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