Day 11 - A night out...in the Dome

This past week has not been the most exciting week to blog about. My days have mostly consisted of waking up at 4:15, getting ready for the day (which includes applying mosquito repellant from head to toe), and then heading off to breakfast. I've managed to find things at breakfast each morning to give me fuel for the day. Some of the items that are served are a little strange to me for breakfast, like chicken and dumplings, but to each their own. I'm mostly sticking to a rotation of hard boiled eggs, toast, potatoes, cereal, and oatmeal. After breakfast, we head to the shuttle which leaves at 5:30 promptly! While at the plant, my days have consisted of walking out jobs, reviewing them for engineering merit and asking a lot of questions. I've also figured out that my area has the most work going on than any other, so I'll be pretty busy come August. After work, we head back on the shuttle and I pretty much head straight to the gym to get in a quick work out. Then a shower, grab some dinner, read a little on my iPad and then off to sleep. Believe it or not, this kind of schedule actually flies on by. It's hard to believe that we have already been gone for a week and a half.

So today, was a little break from the normal routine that I have developed for myself. Well the work day was the same and so was the gym, shower and dinner, but my friends here in Tengiz decided to check out the Disco. So all of the domes here have a small bar in them that are open from 7-9 PM everyday, but once a week on Saturdays, the bar and canteen area of Dome 2 is turned into a Disco from 10-12. Now when I say "Disco", I'm not talking about John Travolta, polyesterd suits, or the Bee Gee's. From what I can gather, it seems that the Kazakh culture calls a disco, what we in american call a dance club.

We all got there a little early just to hang out a little bit and enjoy a beer together, but promptly at 10 PM the music started thumping. So first off their music is a very interesting mix of American music from the 90's-present mixed in with some Kazakh and Russian music dance music as well. It probably wasn't until 11 PM that the dance floor actually got a little filled up. So Let's face it, this is a living compound to support an oil producing facility, and needless to say the men far out number the women here. With that said, the Disco actually reminded me of a mix between a modern bar and a 7th grade Jr. High School Dance. As you looked around on the dance floor you could see a perimiter of mostly guys just kind of standing around drinking. The people that were actually dancing seemed to have quite a bit of distance between eachother. And a strange thing to me was that when peopel took drinks onto the dance floor, they would put them on the ground and proceed to dance around them without knocking them over.

I have been reassured by a copule of Kazakh nationals that work in our group that most discos in the rest of the country aren't like that and they sound a lot more like bars and clubs down in Hermosa Beach. Needless to say, it was a fun interesting night of cultural development.