Bonjour,
I've been in France for about four days now, and I'm having a fun time. I spend the vast majority of my time in the ELC (Europe Learning Center). It's Schlumberger's training facility. I also spend a large quantity of time on the bus. The hotels we stay at are about an hour away from the ELC, so a designated bus comes to pick us up every morning at 7:10am and leaves to take us home at 6:00pm. Class lasts from 8:30 (most days it's really 9:00) until 5:30. I spend most of the hours on the bus sleeping. Surprise of all surprises, I know. :) It can actually be a challenge if I don't have my iPod, because everyone else sleeps too and sometimes it's quite the symphony of snoring. Depending on where the lead instruments are sitting, you can be pretty overwhelmed by the melodies... if you know what I mean. Anyway, the reason we stay so far away from the ELC is because the only hotels that are big enough to handle the number of students coming through the training center are near Disneyland Paris. We're actually staying about 5 minutes away from the magical world of Disney, European style.
This week is my COM1 (Common 1) course. Most of the people will be in my Sand Control School as well, starting next week, but some of them are in other segments. This week is a breeze.. a warm, gentle breeze. We don't really do anything. I'm sitting here in class, waiting for our teacher to come and actually teach us things. I'm not complaining, it's a really nice break. Our course starting next week will be much more rigorous.
There are two American guys based in Louisiana here. One of them actually graduated from the University of Michigan in Aerospace Engineering. What a small world! Anyway, they're pretty funny. It's almost strange to hang out with Americans at this point. They're basically obsessed with getting to a monastery in Belgium where these monks make beer that is supposed to be really good. One guy bought a french cell phone so that he could call the monastery (the Beer Phone, as they call it) and reserve a case of beer to purchase. He came in one morning telling all of us about the dream he had about I think I'll go with them when they decide to make the journey.
I'm also been hanging out with a guy from Brazil. He's the one I knew about before I got here from our mutual friend in Macaé. It's fun to speak Portuguese with him. I guess there is another guy coming from Angola for our Sand Control class, so I'll be interested to see how well I can understand Angolan Portuguese.
I'm sharing a villa with a girl named Lydia. She's dutch.. like really from Holland. Her last name starts with "van," so I knew right away where she was from. Those are my west Michigan skills of dutch identification right there. She's pretty cool. She's working in Norway, so needless to say, our Schlumberger experiences have been a bit different. Mine in tropical paradise, and hers in the beautiful glaciers and mountains of the far north. It's fun to hear other people's stories about different cultures.
There's a mall by the hotel. It's really big. It's all one corridor, and it takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. It's overwhelming. The supermarket is in the mall too. It's wonderfully huge- one of the biggest I've ever seen, actually. Two stories of endless options. It was really a reverse culture shock. It's been almost six months since I was in an American supermarket, and the Brazilian grocery stores in Macae are much tinier. There is an entire aisle for yogurt, and aisle for chocolate, two aisles of cheeses, and about four aisles of wine. I was wandering around, wide-eyed and overwhelmed. Haha.. it's fun.
We've gone out to eat a lot. I'm loving the bread, cheese, and wine. Stuff is pretty expensive. Well, the wine is the cheapest thing to drink. The pub we went to the other night actually had caipirinhas.. for 8 euros!! They're normally 8 reais in Brazil. That's like $16 vs. $5. I decided to stick with wine for the night. The waitstaff around this area speaks a lot of English. I think it's because all of the Disneyland tourists. It's rather convenient. They do seem to appreciate the fact that we try to speak some French... even if we butcher the pronunciation.
Well.. I should be doing my in-class assignment, but I will send more updates later. I'm sure whatever we do this weekend will generate interesting stories :) and we all know I love good stories. :)
Au revoir,
25 May 2008
Bonjour, merci, si'l vous plait...
Good Morning!
I'm writing you all from my villa in Melun, France. It feels like 6:30 am, but here it's 11:30am. I left yesterday at 9am, so it's been about 21 hours of traveling. Saying that I'm groggy is an understatement, and I'm trying to decide whether I should tough it out for the day, or give in to taking a nap. The flight was uneventful. I was able to tell the Air France flight attendant that I wanted champagne with my crackers and later that I wanted "poulet" for dinner and accompanied by a glass of "vin branc" (that's chicken and white wine if you didn't know). I felt so multilingual. I made friends with the Brazilian guy that was sitting next to me. We were speaking Portuguese for a couple hours. I didn't sleep a ton, but I did read half of the novel, The Kite Runner.
