second home

I never in a million years thought that I would say it, but I have to admit that Bakersfield will always be my second home.  It is so nice to come back and pick up right where I left off with all the great friends that I made during my four years here :)  I cannot believe it's already been almost 5 months since I left.  Dear time, STOP flying!

I started the week off by having lunch with one of the best mommas around on Monday. Christine and her husband, Tyler, moved to Bakersfield about 3 years ago and I don't think they were quite prepared for the fact that I already considered them family. During my summer internship in Bakersfield I lived with Tyler's younger brother's girlfriend (now wife) plus they are both Texas Tech Alums, so we are practically related, right? Makes total sense in my head.  Whether they liked it or not, they agreed and took me in as family.  They are proud parents to the most adorable 18-month old little boy, Curt, and as of last Tuesday a sweet baby girl, Rosalie.  So if you're doing the math, Christine at 39-weeks pregnant came and picked me up for a lunch date less than 24-hours before she was scheduled for her C-section.  I'm telling you, that woman is amazing! I closed out my week spending a few hours with the new family of four AND getting to meet my friend Katie's baby girl, Bailey.   Here are a few of my favorite pictures of those sweet baby girls!

Rosalie cuddled up in a blanket from Aunt Alli!

Just showing off her long skinny legs

I gave her a pep talk to be prepared for everyone to make fun of her long skinny toes...

She's smiling, I swear!

Little Bailey after she fell asleep in my arms

I had to wake her up before I left, sorry Mom!

I spent the rest of the week covering Chad's house in pink paraphenelia to get ready for Carrie's baby shower. I felt like a true housewife just spending the day crafting waiting for my boy to get home for dinner.  On Thursday night I even got to be Chad's date to the 2013 Oil and Gas Awards for the West Coast region.  He came away a winner representing his company as Engineering Company of the year…more info click HERE!  We are awful at taking pictures together, but I did snap one of his interview after the ceremony…

After months of planning with my partner in crime, Rachel, (and help from Braidon), I think Carrie and Cody's baby shower was a success! I still can't believe that it is almost time for Baby Grant's arrival.  Her due date is December 10th, but after seeing Carrie's belly my guess is around December 3rd.  As usual, Carrie has not slowed down one bit.  In fact, at 7+ months pregnant, Carrie made the time to finish a t-shirt quilt that I started 4 years ago that she volunteered to finish when she saw that after 3.5 years I had made very little progress. Needless to say, there is no doubt in my mind that Carrie is going to make one AMAZING mother!

Pumpkin babies!  

Note:  Disregard Carrie's outfit, she was putting on t-shirts to prove that she could still fit into a size Medium :)

Clearly, we still can't believe it...

Diaper Cake 

My pumpkin babies

LOVE my t-shirt quilt...proof that Carrie is amazing!

All in all my week in Bakersfield has been wonderful! I'll be enjoying a few more days here before I head back to Houston on Wednesday morning.  Although I'll be sad, yet again, to leave my friends and sweet boy, I'm excited to spend my last week in the states in Houston. I'm looking forward to a week full of family, friends and lots of love as we celebrate my cousin Kristopher and his sweet fiancé, Julie's, engagement!

Until next time, xoxo!

home: naps, parties, and football

Whoops - I missed a week!  I feel like I have been in a time warp since I landed in America a week and a half ago - Cabinda to Luanda to Houston to Las Vegas to Bakersfield to San Diego to Houston and today back to Bakersfield!  It's hard to believe that just two weeks ago I was sitting on the beach in Cabinda with my amazing co-workers.  Here are a few photos from my escape from camp the Sunday before I left...

belissimo!

Chef David and his friends

Just your average Italian meal...more bottles of wine than people

bon appitite!

Stroll on the beach after lunch soaking up the sun!

"Alli, enough with the pictures!"

