Church, which is most unfortunate since it was surely a grand time for all. Instead, we decided to go to the bar next door, which we can see from the window. Wow was that place crowded. It was so crowded that we had to toast in the new year with the melted ice from our drinks because we could not make it to the bar. Not a minute after the New Year, we decided to ditch the young collegiate crowd as we were not sloshed, deaf, or single. We headed back to our place and properly toasted the new year by packing our bags and enjoying pink Andre champagne. Alas, Sophistication, I knew thee well. Still, it was a good time.

Up we sprang the next morning, off on a journey that actually included planes, trains, and automobiles. We gingerly hiked with our bags to the Metro, which was apparently an odd sight. From there we rode out to the end of the line in Greenbelt, MD. Mind you, this was in a cold snap, so everything had a wonderful wintery look about it, so we enjoyed the trip. Once in Greenbelt, we hitched a ride on the B30: express to BWI airport. Once there, we marveled at how much we'd missed Arby's (Good thing too because we had it again for dinner). I guess we didn't realize how far from suburbia we'd really come. This time, the trip wasn't much to talk about, except for the fact that Southwest doesn't have assigned seats in their little planes, and our flight was so crowded that we wound up sitting apart.

Lastly, and most importantly to some, there was the modern godsend of college football. For those living under a rock, this past year, the University of Alabama was #1 in the nation to play for the BCS championship and the national title. We were in Birmingham, for the big day, and game-day was basically a statewide holiday. Everyone in the family, plus a few friends, came over to watch the TV--appropriately dressed in Crimson--and share in the emotional roller-coaster of the Championship game. We cheered and we moaned, we leapt and we argued, and in the end, we yelled for joy. Voices hoarse, and hands stung from well deserved high-fives, we rejoiced the night away in the Tide's victory.

We'll see you again in September, Tide faithful. Lets go for 14.

-Pete