It might seem like this is a less-than-exciting post from the outside, but for me, presenting at group meeting was really exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. My mentor has decades of experience in the field of tissue engineering and the rest of the grad students and post docs in the room definitely know way more about this topic that I have learned in my 10 weeks here, so it was pretty intimidating to be up there presenting on a topic that most people knew more about than I did.
In the last week of my time in Houston, my Dad flew down from Ohio to stay with my grandmother (his mother-in-law) and me for a few days. It was a good visit and my dad was able to help my grandmother with some things she needed fixed around the house. << That makes it sound like I’m not capable of helping my grandmother fix things, but she mostly just waited until he got there to point out the broken drawers and dead light bulbs, etc. That being said, I tried to help her open an empty pepper mill to refill it for probably 20 minutes before giving up, and my dad opened it within 20 seconds of having it in his hands. We had 3 nights of delicious food… strangely, none of which was . My grandmother is a great cook, but there were some Texas specialties that we wanted to go to because my dad really enjoys them every time he comes.
As I wrapped up my last few weeks of my research project in Houston, I realized that I learned a lot of things. Probably the most important thing I learned is that I want to go to med school…
Here are a couple belated pictures from my awesome weekend on Amy’s real Texas ranch! When we arrived, we went on a tour of the 44-acre property and saw the garden, pastures, 2 ponds, and COWS! Then we got to spend some time shooting clay pigeons in one of the pastures and hanging out by the ponds. Amy built a floating hammock/raft with her dad and brother earlier this year - it can be seen in some of the pictures below. They did all the buoyancy and force calculations to make sure it would float and not easily capsize. It was awesome to get to see parts of the Texas country - definitely different than Houston! Here are some pictures!
Last weekend, Nadia, Amy, our friend Neal and I all headed up to the real Texas ranch that Amy’s family owns. It’s about 90 minutes outside of Houston, and it’s one of the most “country Texas” places I’ve been so far.
I have a handful of pictures I had been meaning to post just for fun, but they didn’t really seem to fit in with anything… so now they fit in together as a post of irrelevant, unrelated pictures.
Most of the summer is already gone! I thought I’d share some pictures of the building I work in with you. It’s called the BioScience Research Collaborative, or BRC. When I visited Rice when I was still in high school, this building was still being built. It is the headquarters for the Bioengineering major, and it has both classrooms and labs. It’s a little far from the rest of Rice, and I have a 10-15 minute walk in mornings and afternoons from my car. I’m sad to say that I still get lost when I’m on Rice’s campus because I just haven’t spent all that much time there. The BRC is a really nice builiding to work in though. The space is very pretty, and the labs are relatively new and clean (well, as clean as my lab group can keep them, and I guess that’s not saying much - don’t worry, we have mandatory lab cleanup tomorrow). It’s right across the street from the huge Texas Medical Center - it’s a pretty cool feeling to be so close to the largest medical center in the world!
Last weekend we celebrated Nadia’s 22nd birthday. The festivities included delicious homemadeflautasand cake, a Batman pinata, and a game called Mexican Train Dominos.