They Look the Same Wherever You Go.......

……a refinery is a refinery and an oilfield is an oilfield.  On our drive this afternoon, we went out by one of the remote locations near here, and there are a lot of them.  This is a huge oilfield complex with oil, natural gas and sulfur extraction.  Frankly, this particular refinery is impressive, but I’ve seen them in Baytown, Pasadena, Point Comfort, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Chad, Cameroon, Calgary and I don’t remember how many other locations.

I’ve only got 1 ½ days left here and am struggling with this last program.  My materials are still “who knows where” in some location in Kazakhstan other than where I’m at.  I’ve been able to photocopy some basic Russian materials and have made copies of some of the first class materials and used “white out” to block out names and answers.  Yes they still make correction fluid and yes, it’s available in Kazakhstan.  Still smells the same too.

On top of that, I’ve got one student who can’t be here half the time and another who has to catch a flight out tomorrow evening—a day before we finish.  That’s out of a total of three students in the class.  I’ve been showing English-language videos they can’t understand and we have one employee who isn’t assigned here, so we can’t drive in the compound itself.  That means we have to restrict our driving to about a six mile drive on two-lane blacktop with no traffic out to the Rotational Village. 

The Rotational Village is the Soviet-style housing complex with holes in the road that almost require a 4-wheel drive.  With all the rain earlier this week, the area and roads are under about six inches of water which hides all the holes—some of which seriously could destroy an axle or drive train.  So day after day, we drive up and down the six-mile highway.  I can tell you there is a large hole around the 3 mile mark and somebody lost a water heater out of a truck (or dumped it) at around the 5.7 mile mark.  I dream of that short stretch of highway at night.

But other than these issues, this really hasn’t been that bad of a job.  I was warned it was “hardship” but I wouldn’t call it that.  The people have been great to work with, the weather has been surprisingly cooler than expected, and I’ve certainly had much worse job assignments in Africa.

I’m kind of in a daily routine waiting for my rotation back home, so there’s not really much to blog today.