Wednesday, February 7, 2007
10:04:35 PM

Today we had a regional learning session where we learned the following trivia:
Main Industries of Farmington: Coal, Oil, Gas.
“Four Corner States”: Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico.
Farmington is in San Juan Country
Rig Worker: Roughneck, one of 10 most dangerous jobs in the world
Navajo’s Role in WWII: Used Navajo Language as “Code Talkers”, Only code never broken by the Japanese during the war.


Tomorrow we’ll be leaving the Museum and taking a Guided Bus tour to the Navajo Reservation.
One of the main industries in Farmington is the oil industries is the Oil industry. A lot of migrant mexican workers work in the oil field. Many of them don’t have the proper training because many don’t have green cards which makes it legal to work in the US. As a result, deaths are very frequent. There are two main jobs in the field work of oil production; there are those who drill the holes and lay the pipe, and there are those who come and install the compressors. The more dangerous of the two is drilling and spinning the pipe. These jobs generally go to the untrained migrant workers.
Compressors are basically giant engines which run off of the gas that is extracted that push the gas down the pipeline. An individual well could be in production for 50 years or more. Compressors however, usually only run 40,000 hours before they break down. When they break down they are fixed immediately, no matter what time of day. People are always on call. Colorado provides about 30% of the natural gas or the USA.

This Morning after our morning meeting and regional learning session; Patrick, Gabe, Mary, and myself went back to PATH to finish up with the pantry restocking and doing the baseboards in the living room. For Lunch we had brisket and nachos. We had had some Special guests in that morning from a local university to do fitness with the majority that stayed.
In the afternoon we did a complete run through. I think it went rather smooth considering its ben a while since we rehearsed. For supper we had more beans. A note on the beans; they’ve gotten to the point where they are adversely affecting me; and those around me. On more than one occasion I’ve cleared half the entire stage with my noxious fumes. Things are not going to get any better before they get worse either. Anyhow, we had supper in the civic center; catered by Navajo first nations people. The theatre was pretty much packed. We had people from local high schools participating in our “stomp” number as well as the Four Corners Childrens Choir joining us on a couple of pieces. After the show I went out an signed autographs like I was some kind of rock star. I was interviewed for the paper and everything. It was all good.

Our show tonight alone raised $17,000 U.S. For local charities and non profit organizations. We have another on Saturday as well; should be awesome.

This week we as a group have provided over 740 hours of community service in Farmington.
I also learned that I’ve been selected to do advanced work in the Netherlands. This means that I’ll be taking off 2 weeks early to set up everything in that city from host families to meals and community partners. Its going to be freaking awesome, but very very very intense.

We got all of the staging taken down by 11:30 pm and loaded into the trucks. Back with our host family, we had a midnight snack and are heading to bead because we’ve got to be up even earlier tomorrow for breakfast with our sponsors. Its all Good™