Happy Belated Fourth Everyone!

Fourth of July Tales from Austin and San Antonio

So, the REU kids decided to take an independence day roadtrip to visit the Texas state capitol and swing by the Alamo! What a fantastic idea and what perfect weather for it! Though the car ride was pretty long and as always there was some disagreement about where to eat dinner, we made it there and back without incident and everyone had a fun time! Unfortunately, the summer program is winding down, so I've been too busy to write about it! But I think that the pictures speak for themselves (with the help of my captions of course!). Suffice it to say that it was a blast and a half and the best fourth of July I can remember! Here are some pictures to sum up the experience:

THE CAPITOL:

Our first stop in Austin (after our hotel room) was the capitol. It was about as impressive as any other capitol building... they all kind of look the same to me. Inside the walls were all covered with paintings of the former governors including George W. and a ton of guys with incredible/hilarious facial hair. It's amazing what was once thought to be appropriate in terms of facial hair. There was also an assembly of old canons on the capitol grounds which of course fascinated the boys. The most exciting part of the capitol building were the statues of Sam Houston and Davy Crockett in the front hall, and the really really scary view down to the ground floor from the 3rd floor with a railing that was thigh high. Apparently I am slightly afraid of heights when I am surrounded by boys pretending to be about to push people over the edge of a completely inadequate railing. Funny how that works :)

AUSTIN (in short):

Surprisingly, I loved Austin. It seemed much more my type of town than Houston is, but maybe it was just because our hotel was in the middle of the downtown area where everything is within walking distance! There was a ton of art and murals (like the awesome "hi how are you" alien frog mural! It looks like a perfect album cover for a totally awesome and huge band!) and vintage stores and coffee shops. Above is a picture of me, Rhys, and Kristin drinking hibiscus tea at a really cool coffee shop in Austin called the Spider House. I recommend it to anyone who is ever remotely near that part of the state. We checked out the UT campus (very nice!) and we also played in a giant spaghetti monster (see the baby-sitter's club-esque picture at the beginning of this post) and spent a lot of time dressing up in ridiculous vintage clothes and taking pictures of how funny we all looked. After a full day of fun and adventure we headed back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool (or nap, depending on your taste) and then we set back out to a park on the river to watch the fireworks for the fourth. On the way, we saw the famous Austin bats that live under the bridge. Apparently it takes something like a half hour for all of the bats to vacate the bridge every night. They looked like a cloud of locusts or a plague or something. We found a place in the park to watch the fireworks and the Texas symphony orchestra was playing fireworks-y songs. It was really an awesome fireworks display, it may have been the best that I have ever seen even! Not to say that lovely Excelsior doesn't have good fireworks, but I guess that I have never seen the capitol city fireworks before! Not something to be missed in the future! Oooooooh! Aahhhhhhh!



SAN ANTONIO:

The next day we ended up in San Antonio in the early afternoon. We walked up and down the riverwalk before giving in to our extreme hunger and finding a place to eat (Mexican food! Finally!). Our food was really good and we were able to eat outside with a beautiful view of the less-than-beautiful but still strangely nice river. After lunch, we wandered through this mall to get to the Alamo--the main attraction in little San Antonio-- and ran into a girl with a snake! She worked for one of the restaurants and got paid to stand outside with the little python and let people take pictures with it. After a couple of the other students posed with it, I had to try too. The pictures people took of me are really funny, in most of them I look terrified! This one I was trying to look like Britney Spears a la I'm a Slave for You, but I think I just look scared and silly. Harsh (in the background) thought my fear was hilarious. Oh well, good attempt at becoming a parseltongue, right?!

THE ALAMO:
The Alamo was smaller than expected but still really cool to see. Has no one besides the BAtzli family ever seen Pee Wee's Big Adventure? Apparently not, because no one seemed to get the jokes I was making about the basement of the Alamo, but it was the first thing that both Dad and Mara mentioned when I talked to them about it. This picture is of the girls in front of the Alamo: Corlisa, me, Mariana, Eleanor, and Kristin. There were a bunch of guys there dressed in period costumes who were talking about various aspects of the Alamo's history: the weapons, the food and trade at the time. It was really neat and I found out that the tea that was dumped into Boston harbor was in brick form! Who knew?

Research continues to be fascinating and awesome as usual! I am sad that there are only a couple of weeks left!

Lots and Lots of Small Things

Greetings from Lovely Houston!

