So it has definitely been way too long since my last post, therefore I will try and catch you up to speed on the events of….lets say the last month or so. After finishing up here in Bahrain, I flew to Cairo then onto Paris finally making my way to Brussels. I stayed at this great hotel right across from the Royal Palace called Hotel Astoria. Super old and reminded me of the Plaza in NYC. It was great because I was there for a couple of days and it was my first time to actually be able to get out and explore Brussels. Which is a great city with lots of history and coble stone streets dating back I don’t know how long. The last night I was in Belgium we had our company Christmas party. They put on a real show with dinner and a night club. Interesting is all I can really say about the party itself. Imagine getting together 70 or so people my age who had just spent the last 6 or so months traveling around the world getting together right before they take a couple of weeks off for the holidays. Before dinner the CEO of the company got up and did a presentation on the state of the company the future and gave out some awards. I am happy to say that I got one of the awards with a certificate and even better a large Christmas bonus in recognition of the great sales that I had, had the month up there to.
I actually went straight from the party to the hotel to take a shower grab my bags and then head to the airport. As you can imagine my luggage was extremely over weight but again I was able to have good karma on my side and didn’t get charged a thing. I flew from Brussels to London where the fog was absolutely terrible, and my flight was only one of like five on all of the boards that they were actually letting leave it was quit a miracle. After an extremely long flight on AA ( one of the wonderful blessings of the US JK) during the day I arrived at DFW that evening. What a joy it was to be able to see my family who I had missed so much since I had been gone close to 7 months. First thing on the agenda was….you guessed it Mexican food, and as things tend to do while your away things changed. One of my favorite Mexican food places was no longer called Chuiys rather some new name but thankfully still same great food.
The next night Heather Donnie and the girls were able to join us all for Christmas Eve. Forget all of the presents the best part about all of it was having everyone together. The next morning we woke up to go see the girls see what Santa brought them and then on to see Aunt Ann, Uncle Berger and Jana in Wichita Falls. The next day we drove to Angel Fire, New Mexico to go skiing. It was great getting to spend quality time with the family. The girls fined tuned their skills on the skies, during which Ashton and I on many occasions built huge snow men!!! During the time while we were there Angel Fire had a record breaking snow storm. I will never forget the amount of snow falling down and will probably never see it snow as much again. We were delayed getting home for New Years Eve because of the roads being closed along the way, but I was able to catch the end of a party at AJs that was lots of fun getting to see more friends. I also got to make my way to see Papa and the rest of the family in west Texas before the cruise. Papa looked great and even beat me in a couple of games of domino’s.
We spent two nights in South Beach before the cruise at a great hotel that was once owned by Frank Sinatra. South Beach is definitely an overly trendy one of a kind area of the world. A mix between Florida trendy and Cuban flair. We then boarded the Millennium which is one of the highest rated ships of Celebrity Cruise line for a 7 night cruise to San Juan, St Thomas and another port that ended up getting canceled and replaced for Nassau Bahamas. I had a great time getting to spend time with the guys and making new friends. We also had Dick and Betty Lou from the last cruise that definitely kept things fun and interesting. The cruise overall was up there with our favorites and definitely Celebrity kept our expectations as high as ever with the food and service. Since the ship decided to go to Nassau we were even able to again explore the Atlantis which is still on my top five favorite hotels and definitely one of the new world wonders with its endless lagoons of astonishing fish and aquatic life.
As soon as the ship docked and we were able to get off the ship I headed straight to catch my flight back to Belgium to start back to work. I sat reflecting on the fun that was had not only on the cruise but with friends and family throughout my time off. To be honest it was very hard to leave family and friends and head back across the pond, one that I am sure many people feel. But at the same time I knew that I had unfinished business, unfinished commitments, and experiences and opportunities to come. When I speak about commitments I think about the promise that I made to myself saying that after graduating from college I was not just going to sit around or take a mediocre job to get some experience before starting grad school among other commitments. It has now been over seven months since I began with the company and I left saying that I would go for a year then analyze the opportunities that wait ahead. At the time of writing this it has now been eight months and I am excited to think of what is to come in the next four months. And even more excited about the opportunities that will then be available to me once I hit that one year mark. At home, with the same company moving into management, and for that matter I have always been talking about moving to Rio de Janeiro or even getting business experience in Asia.
This being said it was reaffirmed to me that my family and friends are a large part of my backbone and support team to help me continue to think big, achieve and explore. And for those of you reading this I am thankful.
Currently I am in Bahrain getting all of the last things in order for the magazine to go to print. It is currently under production and I have a deadline of the end of this coming week for all final materials to be turned into my editor. I hope to then head to Dubai for a time to be determined probably a week or so before I start up my next project. My next project will take me to Saudi Arabia. A country which offers many things, first of which is it is the largest oil producers in the entire world, secondly they do not give out tourists visas, and third women are not aloud to drive and finally it is home to Mecca the most holy place to the Muslim faith. I think it is possible that Saudi Arabia is an exciting opportunity to get to live and explore, both in business and socially.
That being said I will try to do better and keep this more up to date. I hope you enjoy the photos and God bless.
Chad
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