Who do you call?

I tend to stumble upon things. Most of the really fabulous areas of cities that I have found have been accidents. Some people, mostly children, according to my culture teacher, stumble apon Homospeians and other ancient humans. The culture class has evolved into an ancient civilizations class; the result is two hours Monday and Wednesday learning about caves and Lucy... she's one hot mama. I'll add a picture so you know how attractive we used to be, in our earlier stages of life. Our professor actually met the man who discovered Lucy, who lived about 3.2 million years ago in a valley in Africa, when he was "taking a rest" while searching for fossils. He told our teacher that he leaned back, put his hand down behind him, and there she was. Well, she being her leg bone and by the afternoon there were swarms of people freaking out about the skeleton. The Altimira cave, which I visited last semester, was discovered by a six year old girl. I am just wondering what the hell she did when she found it? Who do you even call, if you happen to find a skeleton? Or a cave full of paintings of animals. A six year old boy discovered another set of caves, but he happened to be the son of an archeologist so his exclamation was probably: "Oh, excuse me Daddy, there happen to be ancient hand prints all over this wall, just thought you'd like to know." What happens if I am just walking around and happen upon Lucy's brother... I certainly wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do in that situation. I suppose I'd call up someone at the Altimira cave, since that's the only place I can relate to it. Or perhaps that would yield the attention of Obama? If the majority, or shall I say all of the ancient specimen of human have been discovered in the European region, then perhaps they should hand out fliers on airplanes: What to do if you happen to find your great-great-great-great to the thousandth power grandfather, and who to contact. Seems like it would be awfully helpful. My teacher found a rock in th Picos de Europa which is between 350 and 370 million years old. He can tell that based off these crustacian fossils in the rock. The rock was sitting up on a sheep fence, used to make sure none of those wooly little buddies escaped. How he managed to get the nice hunky slab of rock down the Picos alive I would love to know. Hiking down with my backpack about killed me, and he has a 30 year old daughter to give you a time stamp on how old he is. He probably just popped it in his pack, no big deal, and frolicked down the mountain in a British manner.

I love everything British. Today, Lee told us that he loves scanners. And that he spend the weekend "scanning like mad." British people just have a fantastic, hilarious vocabulary that I think I find far too amusing because I am the only one who seems to find him overly hilarious. He made a comment about us having to adapt to his British humor, and I would like to credit Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging as well as Bridget Jones for teaching me just how much funnier the Brits are than Americans. The moral of this story is that while learning about carnivorous humans, I regularly end up being the one laughing by myself over his sentence structure and word choice.

On a not so British note, I managed to be fabulously American last weekend and walked into a nursing home thinking it was a cathedral. I'm not entirely sure why I thought it was one, other than the San Mamo inscription and the massive church bells, but the Cathedral is actually named San Anton in Bilbao, which I knew because we spent about an hour talking about it the previous Wednesday. Regardless, I made the fantastic decision to follow a little old man into the "cathedral" and didn't really notice the security guard or nursing home smell. It was after I had walked through four doors wondering where the actual church part was when I walked into a room full of wheel chairs, oxygen tanks, and abuelas knitting excessive amounts of scarves while the abuelos played cards. I would love to have a little Spanish grandma knitting for me, but since I didn't I attem

pted to appear to be looking for someone, coming to the "conclusion" they weren't there, while hiding my huge camera under my scarf and turn to leave. The security guard gave me one of those half eyebrow raised but half scowl looks that I normally get when I sass off to my mom or talk about boys to my dad. If you were to give me a choice between stumbling upon a really ancient skeleton or a nursing home full of ancient abuelos, I'll take the skeleton. Next time around.

This is Lucy. I bet you all know where your great looks come from now.