My suspicious absence from the world of blogging: Explained!

I realize I have been very suspiciously absent from here for a few months. That’s something that might happen periodically. I usually walk around thinking about things that would make good posts. Then I have plenty of downtime while on the rig and I write out my narratives.  Unfortunately, since I haven’t been on a rig for 3 months I haven’t had the same kind of pace.

I’ve been quite busy the last few months, all of which I do plan to write about. It might be piecemeal and not necessarily in chronological order as I’ll probably just write whatever I happen to be remembering most strongly at that time. 

So in case you missed it here’s a quick re-cap of what I’ve been up to for the last three months:

I spent 9 weeks in Abu Dhabi at school. The first few weeks were fun. Then school definitely got a little harder. In the end, I prevailed and received a lovely certificate and a classroom full of exciting and very intelligent people to use as references when I have no idea what I’m doing.

After my Abu Dhabi adventures I moved on to spend two weeks in Spain with my family.  It was very fun and relaxing.  We hung out at the beach, saw some very unique twists on the normal “European” tourist destinations, and ate some wonderful food. I’m pretty sure whatever pigs I was not consuming in the UAE, I made up for in Spain.

I’ll be writing about this stuff in a lot more detail shortly, I simply wanted to let everyone know how much I appreciate you being patient with me! 

The Perfect Beach

Beach with the city in the background

I haven’t gotten much of a chance to explore Abu Dhabi. As I said previously, I’m here for school first and foremost. Tourism, unfortunately, comes second.  However, I have gotten to have some fun on the weekends.

This past weekend was action packed all by itself.  On Friday (remember, weekends here are Friday and Saturday) a bunch of us dragged ourselves out of bed to go to the beach.  Abu Dhabi has a great waterfront area full of public beaches. We arrived in the main city, went to the grocery store for essentials (hummus, bread and a beach towel for me. Others were more practical with water and fruit.) then took a short taxi ride to the water front.

Thus began our extensive search for the perfect beach.  The Corniche is two kilometers long and split into gated beach areas. We were aiming for an area of beach we noticed with volleyball nets, but we found it extremely crowded and decided to go to the next gate.  At this gate there were umbrellas and chairs set out – perfect!  There was a small fee to get in, but when we went to pay it we were informed that we were not allowed in.  It took us a few minutes, but we eventually figured out that this was a family beach. Which apparently means you can only enter with an equal number of males and females. We were 2 girls and 3 guys. Not allowed in. 

Eng-1 School Intro

I arrived in Abu Dhabi for my Engineering-1 school 2 weeks ago today. Now for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll back up a little. As part of my training I am sent off to school for 9 weeks of intensive learning. I spend 9 hours a day, 5 days a week in the classroom, on the rig, or in the shop learning how to do my job. Then go home and do homework and study for the rest of the day. Now you might ask, what were the past 5 years of university for then? Basically they were to get me to the point that I can understand, absorb, and then regurgitate all this information I’m getting in a very short time.

After Mines it might not sound very hard. And really it’s not. Except that the stakes are infinitely higher. At school, studying for a test was very abstract. ‘What happens if I fail this test?’ – my class grade goes down, maybe I have to retake the course, maybe I stay an extra year at school, maybe I lose a scholarship, maybe I get yelled at by my parents, maybe I make my teacher angry etc… Here, studying for a test is very concrete.  If I fail this test, I get a warning letter from the company, my boss finds out and if I fail two tests I get two warning letters and lose my job. Not to mention, if you don’t understand what you’re doing at my work, you can lose the company hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars with one small mistake. The incentive to study is infinitely greater.

A Touchy Cough...

After my pre-school exam I was sent out to the rig for a little more than a week. I arrived just as I was starting to get a cold and rigging up in the rain then lack of sleep from switching to night shift schedule meant that I very quickly got really sick. After 5 or 6 days my crew got sick of hearing me cough and I was having trouble keeping enough energy to get through my 12 hour shifts. My coworker finally called a car to take me to see the doctor. Unfortunately it was a Saturday, so going to the doctor meant going to the emergency room. 

Now one reason I chose Villahermosa over my other Russia offer is that Villahermosa is said to have some of the best hospitals outside of Mexico City. I can now confirm that they do seem very nice. I walked in with my coveralls still on and announced that I didn’t speak much Spanish but I was sick and wanted to see a doctor.

My rig Spanish is definitely getting up to a sufficient level and I can communicate everything I need there. However, medicine was a new region of Spanish I hadn’t explored before. I saw the doctor and explained that it was hard to breathe and “No puedo dormir porque yo toque todo vez”.  Now what I thought I said was “I can’t sleep because I cough all the time”.  What I actually said was “I can’t sleep because I touch all the time”.  I’m not really sure what they thought I was trying to say.  Anyway, cough is tos and toque is touch.  Apparently easy to confuse.