Lone Star to Last Frontier: A Crazy Wonderful Year in Review Part 1

As the title of this post might indicate, life has been hectic and exciting this past year and I’ve had troubling keeping up on the blog since my trip to Hawaii last March. Good thing I take a lot of photos to remember all the amazing places I've been and things I’ve done :) You can call me Carmen Sandiego because no one ever knows where in the world I might be haha. With several life changes, I've decided to complete this blog, but not before I recap my last year in 3 lengthy posts. So here goes part 1, chronicling my adventures in Asia and the Arctic Circle.

In April 1, 2015 I started a new assignment on the same project I'd been working on the previous two years in Alaska. However, instead of working in our planning office in Anchorage, I was relocated to the actual facility construction site on the remote North Slope of Alaska, well above the Arctic Circle on the top of the world! Since this location is super remote and obviously not very desirable, I’ve been going on rotations where I work for 21 days straight and then get 21 days off with no work at all! The on the job learning experience will pay dividends for my career going forward, but the long hours and remote work location have made life a bit tough. The bright side is I got half the year off to explore and travel, hence my Carmen Sandiego nickname. It's not everyday you are gifted with 6 months of paid vacation time, so I had to take advantage!

Working on top of the world!

An aerial view of my project site; everything in the foreground is frozen ocean

I sold my house in Anchorage last year and was surprisingly emotional to say goodbye to my first home even though I was only there for just shy of 2 years. I made some wonderful friends in my time in Anchorage and learned a lot about myself being so far from everything and everyone I knew and starting over in a place where I didn’t know anyone. I will certainly miss the plentiful outdoor adventures available right outside my front door, the postcard views everywhere I looked, the fun winter clothes and accessories that I accumulated, and the friends that I spent countless days and nights exploring Alaska with. My friends had a “Plugge’s Parting Pub Golf” crawl for me on my last night and it was so amazing to celebrate with the wonderful friends I made in such a short time.

Goodbye to my first home

My last week in Anchorage :(

Kicking off my last night in style with champagne, oysters, and my friend Jodie :)

The night's mission

Stop one - Gimlets at Crow's Nest

Some of the crew that came out to celebrate with me!

Stop five - Bubbly Mermaid champagne

So then began my 4 months of homelessness. Since my rotational job required that I relocate back to Houston, I left Anchorage with 3 suitcases and a freezer box of the salmon while the rest of my belongings were transported into storage in Texas. I’m so grateful that I have such a wonderful family; my gracious cousins Lucas and Iannelli took me in and let me use their guest room as my home base while I was traveling around the world. Although I think I only spent a grand total of 20 nights there over the summer, it was fun to catch up with them after their time living in Florida. So much fun that I ended up finding a house less than a mile away (spoiler alert for part 3 of this blog post haha). It was also the best to be reunited with my favorite ladies in Houston and they treated me to a night of margs and a Matt & Kim concert! Words can’t even describe how happy I am to be reunited with these ladies again, especially for biddie brunches and pass the baby parties. Because wooo my bestie has a new baby boy, Alexander! He is just the sweetest and I made it back to Texas just in time to shower his beautiful mama with lots of love and baby joy before his arrival into our lives in August.

Showering Becca and baby Alexander

Party wouldn't be complete without macarons

I departed on my first 21 day rotation to South Korea instead of the North Slope. My project’s oil and gas facilities were constructed at the Hyundai fabrication yard in Ulsan, South Korea and they didn’t sail across the Pacific Ocean to Alaska until June. It was a great chance to get up to speed on the facilities and meet some of the team that I would be working with over the next year.

It was my first trip to Asia and I definitely had a little culture shock. I took nearly every transportation method to get to Ulsan. I flew from Anchorage to Seoul (in my first ever business class seat that actually laid down; I was like a kid in a candy store with the remote controls!), then a couple hour train ride and 1 hour taxi ride. It was incredible once I finally took a bus the next morning to the work site to see the massive scale of everything! I’ve seen cranes and construction sites before but this didn’t even compare.

My first views of the Hyundai fabrication yard

All my friends in Houston and Anchorage were living in the past - yesterday ha

The most memorable things about my 3 weeks in Korea were:

1 – The cherry blossoms! I thought this was only a thing in Japan, but Korea also has a 2-3 week span when the cherry blossoms bloom and I was luckily there during those 3 weeks! I took several runs and hikes through the beautiful trees, which was surprisingly nice for such a hustling urban area.

Cherry blossoms from my hotel room window

More cherry blossoms along the street

Hiking in the hills of Ulsan

Hiking along cherry blossom lined paths

So pretty

Look out points along the hike

Blossoms up close

After 2 weeks, it started raining cherry blossoms

Trying to go the right direction

View of Ulsan beach

2 – The food was really good. Bibimbap, bulgogi, a duck smoked in a pumpkin, and side dishes for days. It was all new and delicious. They also had amazing fruit stands around the city that sell kumquats, the best little strawberries, and dragon fruit which was so good and similar to a giant less-tart kiwi. Surprisingly, Korea was also where I fell in love with macarons. For most people its Paris, but for me it was South Korea. I got at least one every day from the hotel bakery as my nighttime treat.