Once again, I arrived in a country where I don't know that language. I actually know more French than I new Portuguese when I arrived in Brazil, but it's definitely not much. That quarter of French in seventh grade really isn't helping me out too much. It's funny though, I keep catching myself thinking in Portuguese and wanting to speak it. It's the #1 foreign language in my head, so hearing French makes my brain switch to foreign language mode, but instead of French, my neurons go fetch Portuguese phrases. There is one Brazilian guy who will be in my class. He knows one of my friends in Macaé from college and works in Angola. I plan on keeping my Portuguese polished by having private (but public) conversations.
Most of my first impression of France was the back of my eyelids. I passed out in the taxi on the way to the hotel. The driver got kinda lost, and I ended up paying twenty euros more than i was expecting. Oh well.. it will get expensed anyway. I realized that I missed expressways. Brazil doesn't have those wide, smooth, unimpeded roads. It was nice to be in a fast car and not worry about the driver not seeing a massive pothole or unmarked speed bump. The terrain is about as exotic as mid-Ohio- spring greenery, the occasional rolling hill, deciduous trees... you can imagine. The peasant-looking houses are what makes the countryside look really French as opposed to a not-so-very-exciting-Midwest-state.
Anyway.. I'm gonna go take a nap. Later I'll walk (weather is springy and delicious!) to the center of this little town and see what's around. I'll regale you with more stories as soon as I collect them! I just wanted to let you know that I'm here safe and sound!
Love,
I'm writing you all from my villa in Melun, France. It feels like 6:30 am, but here it's 11:30am. I left yesterday at 9am, so it's been about 21 hours of traveling. Saying that I'm groggy is an understatement, and I'm trying to decide whether I should tough it out for the day, or give in to taking a nap. The flight was uneventful. I was able to tell the Air France flight attendant that I wanted champagne with my crackers and later that I wanted "poulet" for dinner and accompanied by a glass of "vin branc" (that's chicken and white wine if you didn't know). I felt so multilingual. I made friends with the Brazilian guy that was sitting next to me. We were speaking Portuguese for a couple hours. I didn't sleep a ton, but I did read half of the novel, The Kite Runner.
Once again, I arrived in a country where I don't know that language. I actually know more French than I new Portuguese when I arrived in Brazil, but it's definitely not much. That quarter of French in seventh grade really isn't helping me out too much. It's funny though, I keep catching myself thinking in Portuguese and wanting to speak it. It's the #1 foreign language in my head, so hearing French makes my brain switch to foreign language mode, but instead of French, my neurons go fetch Portuguese phrases. There is one Brazilian guy who will be in my class. He knows one of my friends in Macaé from college and works in Angola. I plan on keeping my Portuguese polished by having private (but public) conversations.
Most of my first impression of France was the back of my eyelids. I passed out in the taxi on the way to the hotel. The driver got kinda lost, and I ended up paying twenty euros more than i was expecting. Oh well.. it will get expensed anyway. I realized that I missed expressways. Brazil doesn't have those wide, smooth, unimpeded roads. It was nice to be in a fast car and not worry about the driver not seeing a massive pothole or unmarked speed bump. The terrain is about as exotic as mid-Ohio- spring greenery, the occasional rolling hill, deciduous trees... you can imagine. The peasant-looking houses are what makes the countryside look really French as opposed to a not-so-very-exciting-Midwest-state.
Anyway.. I'm gonna go take a nap. Later I'll walk (weather is springy and delicious!) to the center of this little town and see what's around. I'll regale you with more stories as soon as I collect them! I just wanted to let you know that I'm here safe and sound!
Love,
22 May 2008
Awesome waterfalls, I'm going to France on Saturday and coming home afterwards!
Bonjour!
So I had quite the eventful weekend last weekend. Friday night, I went to a concert with some friends. The band was called Rappa, and I didn't know any of their songs ahead of time. To be honest, I still probably can't identify a Rappa song if I heard one, but I was in good company and had a lot of fun. We left our house after 10:30pm to go to the show. The plan was to get there after the opening band. Even though we left late, and hung out outside for 20 minutes talking to friends, we still were there with enough time to use the restroom and buy drinks before the opening band came on. That's Brazilian timing for you. It was funny how most concerts in the US are done around midnight, and the main band here didn't come on stage until then. The show ended around 4am. You have to have endurance to party like a Brazilian!
