Arrrrrrrriba! Hola, es Victoria! Perdon, ahora solo hablo Espanol - just kidding! What a couple days it has been, but we are finally in La Coruna and very excited to be settling down for five weeks of cultural immersion, the moment you've all been waiting for! Can they REALLY survive in a foreign city for five weeks? Only time will tell, but so far, so good! It has been a little difficult living in separate apartments, *cue separation anxiety*, but we are really trying to embrace the full immersion... for the 8 hours we are apart while sleeping.
I live in an apartment just 40 minutes walking from the beach, on the somewhat outskirts of the city. It is a cute, nice apartment on the third floor with four bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. I know I live with humans and I am told I actually live with 3 other girls! However, as of right now I've only met one girl for like five minutes just after I arrived and I know there’s someone next to me because I can hear her but that's all I know. I guess it's a different lifestyle here! Everyone minds there own business and does there own thing. A little weird but not a bad thing! Everything is good though and my room is small, cute and comfortable (see below). The only problem I've encountered thus far is the door to get into my building which is quite janky and requires a great amount of skillfulness with the key to open. Most of the times (due to pure luck) I have been able to open the door. Only twice have I spent 10 minutes looking like I was trying to pick the lock only to be saved by the same man (yes, twice) who out of nowhere swoops in to save the day. He has now twice kindly attempted to teach me, but it’s not going very well. I’ll keep you guys updated on the door situation.
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| My new room! |
**UPDATE: I have encountered the girl who lives in the room next to me, she said "hola" to me, but it was 7:30 AM, dark, and I didn't have my contacts in, so I still have no idea who she is... hahaha oh well**
So far I have really enjoyed La Coruna! It is beautiful and everyone is very nice - we haven't gotten too many judgmental looks due to the craziness that is Addy, Lauren and Victoria. The program coordinators are both super awesome women and they have some great things planned for us. They have really poured their hearts and souls into this program. We have already (surprisingly) become friends with the other students in the program and have had a fun time figuring things out together and going to the playa. But mostly eating. If you haven't figure it out yet from the other blog posts, we spend most of our time stuffing our faces with just about everything we can find. Luckily, we walk a lot, so much my legs have actually been sore, so I will not be coming super sized due to the endless french fry-filled tapas I have eaten.
Yesterday was my first day at my internship. I will be interning with a company called Aqualgae that specializes in designing, manufacturing, and implementing production plants of photobioreactors that grow microalgae. They mostly work for companies that wish to use microalgae for their products or research. There's many applications to microalgae, like for example it can be used for skin care products, food products, used to absorb CO2, etc. I will specifically be working on the food application of microalgae and working on the Dulcesol project (as far as I know). Dulcesol is company similar to, for example, Hostess, that makes pastries. They are creating a healthy pastry line that has microalgae in it. They already have a photobioreactor production plant, but now they want a greenhouse to cover the reactors. So, they have given me dimensions to work with but I have to do some research, figure out what the best kind of greenhouse is and then design and model it. So far I've spent the past two days just modeling the production site using a program I’m familiar with called SolidWorks. Day one consisted of me starting from scratch with some of the old stuff from their past intern, the power going out, losing most of my work, and then realizing I could just modify one of the past intern's designs. Day two consisted of me realizing the intern had some correct dimensions, but a lot of wrong dimensions in her model and me going back and trying to fix them. I have to fix the dimensions on a model of a storage container and it has taken me forever, it's the worst, and I am still not done. But soon I'll be working on the greenhouse.
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| Some photos from my internship! |
My internship is about half an hour away with 20 minutes of walking and 10 minutes on the bus. I work in a nice modern office building that has a cafe, lounge area and even a gym! Aqualgae's office is just a large room on the second floor. I work with two somewhat-young guys - Filipe who is the technical project manager, and Rogelio, who is an industrial engineer. It's just the two of them at this office and a biologist in Portugal. They are both super nice and have been very welcoming. Schedules are definitely different here however, as both of the guys showed up 40 minutes late the first day because they were tired and 20 minutes late the second day. So much respect, but if only they would tell me so I could sleep in, too!
Overall, I am very excited and looking forward to the next five weeks! Frizzy hair and all.
Websites:
Internship: http://aqualgae.com/en/home/
Company of the Project I’m working on:
Intriguing issues on the job for you, and enjoyed reading your process for solving them. Real life stuff, huh, including co-workers who arrive... when they arrive. The microbiology stuff is fascinating as well; so our Twinkies may be filled with green goo instead of what passes for cream? Frankly, it'll be an improvement. You stay safe, and keep the blog coming as we look forward to sharing this adventure 'armchair' style:
ReplyDeleteThank you for allowing us to do so.