It is has been a really long time since I have been able to update my blog. For some reason recently it has been hard to long on to the blogging website, but here it goes....

My mom said that she has been keeping it updated in the comments section, so check those out if you have time.

Since leaving Beijing so much has happened. I am now in Urumqi working for Goldwind. I asked if I could do a rotation there, but really I have to know what I want and then ask for it. A rotation according to the company is to spend about a week in each department. On one level this is useful because you get to know who is who in the company, but on another front it is a waste of time because you don't really have any work to do for the weeks that you are rotating around. As I am starting to get to know how the company operates, I am realizing what skills I want to develop.

For the first two weeks I was in the assembly workshop helping to put together the wind turbines. I was rather overwhelmed with how large they are the first time I saw them. I don't think that I had ever considered how big wind turbines are and I had never really been up inside one to really know. All of the new engineers and many of the new employees will spend a month working in the workshop, most of them have never had any practical experience in university so they are learning from scratch how to screw in bolts and choose the correct size. Really the assembly plant is like a big puzzle. All the pieces come in and you follow the directions to put it all together. There are only a few parts which require some higher level skill for example the pressure pipes and aligning the rotor. I asked about how well the rotors align and about 20% don't fit correctly so they have to change them out and try another one. The picture is of me standing in front of one of the wind turbines. I think the orange suit is fantastic. The other foreigners in the company said that if my work suit was not dirty then I wasn't doing my job. Well, I found that the Chinese workers do a lot to keep theirs clean, so in the picture mine is in good shape. It isn't in the best of shape right now though, since I have started going to the wind farm and climbing up the towers.

About two weeks ago I had my birthday. I don't think that I have celebrated my birthday so much in such a long time. I went with one of my friends to her boyfriend's hair salon to get my hair cut and then she treated me to having my nails done, then we went out to dinner at a Brasilian resturant. This is the closest I can get to latin music in Urumqi, so I wanted to go for my birthday. It is buffet style then they bring around large skewers of meat for everyone. I was most excited about the beans, rice and fresh vegetables. We then went out dancing until about 3am. It was quite fun. Usually, my birthday isn't that exciting when I move to a new place because I still haven't made lots of friends, but it has been pretty easy to make good friends since I have arrived. The same weekend I got a Chinese room mate. She is from Xian and has come to the company to do an internship, she is a phd student for engines, but has also studied quite a bit about wind energy. She has taught me a fair amount about the possibilities of wind energy in China. The company asked if she could stay with me since I have an extra room and the girls dorm is full. (I stayed in the guys dorm the first week that I arrived, it is a bit annoying to have to wait until the shower is completely empty then put up a do not enter sign to take a shower). It is good to have a room mate now because my house has more people coming over and it doesn't seem so lonely.

These days I am going to the wind farm. The closest wind farm is about an hour away and really it looks almost exactly like Nevada. The tumble-weed like grasses, the mountains on both sides, it is uncanny. The only thing Nevada doesn't have are domesticated camels roaming around. I have been going out with the customer service teams to do repairs on the wind turbines. It is interesting to see how they go about repairs and see what kinds of problems the wind turbines have. One of the biggest problems is that their is oil leakage from the gear box, although I haven't worked on fixing this problem, it is noticeable because there are puddles of oil inside some of the towers and the ladders get rather slimy. I went with teams to realign the shaft between the gear box and generator, adjust the break pads, and replace one of the yaw gear motors. I am not sure if that is exactly the right English name because I am learning the names of these things in Chinese and sometimes, I don't know exactly what the name would be in English. My vocabulary is definitley becoming more specialized. Changing the yaw gear motor was the most interesting, because we had to set up a pulley system to get it up into the nacelle (the housing for the wind turbine at the top). The motor that lifts things into the nacelle was too small to hoist up the yaw motor. We used a truck to lift it up and once it was up there we found out that it didn't work properly, it took 6 people about 4 hours to get the work done and then it had to be done again the next day. Now, I know to alway check a head of time.

I am trying to go to Inner mongolia to work for several weeks at a wind farm, because they are putting up the towers now. But the process is in the works, so I'll have to see in the next few weeks if it all goes well.

As far as Thanksgiving goes I had a good one. I didn't think that I would be able to do much for Thanksgiving but it turned out pretty well. I taught an advanced English class that evening and I usually go out with my students for dinner (they are mostly people who work in the R&D department). That night beyond Thanksgiving we talked a bit about IPO's and renewable energy. Afterwards, when we went out for dinner we had a few more people join us because one of the students is leaving for a month (he is actually a manager), so it was not only Thanksgiving but a going away party. We had carmelized sweet potatoes, corn and pine nuts, green beans with chilies, greens, and chicken with potatoes. I think that is pretty close to what I would eat at home, and perhaps from a vegetarian's point of view even tastes better. The only thing missing was pumpkin pie, but I had some of that in Beijing before I left, so I can't complain.

That is about all the news I have these days, I will try to post more often as the internet allows.
Until next time...