I can say whole heartedly that America is the best country in the world.  Last Friday morning when I touched down in Houston all I could think about was how blessed we are to live in such an amazing country - minus the whole government shutdown nonsense.  My sweet brother knows how much I love being greeted at the airport by a familiar face, so he picked me up from the airport at 6am.  He also knows that I would have griped at him endlessly if he hadn't been there since I have made more than enough trips to pick him up, most memorably at 3am.  First thing I did was take the most wonderful shower, sans shower shoes which is a requirement in my shared Malongo shower.  I jumped back in the car [freedom] and had a delicious breakfast of about 6 breakfast tacos at the Taco Cabana up the street, followed by a nap because I can do that now :)  Then it was time to head to Vegas…

I met 3 of my favorite Bakersfield girls for a little Vegas get away.  I can't say much about the weekend because as they say - what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so here are a few pictures collages made by the Rolow's instead…

Night #1

Night #2

We got up early and booked it out of Vegas to avoid all the Vegas to California traffic that typically turns a 4 hour drive into a 6+ hour drive.  I also just really wanted to get to Bakersfield to see my boy!  Needless to say, I was 100% worthless for the two days that I was in Bako.  My activities included napping, catching up on TV shows, getting a massage, and watching Chad cook dinner.

Next stop - University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California just North of San Diego.  For those of you who haven't been to this part of the country, plan a trip ASAP.  It is breathtaking.  Clear skies and 70-something degrees year-round, ranks pretty high on my list of favorites...

Successful Career Fair on the beautiful UCSD campus

Morning hike in SD...absolutely gorgeous.  Anyone please feel free to buy me the house featured in this photo :)

After a long 3 days of recruiting, it was time to head back to Texas and actually sleep in my OWN bed!  First, we had to celebrate one of my favorite couples on their engagement.  Kelly's parents opened their home to celebrate the future Mr & Mrs Kilcrease.  Kelly has basically been a part of the Johnson clan for her whole life, growing up across the street from Laurel and Kristopher.  I feel so blessed to have been able to really get to know both Kelly and Robbie since moving to Houston.  It was a great night with great people, and I can't imagine two people more perfect for each other :)

Adorable Thoreen/Kilcrease family!

"Chad can you please try to take a normal picture???"

Success!

We spent most of Saturday recovering from the long night and watching Texas Tech pull out a win against WVU, which was a little too close for comfort.  I can't even begin to explain how much I have missed college football Saturdays!  

Chad and I are heading back to Bakersfield tonight, and I couldn't be more excited.  I am going to spend the week finishing up planning for my dear friend Carrie Grant's baby shower!  She and her husband, Cody, are getting ready to welcome their baby GIRL this December and I cannot wait to spoil that little thing!  It's just a bonus that I get to plan with my old office-mate and party-planner extraordinaire, Rachel Waggoner - who I miss terribly on a daily basis!  Nothing like going back to my second home :)

Until next time...xoxo

firsts + lasts

I have been counting down all my “lasts” in Malongo these past couple of days. So here’s to my last Sunday, and even more exciting – my FIRST time to leave camp! Everyone who lives here on camp works 7 days a week, and is only allowed to leave for special circumstances that require approval/security/etc. The Italian company I am working with on my project only works 6 days with Sunday as their off day. They live in a compound out in Cabinda city, and don’t hesitate to rub in the fact that they all get to relax at the beach on Sundays. After enough whining, they put together a lunch for this afternoon and invited me to come out and join! One of the folks on my team is Catalonian (region in Spain, below) and will be making lobster paella. When I went to Spain last summer I spent some time in Barcelona, which is part of the Catalonia region. I had my first taste of paella and was blown away, so I’m expecting a delicious lunch today! Don’t worry Mom/Dad/Nana/Papa/Ma/Pa, I got approval and will have a driver and security, plus Tomas and Phil.

Right when I got here, I made all of my team members take the Myers Briggs personality test as a team building activity. The test is just a series of simple questions that are tallied up and the result is a 4-letter combination that focuses on attributes of personalities: Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/iNtuting, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perceiving. Long story short, every person on my site leadership team of 15 people was either an ESTJ or an ISTJ – except for me. My 4-letter combination is ENFP – Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving. I failed to mention that I was attempting to explain all of this personality jargon to a very diverse group of folks (Italian, Portuguese, Catalonian, and Angolan). So I searched the internet for material to help explain all of this information and found the matrix below that shows one phrase interpreted by each of the 16-letter combination type personalities.

Note: click HERE if you want to read more about the Myers Briggs personality types...

As you can see, ENFP’s are easily distracted which gets me to the point of why I’m explaining all of this anyway….I really get a kick out of all the animals/flowers/views/random stuff there is to look at around here and I don’t have any problem letting everyone know when there is something awesome to look at (this usually includes monkeys). This past week, I had a group of folks come to my office to give me a TON of photos that they had taken over the past few weeks of things around camp so I’ve picked some of my favorites to post!

oh HEY! just hanging out...