Well, if my lack of recent blog entries is any indication, things have really picked up here in Houston! Now that plumbing has been over for a while I’m really getting into the Nanotech stuff! My project continues to be awesome (though elusive) and I’ve been working with Azeem on his project which I still maintain is the coolest thing probably ever. He’s making gold nanoparticles which can potentially be used for targeting cancer cells in the body in order for localized treatment. Super cool, right!?

Recently I’ve been also doing work for the research grant that I have from AU this summer to begin work on my senior thesis (capstone). Last weekend I was desperately working on a draft of a literature review for my project. Lots of work!

Also we’ve also been having a lot of fun in the city. We went to the downtown Houston aquarium last Thursday. As far as aquariums go, it was not quite the best (its hard to beat the Baltimore aquarium or the one on Orkney Island!) but it was a lot of fun. The little kids discovery zone was, as always, quite a good time. I touched a horseshoe crab, and a shark, and a sting ray! BUT! After I touched the rays wing it tried to crawl up the side of the tank at me! At first I thought it was trying to attack me. But, after careful reconsideration I have figured out that the ray was pretending to be a dog and wanted to be pet more. In any case, after the museum we had dinner at the restaurant at the aquarium which had an enormous aquarium in the middle of it with a SAWFISH IN IT! Well worth my 10 dollars admission.

The post-doc who works in the lab across the hall invited me, Jeff, Rick, Kevin and two of the graduate students Chris and Hung to go with him to an event that was held at the Museum of Natural Science last Friday called “Mixers and Elixers.” The museum was enormous and when we got there it was already rockin’—there was a dj and a few tables set up. We walked around for a little and then we went down to see an IMAX film—“Galapagos: 3D.” I kind of feel like I had seen most of the footage of the island before—those big turtles and those lizards that swim seem to look a lot alike. But a good deal of the movie was about two marine biologists who were looking for proof of Darwin’s theory of evolution by going to the bottom of the ocean near the Galapagos Island in a special submarine. The best part of the movie happened when they were down in their submarine using special appendages to suck up interesting looking fish and they spotted one really neat one that looked like it had frog legs and an enormous mouth, so they lined up their fish-sucker behind it but the fish was too big! It got it’s legs sucked in and its mouth opened up and its eyes got wide like it was saying “What the--?” Hilarious. I hope they managed to let him go. When we left the museum there was a symphony orchestra playing at the Miller Outdoor Theater just over the hill from the museum so we got to see the end of that too.

Today, we had to give lab tours as part of the REU program requirements. It was neat to see some of the other labs. Also, we ended up being led into the room where the mice are kept which apparently one is not supposed to go unless one has proper animal clearance. Somebody came running into the room to tell us to get out and she told us that we were all contaminated because these rats were infected with all sorts of rat diseases. She was concerned that we would go to try to see the other rats and would spread the diseases to the rats that were supposed to be controls, but we were concerned about what it meant to us to be rat-disease-contaminated. Should we check when our last tetanus shot was? Should we drink lots of orange juice? I’m pretty sure we will survive, though I am checking to make sure I don’t grow mouse whiskers and a tail.

After work the REU students when to the Museum of Natural Science (again) to see the exhibit on the inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci. He was a really smart guy and he had a lot of good (and also crazy ideas). Then we went to the free normal exhibits, but we were kicked out before we saw everything. The exhibits were really interesting though—dinosaurs, lots of alternative energy stuff, and even some things about nanotechnology and microprocessing. Sweet, right!?

Tomorrow we’re going to a lecture in the morning that the dean invited us to. The speaker is someone who does forecasts for oil futures (or something. Does that make any sense?). I’m hoping that Azeem is back tomorrow (he’s been out the last two days, which makes my days in the lab very boring and slightly directionless). Fingers crossed!

I made the group at the museum get our picture taken in front of this exhibit because I thought that the "Super Small" title would be hilarious given that we are working on nanotech projects. So if it is not actually hilarious, please, don't tell me!

Fight Speed!

Hey all!

I printed using the lithographer (that crazy machine to the left)! Hooray! I am so excited about getting to work on real stuff now! Even though I am basically acting as Azeem’s personal assistant currently, I could not be more happy about it! I really like what I’m doing—it’s a cross between normal photography and something all small and science-fictiony. And when we get everything calibrated and figured out and I get to work on the membranes it will be all medical technology-ish! Gah! So exciting!

