Mercedes Delgado, Peruvian archaeologist, approached me with an envelope. She had me take out the contents. An official invitation to present at a anthropometry/bioarchaeology workshop at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, here in Lima. !!! She said I could present in English, so no pressure. I was just to give a brief lecture on my work here this winter in Peru. I accepted, as I had three weeks to prepare.
Fast forward: the presentation went great! The workshop was around 25 people or so, mostly students with a few faculty. Mercedes chatted with me before my talk and said “You’re talking in English right?” I answered “No, I’m talking in Spanish.” and she replied “Wow thank you thank you!” She’s great, by the way. Anyway I got up and just delivered a talk in Spanish. I suffer from One More Day Syndrome and I wished I had one more day to work on the presentation to get it just right. My first half is well rehearsed, but the last half was full of me asking the crowd what the Spanish word for brain was, etc. Still, Bob said I didn’t need one more day and I gave a grade A talk. Nice!
After the talk, two students came up to ask me to elaborate on cranial deformation. Silly me, I glossed over the whys and hows of it because I assumed that they as Peruvian students would know. I guess it’s like someone assuming that I know all about the Han Dynasty. I did give them my email though. Yay for meeting new colleagues.
The talk will appear on this site in the Professional section. I do have to start promoting myself for when I have to apply for jobs. I can see my CV entry now:
2007: Made and gave a talk in g#*d@&%ed Spanish!!!!!!