I have no idea what this is, but I want it in my backyard.

Caught him eating a banana! (I did not feed the animals)

Birds looking for snacks outside the Tank Farm

African deer in camp

Ok, this next series of photos is AWESOME! There is a banana tree right outside our office, and one of the guys here took a picture of it every day as it began to produce fruit. It's something I've never seen before, and I think it's pretty amazing! I left out some of the days where it didn't change much, but you get the picture...

I’ll be America-bound Thursday afternoon, leaving camp around 13:30 (7:30 Texas time) and I will touch down in Houston around 7 Friday morning – right at 24 hours of travel time. I’d say my first trip exceeded my expectations, solely due to the wonderful people that I have met here in Africa. I could do without the spiders, but I guess I’ll come back :)

31 days down, 4 to go! xoxo

Boa Noite Malongo

spiders and cheerios

Monday morning I woke up a little late after snoozing the alarm a couple of times, got up and walked across the room to turn on the light and cruuuuuuuuuuunch I stepped on a spider. After doing a one legged jump/screaming jig I realized that I hadn’t stepped hard enough to kill the sucker, so I still had to chase it down with a shoe. This was the first time I thought to myself, “ok, that’s enough I’m ready to go home.” I’m proud to say that I lasted 17 days without thinking that thought.

Most of my BBQ buddies have gone home over this past week, so I’m back to the mess hall menu. You know it’s bad when you get excited about boiled eggs for dinner. We also got Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast this week, and I about lost it. I’ve had at least one bowl every morning. I saw one of my old Bakersfield co-workers, and we talked about our mutual excitement for a good 5 minutes. I don’t even know what I’m going to do when I get back home and have endless food options at my fingertips…

On Wednesday night my small team of 4 hosted a softball game in camp, which means we paid for the food. There is always a much larger turn out to anything if food is provided! I grew up playing softball and watching baseball so I'm very familiar with the rules of the game, and I've always been surrounded by folks who are equally knowledgeable (if not more) with the game. This was definitely not the case on Wednesday. We had several Angolans, South Africans, and Europeans who has never watched, much less played a game of baseball in their lives. After a instructing everyone on how to put on a glove we spent some time on catching and throwing, and just assumed that we were good to go - false. Batting was an adventure, but most of the people were able to at least make contact in the first 5-10 pitches. The problem was that we failed as teachers to let them know that once the ball was hit, you run to first base. We quickly realized that we left out the step that you have to drop the bat, not carry it to the base with you. This went on and on...run from first to second base, second to third, third to home, explaining what getting "out" meant, etc - and then there was fielding. By that time I was just giggling non-stop along with most of the other expats who were familiar with the game. Everyone had a really great time and were good sports throughout the game - I think we may even play again this Wednesday!

Tomas, David, Dialla, and I

I’m definitely on the downhill slope trying to wrap up as much as I can in the next week and a half so I don’t leave a giant mess for my back-to-back. Surprisingly, the days are still flying by which is muito bom (very good). I haven't been able to start my Portuguese classes, so I've been trying to learn little phrases here and there but I'm a long way from being able to have a conversation...one day!

24 days down, 11 to go! xoxo

Making friends with my officemates, Mona and her baby girl Winnie.

Malongo Beach with Cabinda city off in the background

half way point

Half way done…with my first hitch that is :) This past week has been the first week that I really feel like I know my way around/who to talk to/what to do/etc. There is still SO much to learn, but I think I’m finally moving in the right direction.

I don’t have too many new pictures to share this week because I failed miserably at my goal to go out last Sunday and explore the camp. Instead of enjoy the day like I had planned, I slept the day away – which was pretty amazing. The hardest part about being here is never getting to sleep in past 5AM (at the latest). As most of you know, one of my favorite things is laying in bed doing nothing soooo these past two Sundays have been super lazy days catching up on sleep. I did try to get some pictures of all of the bats around camp sleeping in the trees during the day. It’s kind of hard to tell but the brown clumps that kind of look like coconuts in the trees are actually bats all hanging sleeping in bunches…

Close up of sleeping bats...

