Despite only working four days this first week, each day has been full of getting to know new people and reviewing old information.  Tuesday, the first day, consisted mostly of getting to know our fellow interns through ice breaker games and then a trip to the Houston Zoo.  Despite nearly melting in the Houston heat (I’m definitely not ready for late July 100º days), the scavenger hunt at the zoo was a fun way to start talking to a few of the interns.  Don’t forget the bonus points for selfies with the lions!

Wednesday we continued getting ourselves into internship mode and learning about each other.  We worked in a group to talk about different aspects of our respective countries, whether it be the U.S., Brazil, or Malawi, and then each group presented to the class.  I personally found it very interesting hearing the students from Brazil and Malawi talk about the university experience in their countries and noting the similarities and differences.  Other topics that groups talked about were culture (art, music, entertainment, food, literature, history, etc.) and the geography and infrastructure of each country.  One infrastructure difference I actually learned today during an activity related to skyscrapers is that where Mary lives in Malawi, buildings don’t really go over three stories and that the hospital only has one elevator that isn’t used a lot–definitely different from here in the U.S.

Thursday we started our engineering design boot camp in which we are doing a crash course in the engineering design process that I learned in the Introduction to Engineering Design (ENGI 120) class at Rice University.  While it is very similar to what I have done before, the refresher is definitely reminding me of details I have forgotten and also it is important that no matter where the interns in a group are from, we are all on the same page.  As we work through this boot camp, we practice skills (such as defining design criteria and brainstorming) with example problems on worksheets and then actually complete the step for a small project we are working on this week.  That project is designing an enrichment device for the anteaters at the Houston Zoo, which we visited again on Thursday to talk with a zoo keeper about the anteater’s needs.  We learned that the goal of the enrichment device will be to entertain the anteaters such that they move to the front of the exhibit where guests can see them instead of hanging out in the back by the barn entrance, which they tend to do.  The zoo currently has a few enrichment devices for them, but they typically don’t entertain the anteaters for more than 10 minutes at a time, so our goal is to improve upon that time.

Today, Friday, we had our first lunch meeting with all of the interns, Dr. Wettergreen, Dr. Leautaud, Dr. Oden, and Dr. Richards-Kortum.  Since it is the beginning, we talked about some of the projects we will be working on over the summer.  After working on the same project all of my freshman year (building a treehouse on campus by Ryon Lab- you should check it out), I am excited to work on something new.  However, I am still very excited that we will all be working on staining the treehouse to protect it from water damage at some point during the summer.

Now that one week is down, I can’t wait to see what the next six hold!