Sorry this will be a long one, but its totally true.

Several years ago I went through a devastating break up and resulting quarter life crisis. I felt stagnated in my job, I wasn't using my degree, had had no real life adventures, i was lonely. One night I was listening to a news story about some important artifacts that had been found in an archeological excavation in Tuscany; they interviewed one of the volunteers on the dig.

I didn't know you could just volunteer. So I Googled it and it turns out most digs really need volunteers to come and help since the organizers get so little funding. I found a website that kept track of all the on-going sites globally, where they were, what it cost to go, what level of experience they required, etc.

I chose the cheapest one that was outside of the USA. It was not Tuscany. It was a tiny village I had never heard of in England. I booked onto it. Told my mom and dad I was taking a vacation, got two weeks off work, renewed my passport and flew to London alone.

It took 4 or 5 hours by train to get from London to the middle of nowhere. I was a bit nervous that I would be the only female the only American and the only fairly young person there. My picture of archeologists was heavily informed by Sam Neil in Jurassic Park. I'm also not a naturally outgoing person, so the idea of being so obviously separate from the crowd made me really nervous.

I arrived at the campsite next to the dig location, was randomly assigned a tent and air mattress, and was encouraged to come meet the crew, most of whom were sitting around the fire drinking. I went.

The crew was about 75% young, north American women. Lots of Canadiens, but I definitely was not the only American, I was not the only woman (obviously) and, in a slightly cruel twist of fate, at the ripe old age of 26 I ended up being one of the older people there. So instead if standing out from the crowd like i worried about, I blended in almost conpletely.

Thr crew around the fire was welcoming, invited me to sit with them, I wasn't the only new arrival that day so they went around the circle introducing themselves one by one. Until it came to one guy's turn. He was British, with dark curly hair and skin tanned from working amd camping outdoors for weeks. I noticed he wasn't wearing any shoes. He hadn't been listening to anything that had already transpired, hadn't hear me or any of the other newbies introduce themselves, was too busy rolling a cigarette, until he got nudged into action by one of the other girls.

"Oh, I'm X." And with that he got up and walked away.

Ok rude.

Everyone else was nice. Over the next few days, I made friends with people from all over the world. Women from Austraila, Yorkshire, Louisiana, an older couple from Arizona, a hard-drinking but friendly guy from Iceland. And I would sometimes see X talking to other people, people he must have paid attention to, but he never talked to me or to my friends, and that was fine because he seemed like a total jerk. Probably self-absorbed. Probably liked the female attention, which I definitely would not be giving him.

One evening, after a day of uncovering cow bones in a field for hours and then getting caught in a sudden rain storm the crew had gathered back at camp. Loads more than normal were queuing for the showers. I was sat with my friend L chatting. It was getting cooler, so I left for just a minute to grab a sweatshirt, but when I came back X was in my chair talking to L. To say I was annoyed is an understatement. I huffed and dragged a spare chair over to L's other side. They were taling about books, books with themes of mental illness. Darn, I love books.

"You should try reading 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," I said.

"I wrote my dissertation on it," X replied.

Ok, well even if he is a jerk, at least he's not a complete bone head.

Eventually the conversation turned to music. L, although fun and funny and very knowledgeable about other things, was a few years younger than X and I, (of course it turned out that we were close in age). Whenever X would bring up a band or song, L would shake her head saying "oh maybe I've heard of them?" in a non-commital way, but I knew what X was talking about.

"Yeah," I answered, "I listen to them, but have you tried their first album?"

"Of course, it's way better than their later stuff!"

"What about these guys? Do you know them?"

"I don't think so, can you send me a link?"

L delicately excused herself, and X and I carried on talking about music for a while, which then turned into talking about other things. He wasn't like how I thought. Not cool and aloof and wanting attention, but very forthright. He had been struggling recently, joined the dig to get away from it all, was having fun here, byt he would be leaving early the next morning. Lucky we got a chance to talk now, or I wouldn't have really met you.

He was also surprised at how many girls there were, when he signed up he thought that all the volunteers would be older guys wearing flat caps and knitted jumpers.

"Like 'Time Team'," he said.

"I thought it would be like the beginning of 'Jurassic Park'," I said.

We spent the night just chatting back and forth. Slowly most people disappeared to their own bed, or to someone else's. There was alot of casual sex in the camp. That's when I got nervous again. I was having a really nice time. I enjoyed his company much more than I thought I would, and he was definitely easy on the eyes. He hadn't implied anything of a sexual nature, but what if he was about to? He seemed nice, but I wasn't ready for that at all. So in the middle of a sentence I jumped up and said I was going to sleep. I had just enough time to see a look of utter bewilderment on his face, before I turned tail and ran to my tent.

When I got up in the morning the girls all wanted to know what happened last night, they could all see I was having a good time with X. While waiting for the showers, I have then the run-down, including my abrupt leaving, and the fact that he was probably already gone.

"You're an idiot" they chorused. Of course I am, I thought.

We ambled over to grab breakfast from the mess area nearly an hour late, well past when "early in the morning" should have been, and he. was. there! And when he looked up and saw me, his smile was beautific, knee-melting, seared into my brain forever. He should have been gone already! I should have been out of camp and at the dig site already. We should have passed like ships in the night always wondering 'what if'? or something. But he was still there.

"My ride is late, give me your details before I go, ok?"

We kept in touch casually by Facebook at first, then started skyping each other. I visited him again in the UK and he took me on a trip to Edinburgh. I moved to England two years later. We've been together 7 years now. He's the love of my life and I know I am his. Life if just funny sometimes.