Pumpkin duck

So many beautiful side dishes

The best strawberries for only $4

My first go at a dragonfruit

More pretty plating and tons of dishes

Macaron treats

3 – I really stuck out as a foreigner. I didn’t know how to eat a lot of the food served in restaurants and would try to scope out others and hope they had something that looked similar to mine and mimic how they ate it. Also, the communication barrier was tougher than I thought it would be. I couldn’t sound out any of the street names for a taxi driver because the alphabet is not any letter I can recognize. This was frustrating and I started carrying a card with me with the name of my hotel on it in Korean so I could hand it to the driver. It seems like everyone rode a scooter and drove it like madmen. They lined the streets for parking and always had the right of way. At least 3 people made some motion towards my hair while I was there and started speaking about it in Korean. One even went so far as to grab it and then give me a thumbs up. It was really odd and I’m not sure I ever quite figured out what made my hair such a hot topic. But it was photographed often with several Koreans.

Scooters parked along the street

4 – Heated toilet seats are a staple and there are sometimes controllers to modify the settings. It was really strange at first, but I imagine in the winter it would be a big bonus haha.

5 – Easter Sunday Mass in a foreign language. One thing I find really neat about Catholicism is that the Mass is universal, it follows the same structure everyone around the world. This was actually the second Easter I’ve spent abroad since I was in Dubai in 2013. The Mass was in Korean, yet I knew exactly what was happening and could celebrate the joyous day. I treated myself to a delicious teatime brunch and a walk through the cherry blossoms on the sunny Easter day.

Luckily the translation guided me to a Catholic Church

Easter treats and cappuccino

After my stint in Korea, I spent my first 3 weeks off traveling to the Philippines. One of my good high school friends was traveling there with her sister so I decided to meet up with them and have some travel buddies! I island hopped from Hawaii to Guam to Palawan in the Philippines. It was definitely a lengthy trip over there since it is basically on the opposite side of the world. Luckily when I arrived, I didn’t really have jet lag since I had spent the last 5 weeks in so many different time zones (Korea, Anchorage, Houston) my body was just very confused!

I made it to Palawan!

One of the first things we did in Puerto Princesa was watch the Pacquiao versus Mayweather fight. It was neat to be in the Philipinnes for the fight since Pacquiao is adored there! His face is painted onto the airplanes and every restaurant was airing the fight that morning. The fight was around 10am, so after breakfast we found a market area with a big screen set up and the crowd just kept pouring in. I was amazed at how peaceful and friendly the fans were, cheering when Pacquiao was doing well, but never booing or being aggressive. During rounds 7-8, the connection went out in the whole country so the screen went blank. I was prepping for some brawls like I would imagine in the US, but everyone remained calm and just cheered when it finally came back on.

Lots of folks gathered for the Pacquiao fight

Watching the fight

The tide was extremely low on the eastern side of Palawan and we walked out what seemed like forever and only got up to our shins in water. We found some crazy spiky starfish but not much sealife besides that. We met some locals at the beach that cooked a tasty dinner with us with some goodies we found a local market down the road. It was interesting to see how they lived there for so cheap (under $300/month).

The beach in Puerto Princesa

We then headed to the small village of Sabang on the western side of Palawan. We took a 2 hour ride through the jungle in a jeepney, which is a converted open air military jeep. Jeepneys are common public transportation over there. The beach in Sabang was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. The water was crystal clear aqua and the visibility was perfect. We spent half of our nights in a little jungle cottage and half in a bamboo hut on the beach. Since everything runs off generators, there is only power in the village from 6pm until midnight. So we moved closer to the ocean to try to pick up on the ocean breeze. It was a challenge to try to fall asleep before the fan turned off at night! At least once a day we would eat at a little restaurant called Green Verde to enjoy the cool ocean breeze, curries, mangoes, and fruit shakes. We also played a lot of Rummy 500 cards :)

Hammocks in Sabang

Perfect view from Green Verde Restaurant

Sunset at the beach

Village of Sabang

Pretty skies

Our bamboo hut

The poverty and primitive culture there made me much more appreciative of what I have in my life – AC, constant power, modern transportation... And it was definitely a neat experience to go to such a beautiful place that was not yet touched by many tourists. One of the main attractions in Sabang is the world’s longest Underground River. We made the trek there via a motorized wooden boat with balancing piles on the sides. The views along the ride featured the lush mountains and coast line. We padded for a couple miles into the river with our headlamps on and there was still so much more beyond we didn't see. There were wild cave formations and a ton of bats! We spent the evening trekking along the coast to get some photos of the spectacular sunset and see the bioluminescence in the water!

