Work on the ‘Mystery Villa’ (not to be confused with the Villa of Mysteries) is well underway, as we have successfully completed two days worth of back-breaking manual labor. No actual archaeology has taken place, and I’m started to seriously consider suing George Lucas for misrepresentation. I had expected archaeology to involve more golden statues, blow-gun toting natives, bullwhips, revolvers, large rolling boulders, and Nazis. The closest our team has come to endangering itself is when I almost fell into one of the many patches of thorns we have spent the past two days clearing.

    Other such noteworthy labor we have endured is the ‘leveling’ of the ground surrounding the trenches. Apparently this is for safety reasons, but I’m not sure whose, since I almost took a pickaxe to the brain numerous times while leveling to ‘ensure safety.’

    After I started the conversation awkwardly with, “So, do you guys eat a lot of corn in Oklahoma?” I immediately chose to read the Italian menu intensely, as if I was deriving some sort of profound metaphysical truth from the ‘antipasti’ section. After that horrible strike one for the Saint Anselm team, the rest of the meal progressed quite well, and the food was delicious.

    The second embarrassment occurred during the cappuccino section of the course, when after we thought the embarrassment of the corn comment was forgotten, Jarrod had what appeared to resemble a seizure, spilling his full cup of scalding cappuccino all over himself. After the laughter subsided and I thought nothing could possibly get worse, fate struck again. While I was lifting my glass of water to take a sip, it slipped from my hands, and time stood still; with the cappuccino fiasco occurring not a minute earlier, I struggled frantically, yet impotently, to regain control of my plummeting glass.

    I failed.

    The three inch fall from my hand to the table completely shattered what had seemed to be a sturdy water glass. The front of my shirt and shorts were covered with water and tiny shards of glass; Jarrod and I just sat there, looked at each other, and began to giggle uncontrollably for the next forty-five minutes while we waited for the check. “We can NEVER come back here again.” Jarrod said.