Debrief

More home time! I babysat Nate on Thursday while Nikki got a rest. He was a bit fidgety but we enjoyed ourselves. In the afternoon Nikki and I went to town to change Nate’s feed and to get my license and health insurance. It’s all sorted!

Mum and I left early on Friday for Sydney. Ebony had her last exam at school and mum was going to pick her up. I was going too to get my car from school and to go to my debrief for my Mongolia volunteer stint. My car’s in a bit of a mess but the main worry is the spider skins all around the car. It means there are even bigger spiders lurking in the darkness of my little Ford Laser. Ewwww.

I got to the city nice and early so I could have lunch with Lai. Which was delicious! Vietnamese Pho. YUM. My favourite. It was so nice seeing Lai too. My interview thing with the recruitment lady was conveniently around the corner. We chatted for ages about what job I’m after, where I want to live, what career direction etc. I also went in to a bit of detail about some CSG drilling stuff – it was fun! There are no specific job offers but hopefully next week something might pop up that would be suitable. The super cool thing is that if I want to test out the waters with recruitment, she can get me an interview with the boss of the company I was talking to. It would be a Sydney based job, which would be really awesome! It would mean I’d be turning my back on geology BUT we’ll see.

I’m going to London with Tegan and Ebony. When I get back early January for Ebony’s birthday, I’ll test the waters again. If nothing is progressing re: jobs, I’ll start pushing and then look at going on a nice easy holiday maybe to Cambodia or maybe even to Thailand or Bali again. Just because. It also depends on the money situation.

So the recruitment chat was totally worth it. There are a bunch of Sydney based oil and gas companies that I can look at. The lady was lovely and I feel like it went really well.

I could check in to my hotel after all that so check in I did. Volunteers started arriving which was so exciting! We ended up convening in my room with our food vouchers, ordering food because it was the cheapest food of the three eatery options we had. We had a couple of bottles of wine and lots and lots of food. We’d been out for a couple of drinks beforehand so I was starting to get a bit tiddly. More volunteers arrived, more hugs, hellos etc and more food ordered to satiate empty tummies. It was so nice to see all these people that were in Mongolia, but are now in Australia. Below: ordering in our dinner (we got a voucher for dinner in the hotel, ordering in was the cheapest option).

Lai had to go to work to finish something off AND there were free drinks there, so I left the other volunteers to catch up (they were all previous intakes so had much more to catch up on together) and we headed to Lai’s weird circle office work.

A quick drink of wine later we tried to get in to the Ivy bar but decided against it because they were asking a $20 covercharge, which is crazy. We ended up at The Establishment where we had more gin and tonics and chatted. We met some nice new people – my recent Mongolian adventures captures the interest of many, which is weird. I know it’s not weird – it’s a different place and all that jazz. It’s just weird at the moment because Mongolia is so normal to me that it’s weird to think of it as not-normal. If you catch my drift.

It was a big night – lots of fun. It ended when I was trying to teach a nice army boy how to partner dance and he flopped me around a bit too much and it looked like we were intoxicated (which, I probably was but definitely NOT beyond extra-tiddly) so we had to leave. I don’t know when I got to sleep but it must have been close to sunrise because I’m terribly tired and hungover today! It was worth it though.

We’re staying at the Grace Hotel. It’s pretty fancy, quite nice. Breakfast buffet left a bit to be desired. There was a lot of stuff but it wasn’t deliciously fresh. I wasn’t really looking forward to the sessions today because I thought they’d be all wishy-washy, boring kinda thing. But they weren’t. I’m so glad I came. We all just talked so openly about everything Mongolia – why we went, who and what we impacted, what we expected and what we got out of it. All those kinds of things. We all had different experiences but it was a great way to have a bit of closure re: my job that was so, so shit – and knowing that I definitely do not regret that decision to leave. It was nice to get other people’s ideas and inputs and how they’re feeling and coping with different things now. At dinner tonight I met another girl from my intake (30). There were only two of us as most people are still overseas. She was in Tonga and quit her job just like mine. We talked about it a lot and it was reassuring to know that someone had felt the same as me and made the same decision as me.

My Tom Tom isn’t working at the moment which makes city driving that much scarier. That plus my hairy huntsman spiders crawling around my car. Sunday tomorrow – yay! I’m going to the markets with some awesome friends and then I’ll spend more time with Lai and do some stuff. You know. Whatever.