Well, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, allow me to tell you what’s been going on. We finally finished with the plumbing, and now I am training in on all of the equipment with Azeem. I’m slowly learning the incredibly complicated process of opening and closing valves and flowing various amounts of nitrogen gas in order to create a good vacuum in the system and maintain a level of voltage that supports the ion beam. It’s awesome (see above for more about my excitement). I really like it and I feel like I’m learning a lot about a very specific and sweet field. Nanofabrication and microfiltration is what all the cool kids do, let me tell you.

Speaking of cool kids, the REU kids dominated at the Cullen Oaks "Amazing Race" scavenger hunt last week. We went for the free food and the raffle to win an ipod and we got conned into actually playing the game. It was one of those ones where they give you a clue that is in riddle form and you have to figure out what it means in order to know where to go to get your next clue. One of the RA's who checked us into the building told us that we should have asked someone who knows the apartment complex better to be on our team, but we sure showed him. We were sprinting all over the apartment complex--I'm sure we looked hilarious.

Also last week, Corlisa, my roommate, introduced me to "real" barbeque. Apparently all of my life I have been mistaking "cookouts" for BBQ. We went to a restaurant called Pappa's, and I had a barbequed baked potato stuffed with BBQ beef. Oh my gosh, it was one of the best things that I have ever tasted. I can't wait to go back! YUM!

Another thing that is cool is 2 hours of bowling for $3. That’s right, this campus has a bowling alley in its sort of student union place, and yes, it is that cheap. Almost all of the REU students went last Friday and it was sweet. I’m not half bad at bowling, and some of the others are really pretty good. There’s also cheap pingpong and a bunch of video games. The best part though, is that they play really awesome music the whole time, and also that the bowling turns into cosmic bowling at 10. Excellent! Pretty sure we’re going back this Friday.

On Sunday, Rhys (an REU student from UH who is the “social director”) took some of us to the Houston Roller Derby. Rick, Harsh, Kristin, Rhys, Mariana and I headed down to Bayou Place to see 4 teams of girls on roller skates battle it out. I had never seen roller derby before and had little idea of what to expect. It was really neat and it looks like an awesome and fun game. I briefly contemplated looking up the local team in DC and trying out and then I realized that about half of each team was sitting out the game with injuries so I rethought that. It was really funny because each girl has to have a unique number and name. Some of them were slightly inappropriate for this forum and others were just funny: Scarlet O’Hurtya and Chainsaw Chick for example. I’m thinking that if I played I’d have to be number 3e8, and my name would have to be Fight Speed. That would be cool. We did see one fight right in front of us, where a girl jumped on the other girl’s back and yanked her helmet back and tried to start punching her. It was pretty intense, like a hockey fight. The game is super complicated so I can’t even begin to explain, but rest assured the other girl deserved it.

Until next time!

Eureka! I've got it!

Howdy Doody Y'all (am I getting more convincing?)

So I thought that this would be just a weekly blog, where I would post once on the weekend--my reflections on the week and stuff-- as a way to pass the time when everything in Houston is shutdown (see the rest of the story below), but it turns out that I have some time to spare and some fun things to report on, so you can choose to read on for adventures around downtown Houston, or you can give up now--no hard feelings.

Saturday passed by in a haze. I got up, ate breakfast, asked someone how to find the gym, went to the gym, came back, showered, got dressed, walked to campus, went to the library, walked back from campus, ate lunch, looked at the clock, aaaaand.... it was 2:30. No joke. Then there was some watching of some professional pool (billiards?) sharks in hiding, and then subway for dinner. The next day after the gym, Harsh called me and said "We're going downtown!" Thank goodness, I thought.

After a surprisingly short busride, we found ourselves in the middle of downtown Houston. The city is shockingly small, actually, but it's really beautiful because the area around it is so flat that you can see the little cluster of buildings from every side. We ended up walking in the opposite direction of most of the attractions, so we instead saw Minute Maid Stadium, the Convention Center, and Chinatown. We had appetizers at a little sports bar where they apparently have a Wii bowling league. After that we came back to our appartments and I got to work on my Powerpoint for my presentation on Tuesday.

My Powerpoint is awesome. It is one of the best Powerpoints I have ever even seen. It's going to blow everyone else out of the water.... I can only hope that what it says is correct. I was able to ask Dr. Ruchhoeft about my project today, and it turns out I'm not really working with Azeem. Instead, I am going to be looking at the development of a method in which the microfiltration membranes that we create will be stuck to a porous structure that will act as a support for the fragile membrane. Eureka! Finally I have my project, and even though the fine details still escape me, I could not be more excited!

