Wow…time flies so fast. I still feel like I’m getting used to this whole thing about living and having a life out in the country, but I’m already wrapping my third week here, heading onto my fourth. Many things happened. I started doing a lot of hands-on work. Now, I always had a dream of having my future husband to be a blue collar man, but I feel like I’m becoming this blue collar person, instead of him, whomever he might be. My day these days consists of tearing things down and putting stuff back together. I really do feel like I’m learning a lot and I’m thankful for that. The only concerns that I have is having my hands full of scratches and wounds, which is currently happening as I speak.
Work is really demanding. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really miss my manager back in Michigan at the headquarters. The manager that I have here in the New Haven office acts like a “frat boy” and I feel like he’s the biggest bully around here. It’s like a big old boy’s club. He was making fun of me the moment that we’ve met saying that I’m the first lady rotating engineer who came down here. Meanwhile, he always complains about people not taking him seriously, but my thoughts are if you want somebody to take you seriously, you need to be serious with that person too, instead of joking around all the time. I still have my 11 to 12 hour days pretty much every day. After I physically started tearing things down and putting stuff together, I’ve gotten more physically tired every day. But when I think about this in another perspective, I guess it’s a good thing because there aren’t that many things to do to socialize with people, so keeping myself busy has been definitely helpful in preventing loneliness.
On the other hand, I’ve been also having some fun. Just this past weekend, my coworker Judy invited me to her farm. When she first mentioned to me that she lives in the farm and when she officially invited me out, I kind of freaked out a bit because I’ve never been in the farm before and I told her that I’ve never lived in a place where there is less than 100,000 people living. She told me it will be really fun and that she had planned a really exciting day for me. So after giving a little bit of a thought, I decided to accept her invitation.
If you’re friends with me on Facebook, then you probably realized that I had so much fun. I learned how to ride the 4-wheeler and the tractor. Along with that, I rode in in combine with her husband Steve, while he harvested the soy beans that they’ve planted couple of months ago. It was a really great experience and I’ve grown to have a more appreciation in farming. After that, I had some really good home grown beef because Judy has cows, along with some deer sausage. I’ve never had the deer before, but it was really good. Seasoned perfectly, and it tastes exactly like a beef jerky. To wrap up the day, we went to the neighborhood party and enjoyed the food and the music that the local farm boy band was playing.
So far, life out here in New Haven is not as bad as I originally expected. When I first heard that my company is sending me out here out of nowhere, I got really scared because I was afraid of not having anybody to depend on and not having anybody to hang out. I remember starting from a week before my training started, I asked God and whined to Him how much I did not want to go. I said, “Father, you were the one who wanted me to dedicate my life here in Michigan for the next two years. Why do you put me into this situation all of a sudden?” But despite my complaints and my beliefs, God has proven me wrong once again. He still surrounded me with people whom I can trust, and He enabled me to meet these people whom to have good life-long memories with. I still really miss being in Ann Arbor, but I know that when this training is over, I’ll be missing this little town and the people that I’ve met. I feel very fortunate. There are so much to learn from here. The people, town, atmosphere, and most importantly being faithful to God even if I don’t have the community that I used to have with me.
Prayer Requests:
- Being 100% faithful to God and trusting in His vision
- Relationship with my manager for the time being here in New Haven
- Building everlasting relationship with people here
- Finding community that I can depend on during training here in New Haven (will blog about this more later)
time machine 