I would like to introduce Tripod. This is one special little girl that I have come to know through my adopted Malongo family. I’ve met a great group of folks that get together most nights at one particular BBQ spot for dinner, drinks, and ridiculous story telling about the good ol days. Anyways, a few hitches ago this little kitty was left under one of their storage containers and as you can see she has a broken/deformed front leg. Most everyone has the same feeling about the feral cats around here (they are gross), but Tripod found a soft spot in the hearts of these guys and they started feeding her leftovers. She gets around just fine and can hold her ground against all the other animals in the area, but more importantly I just think she’s really stinkin cute. She’s actually pretty quick, so here is the best picture I have gotten so far. Note: you KNOW there’s not much going on when I write an entire novel about a cat…

Precious little Tripod

Something special happened back state-side this week! A few months back Chad was telling me about his maternal grandfather who served in World War II which got me talking about Papa’s trip to Washington DC on the DFW Honor Flight last year. There are several cities that have been able to put together Honor Flights funded by donations to send WWII vets to DC to see their memorial. Bakersfield has a large community of veterans, so Chad and I decided to make a donation to sponsor a round trip on the Honor Flight to one of the local veterans. Saturday morning in Bakersfield, Chad was able to meet Captain Robert Herrick who at 92 years old will be making the trip to DC next week! Captain Herrick is a WWII and Korean War veteran and we just feel so blessed to be able to be a part this once in a lifetime trip!

My sweet boy and Captian Herrick

Proud Granddaughter :)

For those of you that have been trying to comment on the blog, I'm sorry it hasn't been working. There is some kind of glitch that I am trying to work out with Google. Hopefully I can get it solved in the next few days.

17 days down, 18 to go…xoxo

life in the jungle

I have officially survived my first full week in the Malongo. When I joined the team back in June some Malongo-veteran’s tried to explain that working here is like the Matrix, there is no real sense of time and then all of the sudden it’s over. Naturally, I looked at them like they were lunatics I mean 28 days is a LONG time, but I am beginning to understand what they mean. Since we work 7 days a week it’s pretty easy to lose track of the days and then all of a sudden a week is gone. I’m probably jinxing myself by putting it in writing, but hopefully these next 4 weeks keep flying by.

Most every night there is some kind of get together at one of the make-shift patios around camp and it usually includes a cook who throws together a delicious meal in an effort to stay away from the mess hall menu of rice, mystery meat and bread. Let me tell you, there are some serious chef’s out here that know how to cook. I’m trying to figure out who they are so I can keep up a diet of steak and chicken rather than the alternative. Anyway, last Sunday I had the most amazing meal – drunken chicken, which is a staple out here for the professional barbequer’s. Daddy, take note…you need to try this out :)

I know last week’s blog has been keeping yall on pins and needles, but you can rest easy because I PASSED my Malongo driving test! I warned my instructor, and passengers, that I was going to be rusty on the manual transmission so they were fully prepared for a jolting ride. I impressed the guys by not stalling at all, however I did wake everyone up when I had to back into a parking spot and went a littttttttttttle heavy on the gas. But my sweet instructor pulled the parking brake on me before things got too out of hand, so it was fine ;)

I finally saw the sun on Monday and snapped a few pictures before it went and hid away. I may actually scare small children when I get back to the states with my extremely pale skin. Either that or all the tweens will be really into me because they think I’m one of the Cullen’s from Twilight…that’s still cool, right?

Sunshine on Malongo Beach

Hibiscus flowers are all over camp...prettypretty!

I’ve come to learn that most of the wildlife, minus the gross cats, stay hidden during lunch and after work because there are too many people up in their business. The trick to seeing the packs of monkeys is to take a drive mid-morning and you’ll catch them hanging out, sun bathing, picking bugs off each other’s backs – naturally, and just being really stinkin cute. I was out in the field on Thursday morning and I saw a momma monkey with her baby and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen. I was SO mad I didn’t have my camera because that little thing looked like a human baby, just slightly hairier. She was super protective and the baby was just clinging on to her neck. It’s like National Geographic out here…

Monkeys having their mid-morning snacks

I moved into my permanent room this week, and minus the sharing the bathroom thing it’s not so bad. It’s actually bigger than my temporary room, and I did a little re-arranging to make it really big. The only problem is that the phone and cable outlets are now covered by my bed, but I’ve made some friends in the IT department and they are going to fix that right up! I may have also roped a few people into scavenging up a mini-fridge and microwave for me too, so we will see if that happens – cliff hanger for the week :)

Time for me to leave this dungeon office and the beauty of the interwebs and go soak up some sun! 10 days down, 25 to go…xoxo

Sunday morning sunrise view from my office. God is Good!