Working hard or hardly working?

Hola!
After almost a full month of hanging out in Villahermosa on the base I was finally allowed out into the real world. AKA, a drilling rig. Because I know how many people are curious about what I do and what it's like, I've taken some pictures to show the world. How am I doing so far? I'm loving it. Alright here we go.

My new temporary home. Note the two other rigs in the background. There's another one behind me too. This is how I see the rig 80% of the time because I work from 8 pm to 8 am.

Rest of Guadalajara!

Alright, several weeks later I believe I am ready to write about Guadalajara.... from Villahermosa. It's my creative process, don't knock it.

First, the answer to my question I posed almost a month ago... The finger worth the most, at least according to my company, is the right pinky finger! This is because, this is the figure that allows you to grip objects. When you use your pinky finger, it activates muscles in your back, enabling you to form a stronger grip. Seriously, try it!  Thanks for the guesses and the comments! I love hearing from you guys!

Guadalajara in general was amazing. The city its self is quite beautiful. In October Guadalajara will host the Pan American Games, a lead up to the Olympics. Because of this, there it's a better time to have been there.  Everywhere the government is cleaning the streets, painting the roads and generally getting the city ready to put it's best foot forward.

There was also the most intense police presence I have ever seen. Moving to Mexico in the wake of the Monterrey casino fire had me a little worried. I felt safe the entire time. I took the bus the school and back almost everyday. Honestly the scariest moment of my month was when I took the bus too far the first day and got a little lost trying to find the house. I never once felt threatened.

Knowing how essential Spanish would be to my job, I felt the need to work pretty hard on my Spanish and my training, but I still managed to have a little fun along the way.  I'll throw up some pictures and descriptions because I think that's a pretty easy way to show what's going on!

Tequila!

More adventures from my first week in Guadalajara.

Tequila is a small town about an hour from Guadalajara. Surprisingly enough, they make tequila there. My camera died before we started the tour so I only have some pictures from the town. This is our drive out. There's hills here!

Guadalajara - week 1

Tomorrow will mark 2 weeks in Guadalajara. I've been pretty busy, thus failing to write much about what's been happening. I'm going to post pictures and tell my story that way. Mostly because it's just easier, but also because Mexico is a such a colorful and rich place, I feel like you can't just decribe it, you have to see it. After getting pictures up, I'll write about what I'm actually doing and all that. So first, we have pictures from my first weekend here. Also Picasa does not like me today and a lot of these pictures are uploading super goofy. I'm just going to get something up, and then I'll try to fix them later.

I'm staying with a host family here in Guadalajara. Saturday we went to a fiesta. This is a shot of the place. Mexican time is no joke. We were there for about an hour before many people showed up.

At this point my comprehension of Spanish was still (and is still) very little so I'm not really clear on: why there was a party, what was going on, or how they knew the people.
I think, it was this man's birthday. At least that is what I assume from the mariachi escort in. See them in the back? There were 10 of them.

My favorite part of the afternoon. The food. Everything appears to be fried here. What they're cooking are kind of like sopapillas, but made with corn meal instead of flour.

This is the final result. So you take the sopapilla thing and put some mashed up potato on one and some beans on the other. You fry them (again). Then, add lettuce, pico de gallo, onion, chile, sauce and top it off with lime juice. It's pretty amazing.

And for good measure, some chulupas too. Con lémon. Everything in Mexico seems to be con lémon. Except apparently for the beer. I find this a little ironic.

This is a tamale. In this part of Mexico tamales are often wrapped in a banana leaf. This one was wrapped in a banana leaf and a chile pepper. It's pretty good, the banana leaf adds a little bit of an earthy flavor to the maiz. It's kind of a bananay hint, but not sweet or anything. Traditionally, the filling is meat but in reality it can be anything. This one was filled with steamed chopped vegetables. I had one today filled with cheese and mushrooms. Yes. I ate it. Mushrooms and all. I liked it, just not the mushroom part.

I'm not really sure where the tenth mariachi went, but he's around somewhere. It was pretty cool listening to them. I have a video, I'll try to get it up eventually. Everyone knows all the songs and all the words and sings along.

 

This is about where I get really lost. All the sudden two nuns came out. Apparently bits involving nuns are popular here. I can see that. Judging by the reactions, it was pretty funny. I understood very little of it. Microphones coupled with really fast speaking are a bad combination for me to understand.

Okay, more pictures to come! Enjoy.