Working in the Heat of Mexico

Everyone -- this is what I look like at work. A sweaty mess. This is Beth and I on top of the reactors waiting to go in them. Unfortunately, it still did not happen today due to our safety regulation conflicting with the customers safety regulations... blah blah blah. But work is going slow right now. They are taking everything out of the reactors but we are hoping everything is put back in them and ready to load the catalyst on Sunday --- hoping.

Beth and I are making a lot of friends at the refinery and at the hotel.. mainly just the ones that speak a little English and want to learn more English. For example, we were hanging out in the control room and we met a women named Denise. She works in the refinery and also teaches English. She instantly took our information and told us that she wanted to hang out with us to practice her English -- so we might be going to a movie or shopping this week :).

Also -- our friend Jose Morales Morales and his wife want to take us out to a taco stand or just out to dinner. If I am still here on Christmas, we will probably be spending it at Jose's house. We also may have gotten picked up by one of the employees named Palo who speaks excellent English and wants to show up some of the ruins. We hope we have some time to do all these fun things!

Hope all is well in Chicago and other places! Its 80 degrees here ---- which is way too hot to wear the things we have to for work....see picture..

Feliz Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving -- Gobble! Gobble!

Beth and I had to work but we decided to eat dinner like it was Thanksgiving here too. We had turkey clubs for lunch but called it an earlier day. Work will start to pick up again on Sunday when we do reactor internals inspection. At dinner we had the usual Mexican feast but we decided to go all out and have dessert. I attached a picture of our delicious dessert.

One very exciting thing about the hotel today was that all the Christmas decorations were being put up. I will have to put up a revised picture of the hotel lobby with the christmas tree and all the beautiful decorations. Even the restaurant has mini christmas trees on the table :)

Authentic Mexican Cuisine

This morning the operators in the control room made Beth and I a delicious Mexican breakfast. Apparently in Mexico they eat the same food types each meal. All the operators shown in the picture below brought something to share with us. They brought us Nopales (Prickly Pear/Cactus), Picadas, Chicarrones, Empanadas, Delicious Mashed Potatoes and various hot sauces. It was absolutely delicious. We also got the chance to tell them all about an American thanksgiving.

Luis, on the bottom right, wants Beth and I to go with him and his wife to a taco stand and other delicious mexican restaurants. Luis's job is simply to take down all the data points. It turns out that he speaks better English than any of the engineers that we are supposed to be working with.

Our daily routine so far has been:
1. Arrive around 8:30 am 2. Stand at the front gate trying to fill out the form that we can't understand the titles to (I translated it tonight though so we can fill it out correctly tomorrow!) 3. Collect some data in the control room and discuss with Luis because he speaks English -- he has been teaching us and we are teaching him 4. Go to another office and eat lunch and talk with the office workers and give/get a spanish lesson with Jose Luis (different person). Work has been a lot of translating but it will definitely pick-up starting this Friday. We are really learning a lot of Spanish though.

Everyone has been really friendly and welcoming here in a good way! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

No hablo Inglés

I officially arrived in Minatitlan, Mexico on Sunday afternoon. We walked off the plane to a definite tropical climate. After passing the 2 person manned customers we made it to our hotel - Hotel Terranova. Hotel Terranova is the only 5 star hotel in the region and is located in the town of Coaztacoalcos in the state of Veracruz. We have not seen the main part of Coaztacoalcos but we are in REAL Mexico. English speakers are not as common as they are in Cancun.

Beth (Project Chief) and I arrived in the refinery on Monday and it turns out that none of our contacts truly speak English. We struggled a lot but today was much better. We have had several Spanish lessons with engineers in the office and they made us try a drink called Agua de Chaya. It is a drink filled with a ton of vitamins. The plant Chaya has more vitamins than spinach and is grown in Mexico and Texas and is known to cure things like diabetes or high blood pressure.

So we have also spent a lot of time in the central control room to monitor temps and pressures etc. The operators are now insisting on making us breakfast. It should definitely be interesting but we are going to bring some back up food just in case. So far the food that we have eaten (mainly in the hotel) has been absolutely delicious. Attached is a picture of the hotel lobby kind of --- I will try to post better pictures later.

Happy Thankgiving!

Jake the Christmas Cat

In prepartion for my work assignment to Mexico I tried to finish up all my Christmas shopping and out up all our holiday decorations. Justin and I went to Home Depot to buy a new 7.5' christmas tree. The only good one that they had was the floor model so they let us take it home without a box, still put together. On Friday we hung our stockings and Saturday we put up the Christmas tree.

This Christmas is Jake's ( our cat's) first christmas and he absolutely loved the tree. He first jumped in the tree to explore but spent most of the night laying on our tree skirt admiring the lights. Attached is a picture of him squinting under the tree.

Overall I am almost ready for Christmas! Happy Turkey Day Everyone! I will eat some thanksgiving tacos for everyone.

A Mall Better Than Woodfield?

Hello all!

I am back from Canda! It was a short but great trip. I learned a lot from the Canadians on the job but most importantly I got to shop!

The mall that I have been referring to is the West Edmonton mall. It not onyl has stores but it has two casinos, a hotel, a waterpark, ice skating rink (of course) and underwater sea adventure, roller coasters...and maybe even some other things we missed. My main goal of our two shopping trips was to find some olympic gear. For those of you who haven't heard, Vancouver, Canada is holding the olympics this January.Unfortunately, we looked in ALL the wrong places for the olympic clothes. I eventually found a stuffed animal named "Mukmuk" at the airport. His picture can be found here: Olympic Mascots

Here are some pictures from the mall. The mask is from Bourbon Street in the mall:

Oh Canada!

Hey all --

It has been a long time since I have blogged about my travels! Over the past month I have mainly been in the office with a short trip to Robinson, IL -- I will sneek a post in about that later!

So right now I am officially in Edmonton, Canada. Myself and the Chief of the Project - Katie, arrived late Sunday night. We drove all around Edmonton looking for our hotel and finally got in at about 1 am. We are staying at the Crowne Plaza Edmonton - Chateu Lacombe...which is way too nice for road life :).

Last night we were exhausted so we just had dinner at a local pub called Sherlock Holmes. The pub was an English/Irish pub that only played country music.

I will take/post some pictures soon --- apparently they have a mall here bigger than the Mall of America.