Christmas at the Rig

I know many of you are very curious about what my Christmas looked like. Here it is!

I was very worried about how being away from my family would affect me during Christmas. For my family, Christmas is literally the only holiday we manage to gather for each year.  Breaking the tradition of spending the holidays with my family was a hard reality to face. As it turns out, the worry was worse than the reality.

Part of me was also a little excited. Honestly the commercialization of Christmas kind of angers me a little. Basically a lot of stores spend so much time telling you that unless you’re buying _____ for your _____ then you don’t really love them. This season should be about selfless, abounding, conditionless love. The love that God feels for us. The love that God calls us to show towards one another. Part of me was excited to see what Christmas is like without presents. Without fancy food. Without stuff. 

Here’s how I spent Christmas.

We had a weird tool failure at around 4 am on the 23^rd and I was on shift after getting 3 hours of sleep that night. (Oh and the night before too. I was exhausted.)  We stayed up working to fix it until giving up at noon. I slept and then woke up again after 6pm.  I was on shift again until I gave up at 9 am Christmas Eve morning. I slept for part of the day, and then woke up at around 6 pm.  The new tools we ordered had arrived and so we began to assemble them.

Job Challenges

There are a lot of challenges I face on my job every day. Some are more frustrating than others.

First, because I’m a trainee, everyone assumes I know nothing. I’ve been working for 3 months now, which is about twice as long as most trainees work before getting sent to school. I’m not in school because as a company, we’ve been training a lot of engineers and the schools have been full. I don’t go to school until March. My area is busy so I’ve been thrown into responsibilities earlier. Every time I go to a new job with a new engineer and hear ‘This is a survey frame and this is a utility frame’ for the 10^th time I get a little more frustrated with being just a trainee.

My favorite kind of pipetally.
Beer crosses all kinds of
cultural barriers! 

Second, the language barrier plays in heavily. When my coworkers talk, they speak Spanish and often I can’t follow the entire conversation. Some people remember to stop and explain, some people I bother until they stop and explain, and some people just keep right on going. Even after listening and speaking Spanish for 4 months, it might be surprising to learn that I am not fluent in the language. It’s frustrating for me to have to ask for everything to be repeated back so I can understand. It’s frustrating for coworkers who don’t speak English very well. Sometimes the only explanation I get is “I’ll be right back” or “Don’t worry, everything is okay”.  Usually when I hear ‘everything is okay’ I get annoyed because I know it’s not all okay. I can usually get the gist of a conversation, I might not know the details but often I can tell when something is not okay but my coworker doesn’t take the time to explain it. Ugh.

On this job I’ve gotten to deal with a special combination of these two factors.

Posada!

In the past two months I’ve spend exactly one weekend at the base. The rest have been on rigs. This last weekend however, I got lucky and hit the jackpot. You see, it turns out it is actually December. Which means it’s almost Christmas. Which means Christmas parties. Which in Mexico means Posadas.

A traditional Mexican posada happens in the 9 days before Christmas. Basically it’s a party between close neighbors and family. Every night you go to a 3 different houses and ask for ‘posada’ by singing a song, representing Mary and Joseph trying to find someplace to say in Bethlehem. All the houses turn them down (and join in the search) except for the one designated for the party. The party house lets everyone in.  You eat and hang out. Usually there’s a piñata either in the shape of a seven pointed star (for the seven deadly sins) or the devil so you can take turns beating the crap out of sin/the devil.  Repeat for the 9 days before Christmas, each night with the party at a different house.

Three New Things I Did Today

Have you ever started worrying about something small until it became something so big and scary you weren't sure how to handle it? I realized this week that there are a few things that I've been allowing to build into huge scary things. Last week I started reading about another Katie, about my age who felt called to forgo college and move to Uganda and start an orphanage. So she did.

In her blog she touches on the subject of fear several times. In the end it was this that struck me: For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power, love and self control – 2 Timothy 1:7 (ESV).  I know that God has given me a spirit of power and love with some self control in there somewhere. It just took me a few days, and a lot of prayer to be reminded of that. I’m sharing three things that I've been scared to do. I did them all this week. And it’s only Wednesday.

1. Took a taxi by myself.

This is something that might not seem like a big deal to most of you. So why is it a big deal here? First off, my staff house pretty confusing to get to. After 2 and half months here, I’m finally just starting to figure out where I live. I’ve been worried about leaving the staff house and being unable to get back because I have no idea where it is. While that’s still a bit of a concern, I’m a lot more familiar with the city now so generally I know where I am.