Catedral de San José - TULA

For the last couple days the customer has been completing maintenance in the refinery after an unplanned shut-down. Although we were bummed about staying a little longer did get to explore the town a little more. Shown below is a cathedral in Tula Centro. It is the Cathedral de San Jose. When we visited the cathedral there was a mass going on inside so we were unable to take pictures. It was very beautiful inside though. My favorite part was probably the wall that surrounded the cathedral.

 Across from the cathedral was also the historic town square. I have never seen sooo many people hanging out in a park. The town square was surrounded by shopping and sweet shops. I had a delicious Agua de Pina Colada. Tula also has the most beautiful flowers. They have beautiful purple flowered trees as well as beautiful bright pink flower bushes. You can see the square in the picture below :). The weather has been absolutely beautiful here :) Low to mis 80s every day. 

Illinois - The Weekend Before Tula, Mexico

I had some complaints from the peanut gallery about not including info about my trip down to Champaign.
Every year University of Illinois has Mom's Weekend in April. During mom's weekend masses of moms and sisters visit and attend the craft fair, plays, and the flower show.

Every year I was in school we visited the flower show where the sell flowers and have these awesome garden displays constructed by horticulture/landscape architecture students...and I guess anyone else who wants to help.

WELL -- This year Becca (my younger sister - landscape architecture major) helped put together an AWESOME display. This year's theme was Gardens Around the World (or something like that). There were gardens from France, Germany, In Your Backyard for example and Becca's group did the Amazon Rainforest. Even though I am a little biased, it was definitely the best :)

Above is Becca in front of one portion of the garden. She is standing in front of the awesome water feature put together by one of her teammates. To the left is my mom in the entrance to the garden. Below is a picture of us at our favorite Urbana/Champaign Mexican restaurant - Dos Reales! When I suggested we go to Dos -- I had no idea that I would be in Mexico 3 days later :)

Tula Ruins

I am back in Mexico...for the 3rd time in 6 months. But this time has been a little more exciting. I am the chief of the quick 7 day project. I have an Assistant Technical Advisor (Trainee...) with me named Justin. I am in Tula de Allende, about 1.5 hours northwest of Mexico City.

Today the customer was performing some repairs / non-repairs and we have to return back to work at midnight. In the meantime we had a chance to visit the Tula archeological site.

Above is Pyramid C...we visited B & C and two stadiums, a religious area...but there was no Pyramid A. Quoting from another site "Tula is considered to be the candidate for Tollan, the legendary capital of the Toltec Empire, which was founded in about 750 A.D. when the Teotihuacan empire was in the process of falling apart."

Below is the statues on top of pyramid C.

Here is me sitting on the steps of Pyramid B

And finally below are pictures of the town of Tula and cactus flowers. It is a neat little/big town complete with a Burger King, Domino's, Walmart and Soriana.

My job - UOP advisor

3:00pm Monday-"Meagan, we have a short job for you...in Tula,Mexico..you have to be there by Friday morning" - my reaction was saddness because I just got back from Mexico for the second time in the past 4 months and I have to miss Justin run his half marathon on Saturday.

9:30am Tuesday - "Meagan, slight change of plans, they need you on-site tomorrow..so you need to fly out this afternoon..come discuss" -- I interrupt the Road mapping (manager's planning meeting) to find out who my trainee is going to be. They hadn't decided yet -- so they picked someone who didn't have a job scheduled in the next week. Next I ran up to the regional services managers office to get all the details.

11:00am Tuesday - "Meagan, well they still need you tomorrow, but you can fly out in theWednesday morning"

9:00pm Tuesday -- I am all packed and ready to go! I got the opportunity to have dinner with Justin and my grandparents and now I am ready to go. I am not looking forward to the 4am wake-up but I'm ready!

Spring in Palatine

For about 1.5 weeks I have been back in the Chicago area. Justin said that most of you would not know that I was back in town because I did not update my blog.

The best part about being back now is that Justin is back too! He has finally completed his job in Missouri. At this moment he is also taking the 8 hour Professional Engineering Exam. This will allow for him to stamp things at his job...at least that is my explanation of a professional engineer.

As of right now my work has me scheduled to leave for Macedonia next Friday or Saturday. I should be there for about one month. We will see if it happens!

Here is a picture of our tulips in our front yard :)