Monday was my big meeting with my boss, Francisco, to update him on my work and to show off my current prototype. I showed him all of my prototyping work, explained my design decisions, and the testing data I’ve collected so far. Francisco and Michael (my other coworker involved in the project) had a couple of suggestions, such as adding in an opening for the LEDs. Overall, Francisco seemed very pleased, so much so that he asked me to work on creating two final prototypes to be sent off to the government lab for testing on July 30th. I was a little taken aback as I was not exactly sure how Brazilian medical device approval processes work.

Nonetheless, I spent the week busily prepping my final prototypes. After adding in the design changes suggested in the meeting, I moved from the Cliever to the Objet and it was glorious. While the cheaper Cliever made some good medium fidelity prototypes, it takes a long time to heat up (45 minutes to heat in order to complete a 6 minute print…), doesn’t do well with small-scale detail, and has difficult to remove support. The Objet is an entirely different beast. When I brought the completed prototypes back to the office, my coworkers crowded around my desk to admire my gorgeous prototypes (if you can’t tell, I’m the tiniest bit proud of my work).

The rest of my week was spent prototyping and printing a power button to be used with my prototypes and assembling drawings to be used in the user’s manual. I also created a list of documentation I’ll need to pass along to my boss/coworkers so this project can be continued.

Nathalie and I kickstarted our weekend by going to a potluck/party hosted by my coworkers and got sugar headaches from all the donuts, cinnamon sugar nuts, and coconut cakes we consumed. Then, on Saturday, we made our way to Na Brasa, a fancy steakhouse recommended by Nathalie’s coworkers. And oh my, oh my, was it delicious. At one point, we had to beg the waiter to stop bringing out food as we couldn’t keep up with the mounds of prime ribs, sausage, sirloin, and toasted cheese filling our plates. I can now happily check “Ate an an authentic Brazilian steakhouse” off the bucket list.

Then, on Sunday, I joined Latané and some of our friends from the Casa at Parque Farropilha to spend our weekend afternoon in the traditional Porto Alegrian style–sipping chimarro and relaxing at the park. I ate doce de leite filled churros covered in sprinkles and wandered around a Sunday feria (an art fair/flea market common in this region). My favorite was a traditional gaucho musical group, crooning in Portugese and pulling passerby in to dance. One of the older men in the group was quite the flirt, grabbing nearby grandmas and pulling them in for a little tango-esque dance. It was quite the atmosphere of art and music.

I can’t believe this is already my second to last week here. It’s cliche, but I feel like just yesterday I was stepping off the plane from São Paulo, exhausted and dirty from nearly 20 hours of travel. I can’t wait to make the most of my last week here!