Our Next Adventure

So this week we found out where we will be going for our next assignment! We're excited to announce that in June we will be relocating to....

Greenville, South Carolina!

We're SO exciting to be moving a little closer to home and begin a new season of life in June! The position that I will be filling will be similar but different to the one that I am in now. It will still be a process position but will have some operations responsibilities mixed in as well. The site is located in Mauldin, SC (just outside of Greenville) and is way smaller than the Geismar site, only about 80 people! Also the site makes a lot of care chemicals in a batch process (as opposed to the continuous and semi-batch processes that I work on now) so the chemistry and processes will change as well.

Fluor, the company that Joshua has been working for, has an office in Greenville so pray that he might be able to transfer there so he doesn't have to start all over again. BUT if he does then Jacobs engineering and URS are in the area so he definitely has some options...and really, who doesn't want to hire Josh?

We are enjoying the community that we've begun to establish here in Baton Rouge and it will be hard to move again, but we have come to expect change and growth in this season of our marriage and we are so grateful for it!

Here are some maps you might find interesting...you know, in case you're driving around and want to come see us!

 

  

First Job So Far

After a lot of uncertainty and patience, I finally landed a job and started working last November.  I was excited to finally start putting this engineering education to use.  I wasn't really sure what to expect or if I would even like it at all... But in any case I figured it would beat sitting around at home for longer!  Anyways, it's been a while now so I figured I would share a bit about my work life now.  I get a lot of questions whenever I see people, so maybe this will give some insight to everyone who's curious.

The company I work for is called Plant Engineering Services.  It's a relatively small company (there's 30 or so people in our office and I think it's one of the biggest... honestly don't know much about PES though) but it's a subsidiary of a very large company called Fluor.  Fluor is one of the top engineering consulting and design firms in the US, so I was super thankful for this opportunity.  For me, this has been an excellent way to start things off.  Being employed by and connected to Fluor has some major benefits.  But at the same time, I'm working in a small office where things are more personal.  I suppose you could say it's the career equivalent of going to a well respected university but having small classes with professors who know your name.

My boss is a very nice and super extroverted engineer from Lebanon who came to the US for college.  Apparently my Master's degree was a big selling point with him, so I guess the extra pain and time it involved was worth it. :)

For the most part I've really enjoyed my time so far!  Sometimes things seem a bit slow... Though Erin and I were talking about this and we're starting to wonder if Georgia Tech is to blame for that?  We're starting to get the impression that the real world is a lot more laid back and chill than college was. From our experience at least. Everyone at work goes on and on about how busy things are... Granted, some of them do seem to work a lot. But I think a lot of them get paid by the hour and just have nothing better to do. Because they sure aren't as frantic as Tech students with a homework assignment due!

I spent the first couple weeks fitting in and figuring things out. Doing my best to meet people. I think I was a bit intimated by it all at first... I did (do) NOT know how to be an engineer. What in the world are these people thinking to have hired me? But they seem to be think otherwise. :)

Anyways, it really has been fantastic. I've learned a lot so far. And I've learned that I knew more than I thought I did! There's certainly an element of hesitation involved... What if I make a mistake? It has REAL consequences now, not just a bad grade! And there's no solutions manual to check or classmate to compare with after you do the problem! But I've decided that's why I don't have a professional license yet. My mistakes are my boss's responsibility for now. :) That's comforting.

I've been working on one project in particular so far and it has been absolutely fascinating. Basically there's a fertilizer plant just south of Baton Rouge, and they have an ammonia plant on site. The ingredients of ammonia are pretty explosive apparently (methane and hydrogen gas I think). Of course they're pretty tight on safety in these places, they want to know what will happen if such an explosion were to occur... A while back a team of engineers did a bunch of chemistry magic and put together a report of all the possible explosion scenarios. It's our job to tell them what will happen to the buildings that are nearby.

This type of problem actually involves a lot of things that I learned during my Masters program, so I've been really pumped to actually apply it. I hadn't expected to do anything quite like it- at least not so soon. And it's definitely very fulfilling to dig into the problems and understand it. I actually learned stuff! We also got to go visit the site two weeks ago, which I really enjoyed. It makes the reality of it sink in when you actually see these buildings that you've been drawing pictures of and performing calculations on.

My only complaint so far is that I've been flying solo on my project. It's just me and (when he has time) my boss. Everyone else in the office seem to be on the same page with a number of big, crazy projects that are going on. Meanwhile I just sort of chill as I work on my one-man project. BUT apparently I'll be phasing into a new project this week, so I'm excited about that. :)

Other than the work itself, and despite the fact I've been a bit lonely on my project, I've been doing my best to keep on meeting people. It's fun to work at such a small office where everybody knows each other!

If you have a moment, I could always use some prayer! Both in learning to love and befriend my coworkers better and in learning to be the best structural engineer I can be!

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any other questions, either in person or in the comments below.

Visitors!

Something that has really blessed Joshua and I in these first (almost) five months of marriage are the visitors that have traveled to see us. In some ways being so far away from where we grew up and have such an extensive support system has been really great in our marriage. The distance has helped teach us to really lean on one another and has helped us build our identity as 'Joshua and Erin' instead of 'Joshua' and 'Erin' mushed together. From the very moment we arrived in Baton Rouge we have embarked on our journey with a clean slate as a combined 'us' instead of retaining independent elements of our pre-marriage lives and figuring out how they can fit together.

In other ways, though, we deeply miss our families and the intimate relationships that we have invested so much of our lives in. Especially as I have struggled to fit into my new position at BASF, doubt sometimes creeps into my heart about whether it was even worth it to leave everything familiar and come all the way out here.

So when these three drove all through the night to arrive at our doorstep on a Saturday morning over the Christmas break you cannot even begin to imagine how overjoyed we were to be reunited with some good friends!

The two days that we got to spend with Rob, Drew, and Alexa were like a glass of cool water on a summer day in Louisiana. It was wonderfully refreshing to see their smiling (and sleepy) faces and to hear all of the wonderful and challenging things that God is doing in their lives. It was also so great to share our new lives in Louisiana with them: to show them our town, our home, our church, and to tell them about work. God has been moving and teaching us so much as we have sprung from our comfortable nests and flown into the great beyond that it was relieving to be able to put words to all of the revelations and changes that have happened to friends who know our hearts and our background so well.

We are so thankful for Rob, Drew, and Alexa for making the long journey to Baton Rouge to bring Joshua and I a little bit of the home we have been missing so much! We love you guys!

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Our other visitor we had over the Christmas break was my favorite little sister in the whole world. Ashton rode back with us when we returned home after Christmas and flew out of New Orleans on New Years Eve a few days later.

We took Ashton to do all of the 'tourist' things that we could think of and afford. We went and saw mike the tiger and LSU's campus, visited the French Quarter in New Orleans, ate Beignets at Cafe Du Monde, had dinner at the infamous Camellia Grill, saw the Capitol building, and drove over the Mississippi River.

It would have been nice if the weather had cooperated with us more, but I loved getting to share our life with Ashton and to experience some new things with her as well (yes, we had not managed to get beignets before that weekend). It was also really great to hear more about her college life after the completion of her first semester. I love my sister's heart so much and watching her learn and grow warms me because college is such a special season of life to discover more about yourself. I think I can finally identify all of her friends by name from pictures and I'm all up to date about who's dating who so I don't make a fool out of myself when Joshua and I finally get to meet all of these wonderful people that have become incredibly dear to Ashton.

So basically you should come visit us.