I have finally finished my first week of work. We work from Saturday to Thursday. Friday is considered the national “day of rest”. The work is definitely challenging. I spent most of my time in a lab this week doing thickening time tests, compression tests, and specific gravity tests. I know many of you are like “what the heck is that?!?!?” I have to be familiar with a lot of the chemicals that they use to mix cement which is used for the construction of the casing for the well. The different chemicals impact the strength of the cement which is why we do compression tests and the thickening time test has a lot to do with how long it will take our cement design to harden. The more time it takes, the more costly it is to our clients. Every time the engineer makes a design, his/her design is sent to the lab to be tested. Therefore, it is important for the engineer to understand the tests the lab technicians do before we present a design to a client. Who knew I would ever be working in a lab? I am also required to finish a bunch of online training modules so I have been in front of my computer for hours on end trying to complete these modules. I am supposed to be finished with all my modules in 1- 3 months. I will spend the next couple of months trying to understand their Engineering language (names of equipment, names of processes, etc.)
In my office about 90 percent of the office is fluent in Arabic. So even though it is required that every employee speak English, daily office dialogue is exchanged in Arabic. I don’t have a clue whats going on the majority of the time, lol. When they do speak with me in English, it is very difficult to understand because of their heavy accents. I ask for them to repeat things about 4 or 5 times before I know what is actually being said. The hardest part is saying their names!!!!! But I am sure I will get the hang of it soon. I call the office English Menglish. (Middle East English) One of my goals is to pick up some Arabic while living here so I guess I will have to anyway because that is what is most widely spoken in the office. My challenge for the next few years will be to learn a new engineering language, menglish, and hopefully some Arabic.
I have always been good at time management because it was a MUST when I was trying to juggle track and school at Stanford but working here is a whole new level of time management. I wake up at 6am. I have an hour to eat and shower and get my stuff together. Between 6 and 7 is also one the few times it is easy for Landon and I to talk so while I eat breakfast I talk to him on Skype. Then I catch a shuttle with the rest of my coworkers at 7am. I am at work by 8 am. I work from 8am to 5pm but I often stay later because the internet at my accommodation is crap. The next shuttle I can take is 7:30pm. One of my priorities after work is getting at least a one hour workout and eating dinner of course. Surprisingly dinner has been a challenge. My kitchenette is not functional. My kitchen sink has been clogged for a week because every time I call down no one either understands what I am saying or they are just plain lazy and do not want to fix it. My stove only has one working burner and its the smallest one and my oven is beyond disgusting. It has not be cleaned in ages so whenever I attempt to cook something it smells like the apartment is on fire. My accommodation is not the greatest but I am trying to make the best of it. I will probably hire my own service to clean my accommodation properly because the maid we have do not do a good job.
I went on my first grocery store run this week. It was very convenient. its about 3 blocks from my accommodation. Its a Carrefour; I used this same grocery store when I was living in Paris. It is set up kind of like a Walmart; it has clothes, electronics, groceries, and appliances. I took a bunch of pictures of the produce because it was cool to see where they import all their fruits from. I was kind of concerned before arriving that they might not have a wide variety of fruits but they have a wider selection then any US grocery store I have been to.
Check out the pictures below.That’s all for now. I think I am going to try and visit some wedding boutiques today and of course STUDY STUDY STUDY!
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