October 22/23

Today I flew off into the wild blue yonder.  Had a hard time saying goodbye to the parents and Ben, but I know I"ll be seeing them sooner than I know.  Caught a quick flight up to Chicago, then waited in the terminal at O'Hare for a couple hours.  Met up with Jessica and a few other SLB people.  There were 14 of us on the flight I think.  Had some good food on the flight, all Halal approved dinners.  I sat next to Shilpa (I hope that's how you spell her name).  She was flying back to India after spending a week in Indianapolis with Eli Lilly.  Random.  She was super fun.  We had the best time talking about shopping during Black Friday, and how bad traffic is in India.  I wish I would have got her name.  :(  The crying baby throughout the flight was nauseating, but I actually slept about 6/14 hours.  Thank goodness.  I got on the ground, and met up with all the SLB people I hadn't noticed before, nice group.  Customs was a breeze.  Slowly, in groups of 2 or 3, taxis started to come and take SLB people away.  Of course, I was 1/3 in the last group with a whole bunch of Saudis.  Granted the Saudis seemed nice, but I was getting some weird looks.  We finally all trooped out in a big group and got into a 10 person seat van.  Off we went to the hotel.  It's hard to say, but the area seemed pretty nice.  Mostly just desert, palm trees, and road.  In UAE all SLB employees must travel in vehicles that go the speed limit, so it took forever to get out of that place.  Finally got the hotel, and I have such a nice room!  That was around 10 PM local, so I got my stuff together for the next day and tried to go to sleep.  Hard to do, but I got some at least.  I'm super ready for a new exciting first day!!