On Sunday, I went to a town called Sana with friends: Bruno, Louise (Bruno's girlfriend), and Joao. It's actually technically still Macaé, but we drove for an hour to get there. We went hiking on this mountain to go see the many waterfalls there. It was absolutely gorgeous! The trail was really rough and steep sometimes, but the scenery was amazing. There were tropical trees, giant bamboo-looking plants, and all the time you could hear the river running down the slope. The second waterfall we found had multiple stages, and we were able to climb behind part of the waterfall!! It was so cool. There are a bunch of pictures at picasaweb.google.com/Jessica.J.Schulte. At one point, we decided to do a little exploring, so were climbing around a less-traveled path. I ended up slipping on a muddy bank trying to follow crazy Joao. Don't worry, nothing but my pride was injured. :) Soon after that, we realized we had to turn around because the path was impassable. Then I got to climb up the steep, muddy bank I just climbed/slid down. At another waterfall, there was a big, flat, sloped rock at the bottom. We were hanging out there, and I was walking where the rock went from being dry to wet. Yes, I slipped and fell again. This time, I actually slid for about 5 feet before coming to a stop. Everyone around was gasping and I just bust out laughing. I struck a rockstar pose and carefully got back on my feet. Four days later, I still have a very sensitive bruise on my left hip from that fall.. it's a very pretty shade of purple. We headed back down the mountain a different way than we came. It required climbing up wet boulders using ladders and ropes, and the whole time I was so worried about falling again. I did fall once more, and was subject to ridicule (mostly from Joao) about my lack of dynamic equilibruim. Oh well.. bruises and muddy shorts never hurt anyone, and I had a blast. :)
So, I'm leaving for France on Saturday (May 24). The ten hour flight will be my new longest flight record. I'll be attending my technical school in Melun, which is outside of Paris. I'll be there for nine weeks. I'm excited to travel, see more of Europe, learn some French, make some new friends, and learn more for my job. My class will be around 10 students from all over the world who work in Well Completions- Sand Control. I'll be living in a place called MySuite Village (practice saying it in your best French accent... it's more fun). It's like a long term hotel kind of place. I'll be able to describe it better when I get there. I'll take a bus to school every day. The commute is about an hour each way, but hopefully I'll find something productive to do during that time. I'll have class from 8-5:30 or so every weekday and some Saturdays. The rest of my time will be spent studying, going out in Paris, going to Disney World Paris, and traveling to Spain, Amsterdam, Germany, Italy... who knows?!?! If you've been to Paris, please let me know your favorite places, and I will try to visit.
After my course is done in France, I will be heading home for a glorious two weeks!!! Yes, I'M COMING HOME!! I'll be arriving in Michigan on July 27 and going back to Brazil on August 10. You should plan on being in Michigan sometime during that time. I would love to see as many folks as possible. The year 2008 is my year of summer. It's getting cooler here in the southern hemisphere, and I'm about to go spend June and July in France where they don't have much air conditioning, and then coming back to Michigan for half of August. Just when it's warming back up here in Brazil, I'll come back. Sigh... I miss winter just a little bit.
Oh, exciting news.. my apartment just a little better. I walked in last night, and found a new refrigerator (with a real freezer) in the kitchen and two more love seats in my living room!! Too bad it happened just as I'm leaving for three months. But oh well, when I get back, they will be waiting for me :-) I'm still holding out for an oven and shelves or cabinets for my food.. but I have hope :).
Alright.. that's enough news for now. I always love to hear back from you!
Au revoir,
So I had quite the eventful weekend last weekend. Friday night, I went to a concert with some friends. The band was called Rappa, and I didn't know any of their songs ahead of time. To be honest, I still probably can't identify a Rappa song if I heard one, but I was in good company and had a lot of fun. We left our house after 10:30pm to go to the show. The plan was to get there after the opening band. Even though we left late, and hung out outside for 20 minutes talking to friends, we still were there with enough time to use the restroom and buy drinks before the opening band came on. That's Brazilian timing for you. It was funny how most concerts in the US are done around midnight, and the main band here didn't come on stage until then. The show ended around 4am. You have to have endurance to party like a Brazilian!