I think it's going to be an nano-ly awesome summer.

Wish me luck tomorrow!

Houston, we have a problem

Hey all! (Or in the local dialect: "Howdy y'all")

So, my world travels being done but still suffering from the travel-bug, I asked myself, "what wild and exotic place can I spend the summer?" The answer, Houston, Texas of course. In my mind, Houston was more or less straight out of a bad Western movie, with cactuses, dust, and cowboys. This is, as some of you who know your geography/progression of history know, is no longer the case. Houston is a real city (a real city! Who knew?) and it has buildings and malls and museums and such. Or at least that's what I saw out of the window of the Super Shuttle that took me to the University of Houston campus about a week ago.

The University is not downtown, and does have one thing in common with my expectation of Houston as a ghost town: it is desolate and deserted. The campus has grown up as a commuter campus, and so there isn't much around it. It is located in the third ward (not the greatest area apparently) and if you don't have a car around here, you're pretty much out of luck. There's a Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, Popeye's, and a Subway about a 10 minute walk from our apartment complex, and other than that, nada. I've heard that there is a Starbuck's on campus that will open for the summer session next week (thank goodness!), so that makes things a little better, but the lack of anything fun or practical around the campus is a little worrying and very strange to me because it is so different from AU. The campus is really pretty, which you can see from the pictures. Lots of weird art and trees, and also scary statues of the schools mascots the Cougars (named Shasta and Sasha).

For those who may not know, I am in Houston for the summer for the REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) program through NSF (National Science Foundation). I'm going to be doing research in the Institute for Nanotechnology in the Cullen School of Engineering here at UH! Though this all sounds very cool and official, I'm a little concerned with not quite knowing what I am going to be working on yet! Soon I'll find out though.

Wednesday was my first day in the lab of Dr. Paul Ruchhoeft, but it wasn't all fun and games. Because Prof. Ruchhoeft just switched into a new lab there was a lot of stuff to rearrange, and there was no water, electricity, or air-conditioning! The A/C got fixed very quickly, but me and Jeff, who is another REU student from UF working in the lab, have been assigned the task of putting up the pipes to bring water into the lab and a couple of others. I didn't expect to be plumbing this summer, but it's a good real world skill to have (yeah?)! Two other REU students from another lab, Rick and Kevin, were helping us last week, and even though plumbing is kind of boring and very difficult with only one PVC cutter and one ladder, it wasn't half bad. The boys are very nice and pretty funny, but the days are long.

The two graduate students in the lab, Tim and Azeem, are both really nice. From what I gather, my project (once we finish with the plumbing) will be working with Azeem to help him develop a technique to produce microfiltration systems using a lithographic process...I think. I have a bunch of literature about the processes so hopefully when I finish going through that I will have a better understanding of what we're doing. For the REU program we have to write up formal research reports, and we have to make a short presentation about our projects next Tuesday, so I hope I get some better idea of how things are going to work before them. I'll ask Azeem on Monday. I keep joking that since all that we've been doing is plumbing I'm going to go and make my presentation as if that was my summer research project--I'd dress up like Mario (from the Mario Bros.) and start explaining the intricacies of one inch elbow joints. Funny, but I am not sure how funny the people in charge would find it. And, more importantly, I don't know where to get a Mario costume.

My roommate here is pretty awesome, her name's Corlisa and she goes to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She's originally from around here and has family in the area which is nice because her Grandma has agreed to take us grocery shopping once a week, which is a really great set-up. The other people in the program are all really nice, but we are all pretty bored sitting around the apartments. The guys are playing poker and pool, but as I suck at both I'm hesitant to join. Especially because they play for money. Who knows, maybe I'll get really good by the end of the summer, so watch out!

That's about it for now, I'm waiting for the season of Sex and the City that I bought off of Itunes to download (Hey, don't judge me, they just don't have good shows on Itunes!), and contemplating reading for my project here, reading for my AU summer research project, studying my GRE book, or reading Wicked... yeah guess which one I'm going to do.

Yee-haw and go Coogs!

Kiersten

Flavor-ices consumed this week: 5
Things that have fallen on my head in the lab: 4 (2 assorted pipes, a metal rod, a pencil... I think they should supply us with hard helmets!... or I should be more careful... leaning towards hard hats.)
Cougar cards I have lost: 1