Entering the Underground River site

Arriving at the lush coastline

Paddling into the river cave opening

All the boats bringing people to the Underground River

Beautiful Sabang sunset

Experimenting with the "dramatic" mode on my camera

After several relaxing beach days in Sabang, we decided to change it up and check out Port Barton, another beach further north. It was a very rocky van ride since the roads are not well paved through parts of the jungle, but we finally made it and were able to find a room for the night. The next day we headed out on a boat for an island hopping adventure to visit several great snorkeling spots. We had a fresh fish lunch on one of the islands and snorkeled all day. I also drank buko for the first time there, which is the juice from a young coconut. It felt very authentic drinking out of the coconut shell!

Island hopping

Our lunch spot

Beautiful water

Relaxing for a bit before our last snorkel spot

So many fishies

Cool pine tree coral

More funky coral

My favorite blooming seaflower

Neon coral

Sunset in Port Barton

Buko drinks

I spent about 10 days in the 3 various Palawan beach towns and then ended the trip with a day in Manila before flying home. We took a walk through the park and then went to the Hobbit House since I’m obsessed with Lord of the Rings. It claimed to have the worlds smallest waiters, and had Lord of the Rings decor, including a hobbit front door! We enjoyed a couple beers there before I headed back to the airport for my long flight home.

Hiking with the Fellowship

Hobbit door

Goodbye Philippines

After all the tropical time and warmth in Asia, it was time to begin my rotations to the Arctic. I get a lot of questions about what it’s like on the North Slope and I can say it is an entirely different world up there that it’s hard to even describe. First of all, it’s far away and hard to get to. It takes 7-12 hours to fly from Houston to Anchorage depending on the time of year and what flights run. Then I take a small 27 seat prop plane for 2.5 hours to a town called Deadhorse on the North Slope. My project location is an additional 60 miles away from Deadhorse, but there are no roads leading there. If the visibility is ok, the plane will make the short 15 minute trip to our site. Between January - April, we build an ice road so we can transport people via bus over from Deadhorse. And in the summer time when the ocean isn’t frozen, we can run barges from Deadhorse.

In the winter time, the site is literally surrounded by white everywhere you look. The top of the ocean is frozen solid and covered in a layer of snow, the surrounding tundra is coated in a couple feet of snow, and the sky is usually cloudy and white. It’s almost hard on the eyes with the lack of any color. During the summer, we are surrounded by the open tundra. If you are like me, you hear of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and imagine it to be this beautiful pristine place. However, I was in for a shock when I first arrived in the summer and realized the beautiful tundra is just a big swamp land full of mosquitos. More mosquitos than I’ve ever seen in one place. I had to wear a face net over my hard hat to keep them from biting my face. It was also a shock that the sun never set in the summer!

Protected from mosquitos

Saw this lovely photo on instagram right before I headed up to the North Slope

Sun never set from 11PM straight to 1AM

Life is pretty basic and simplistic since everyone works 12 hour days and is exhausted by the end of their shift. I live in a construction man camp during the 3 weeks I’m up there. I have a room that is smaller than a college dorm room and houses a dresser, desk, and bed. We have cafeterias, a gym area, and a couple modular trailer style office buildings. The temperature in the summer is in the 50s and in the winter it gets down to the -50s. It’s not uncommon to have radio calls notifying everyone on site that there was a fox siting, a caribou herd crossing the site, a wolverine or bear siting, or a frostbite warning in as little as 10 minutes for any exposed skin. I wear “arctic gear” every time I go outside and am not ashamed to be bundled to keep warm haha.

In my arctic gear, no skin exposed

I've had a few one of a kind experiences up here that are worth sharing. During my 3 week rotation in December / January, the sun never rose and it was 21 straight days of darkness. It was so cold one day that a couple of my coworkers and I took some boiling water outside and threw it into the air and made snow. The northern lights are often visible in the winter time. And one of the most unique experiences I’ve had up here was taking our low impact vehicle for a maintenance test drive onto the frozen ocean to watch the sunrise for the one of the first times after what seemed like eternal darkness in January.

It can definitely be lonely up there at times and a bit crazy to spend every waking hour with the same people, but I luckily have a couple great friends that make this life bearable. We attend Friday night bingo, celebrate the holidays together, motivate each other to workout, and constantly chow down on the amazing food and the never ending supply of sweets that fill the dessert cabinet. We even had our Construction Manager dress up as Santa and walk around passing out candy on Christmas! My favorite holiday activity was a 2 night gingerbread house decorating competition and I'm still sad our rustic Casa Amarilla didn't win. Life on the North Slope is wrapping up for me; I’ll be done in March and can’t wait to see what’s next! After this hectic year though, I’m ready to have some stability and settle down for awhile :)