On Sunday, I went to a town called Sana with friends: Bruno, Louise (Bruno's girlfriend), and Joao. It's actually technically still Macaé, but we drove for an hour to get there. We went hiking on this mountain to go see the many waterfalls there. It was absolutely gorgeous! The trail was really rough and steep sometimes, but the scenery was amazing. There were tropical trees, giant bamboo-looking plants, and all the time you could hear the river running down the slope. The second waterfall we found had multiple stages, and we were able to climb behind part of the waterfall!! It was so cool. There are a bunch of pictures at picasaweb.google.com/Jessica.J.Schulte. At one point, we decided to do a little exploring, so were climbing around a less-traveled path. I ended up slipping on a muddy bank trying to follow crazy Joao. Don't worry, nothing but my pride was injured. :) Soon after that, we realized we had to turn around because the path was impassable. Then I got to climb up the steep, muddy bank I just climbed/slid down. At another waterfall, there was a big, flat, sloped rock at the bottom. We were hanging out there, and I was walking where the rock went from being dry to wet. Yes, I slipped and fell again. This time, I actually slid for about 5 feet before coming to a stop. Everyone around was gasping and I just bust out laughing. I struck a rockstar pose and carefully got back on my feet. Four days later, I still have a very sensitive bruise on my left hip from that fall.. it's a very pretty shade of purple. We headed back down the mountain a different way than we came. It required climbing up wet boulders using ladders and ropes, and the whole time I was so worried about falling again. I did fall once more, and was subject to ridicule (mostly from Joao) about my lack of dynamic equilibruim. Oh well.. bruises and muddy shorts never hurt anyone, and I had a blast. :)
So, I'm leaving for France on Saturday (May 24). The ten hour flight will be my new longest flight record. I'll be attending my technical school in Melun, which is outside of Paris. I'll be there for nine weeks. I'm excited to travel, see more of Europe, learn some French, make some new friends, and learn more for my job. My class will be around 10 students from all over the world who work in Well Completions- Sand Control. I'll be living in a place called MySuite Village (practice saying it in your best French accent... it's more fun). It's like a long term hotel kind of place. I'll be able to describe it better when I get there. I'll take a bus to school every day. The commute is about an hour each way, but hopefully I'll find something productive to do during that time. I'll have class from 8-5:30 or so every weekday and some Saturdays. The rest of my time will be spent studying, going out in Paris, going to Disney World Paris, and traveling to Spain, Amsterdam, Germany, Italy... who knows?!?! If you've been to Paris, please let me know your favorite places, and I will try to visit.
After my course is done in France, I will be heading home for a glorious two weeks!!! Yes, I'M COMING HOME!! I'll be arriving in Michigan on July 27 and going back to Brazil on August 10. You should plan on being in Michigan sometime during that time. I would love to see as many folks as possible. The year 2008 is my year of summer. It's getting cooler here in the southern hemisphere, and I'm about to go spend June and July in France where they don't have much air conditioning, and then coming back to Michigan for half of August. Just when it's warming back up here in Brazil, I'll come back. Sigh... I miss winter just a little bit.
Oh, exciting news.. my apartment just a little better. I walked in last night, and found a new refrigerator (with a real freezer) in the kitchen and two more love seats in my living room!! Too bad it happened just as I'm leaving for three months. But oh well, when I get back, they will be waiting for me :-) I'm still holding out for an oven and shelves or cabinets for my food.. but I have hope :).
Alright.. that's enough news for now. I always love to hear back from you!
Au revoir,
01 May 2008
Disappointing news...
Hey folks,
Today is another Brazilian holiday. Honestly, I'm not sure which one it is. All I know is that instead of being in the workshop, I just got back from eating a leisurely, delicious picanha lunch with my friend and coworker, João, and I'm guiltlessly writing you all this email from the comfort of my beachfront apartment while the maids are cleaning the place. Not bad, huh? ....
Okay, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and today is Brazilian Labor Day (Dia do Trabalho). Now we all know the reason for my leisure. :-)
The bad news I was referring to is that I'm currently not offshore. Apparently, our client, Petrobras, doesn't have space on their rigs at the moment for trainees. I found out at the last minute that I couldn't go, and I was really upset. I really wanted to go with the team that went, and I really want to go offshore before I go to school. There should be another job for me to try to go on before I got to France, but that means that I won't be able to come home to the US before I go. I was super, super bummed :-( I really wanted to come home before many people I care about move to other parts of the country. I was also going to road trip with my sister to VA Beach to visit LT (Leadership Training- a program through my church that I participated in multiple times in college). It would have been much more convenient to see everyone in one place. That being said, if you're planning on moving away, or already have, save some time and money to come visit me in Grand Rapids in early August :-) That would be super!! Thanks! I think the only way I could still make it happen, would be if this other job got delayed to the point where I wouldn't have enough time to go and get back and get to France on time. I would have to know about it enough in advance to buy a plane ticket and pack for 2 and half months. I'm not holding my breath for it to happen.. I've had enough disappointment already.
I don't know if mentioned before that Macaé Palace has no laundry machines on the premises. Schlumberger resolved the issue by hiring a laundry service. It's like a hotel. I put my clothes in a bag, fill out a form, and it gets picked up everyday and returned the next day. I used it for the first time this week. I got my laundry back yesterday. It was hilarious!!! Everything came wrapped in individual plastic bags. Even socks and underwear were in plastic. My workout t-shirts were folded perfectly around a piece of cardboard, like men's dress shirts when you buy them new. The environmentalist part of hates all the plastic wrap that probably wont get recycled, but it sure is funny to look at.
I currently have my apartment all to myself. Gabi left for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Sunday for two months. She's in the department called RMC (Reservoir Monitoring and Control), and we don't have activity for her right now. She's going there to get experience so that she can lead jobs here in Brazil when she gets back. It's strange because when she gets back, I'll be in France. I won't see my partner in crime for 3 months. That is the nature of Schlumberger- people traveling all over the place all the time.
There are tons of stray dogs all over the city. They're really tame, and nothing to be scared of, but they eat garbage and sleep on the beach. Anyway.. on the way home from lunch today, one ran in front of a car and got run over. I saw it, heard it, saw the poor dog writhing in pain with blood coming out of it's nose and everything. It was really traumatizing. I'm sorry for disturbing you with the story, but it's part of my life.
Oh! I have internet in my apartment now! So I can use Skype to talk to people. That means you should all download it and add me (coach8885) and call me!
Love,
Today is another Brazilian holiday. Honestly, I'm not sure which one it is. All I know is that instead of being in the workshop, I just got back from eating a leisurely, delicious picanha lunch with my friend and coworker, João, and I'm guiltlessly writing you all this email from the comfort of my beachfront apartment while the maids are cleaning the place. Not bad, huh? ....
Okay, I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and today is Brazilian Labor Day (Dia do Trabalho). Now we all know the reason for my leisure. :-)
The bad news I was referring to is that I'm currently not offshore. Apparently, our client, Petrobras, doesn't have space on their rigs at the moment for trainees. I found out at the last minute that I couldn't go, and I was really upset. I really wanted to go with the team that went, and I really want to go offshore before I go to school. There should be another job for me to try to go on before I got to France, but that means that I won't be able to come home to the US before I go. I was super, super bummed :-( I really wanted to come home before many people I care about move to other parts of the country. I was also going to road trip with my sister to VA Beach to visit LT (Leadership Training- a program through my church that I participated in multiple times in college). It would have been much more convenient to see everyone in one place. That being said, if you're planning on moving away, or already have, save some time and money to come visit me in Grand Rapids in early August :-) That would be super!! Thanks! I think the only way I could still make it happen, would be if this other job got delayed to the point where I wouldn't have enough time to go and get back and get to France on time. I would have to know about it enough in advance to buy a plane ticket and pack for 2 and half months. I'm not holding my breath for it to happen.. I've had enough disappointment already.
I don't know if mentioned before that Macaé Palace has no laundry machines on the premises. Schlumberger resolved the issue by hiring a laundry service. It's like a hotel. I put my clothes in a bag, fill out a form, and it gets picked up everyday and returned the next day. I used it for the first time this week. I got my laundry back yesterday. It was hilarious!!! Everything came wrapped in individual plastic bags. Even socks and underwear were in plastic. My workout t-shirts were folded perfectly around a piece of cardboard, like men's dress shirts when you buy them new. The environmentalist part of hates all the plastic wrap that probably wont get recycled, but it sure is funny to look at.
I currently have my apartment all to myself. Gabi left for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on Sunday for two months. She's in the department called RMC (Reservoir Monitoring and Control), and we don't have activity for her right now. She's going there to get experience so that she can lead jobs here in Brazil when she gets back. It's strange because when she gets back, I'll be in France. I won't see my partner in crime for 3 months. That is the nature of Schlumberger- people traveling all over the place all the time.
There are tons of stray dogs all over the city. They're really tame, and nothing to be scared of, but they eat garbage and sleep on the beach. Anyway.. on the way home from lunch today, one ran in front of a car and got run over. I saw it, heard it, saw the poor dog writhing in pain with blood coming out of it's nose and everything. It was really traumatizing. I'm sorry for disturbing you with the story, but it's part of my life.
Oh! I have internet in my apartment now! So I can use Skype to talk to people. That means you should all download it and add me (coach8885) and call me!
Love,
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