After landing in the Porto Alegre airport and walking off the plane to the small baggage claim, I realized that I needed to figure out where I should wait for the next 4 hours for Latané and Allie to land.  Given I had no idea how the airport was arranged, and I didn’t really want to end up outside with no way back due to security rules, I figured I should ask someone.  The one problem, however, was that I spoke very, very little Portuguese.  I decided I would try my luck talking to the security guard in Spanish (in addition to Mechanical Engineering, I am also a Spanish major).  I know the languages are very similar, but the process of explaining to the kind security guard that I needed a good place to wait for other people to land, but that I had no further connecting flight, was a pretty slow and arduous process.  There went my hope of being able to get by conversing in Spanish.  Nevertheless, the security guard eventually understood the gist of what I was trying to say and took me to a check-in agent who did speak English.  Hho suggested I take the bus to the other, bigger, terminal, which turned out to be the right move as both Allie and Latané landed there.

After two hours of sitting alone in the main lobby of the terminal, Dr. Wettergreen and Amy Kavalewitz from the OEDK and Professor Carlos dos Santos, the dean of engineering at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) arrived and very shortly after that Latané joined us.  We got a snack from one of the stores in the airport- O Rei do Pão de Queijo (The King of Cheese Bread- personally I think that is a great name for a store).  This marks my first introduction to hot chocolate in Brazil: half-hot-chocolate-half-chocolate-pudding-like goodness.  And pão de quejo, a rather delicious cheese bread popular throughout Brazil.

That night, our group was invited to a Churrasco style barbecue hosted by some of the people involved in the partnership between Rice and PUCRS.  And let me tell you, Churrasco is glorious.  In this style of barbecue meat, potato, sausage, bread, and cheese are skewered onto swords and cooked over a flame.  This was the ideal way to begin my introduction to Gaucho culture (Gauchos being the term for people from Rio Grande do Sul, the state that Porto Alegre is in)– food, and lots of it!

Churrasco

The first week itself was a combination of participating in Dr. Wettergreen’s signature Engineering Design Process Workshop and orientation to the PUCRS campus and its science and technology park TECNOPUC.  TECNOPUC’s website says, “The Science and Technology Park at PUCRS (TECNOPUC), officially inaugurated on August 25, 2003, fosters research and innovation by means of simultaneous interaction between academia, private institutions and government. Businesses of different sizes, entities and research centers from the Institution itself are located in an area of 5.4 hectares, on the University Campus, in Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul. Currently, TECNOPUC houses 101 organizations, 81 of them companies, 8 entities and 12 PUCRS research structures which, together, add up to more than 5.6 thousand job positions” (http://www3.pucrs.br/portal/page/portal/inovapucrs/Capa/Tecnopuc/Eng/Institution)

My favorite part of participating in the Engineering Design Process workshops was meeting a number of the professors and grad students from PUCRS, particularly Professor Filipi Vianna. He was excited to learn new strategies to improve his teaching and as a Mechanical Engineering professor, if he were at Rice I imagine he would be one of my favorite professors.  In spare time, he described his classes and how classes at PUCRS work, gave us sight seeing suggestions, and was overall very welcoming.  During one of the days during the first week, Professor Carlos gave us a personal tour of the PUCRS campus, which is very beautiful.  We also joined in on a tour of CriaLab that Professor Luis Villwock was giving to one of his classes–in Portuguese.  Listening so intently to a language I don’t speak was certainly tiring, but it was reassuring that I was able to understand the gist of what was going on, compliments of my Spanish knowlegde.  CriaLab is a space in TECNOPUC, sponsored by HP and Hewlett Packard (yes, they are two separate companies now, but more on that in next week’s post), that works to foster creative thinking.  We also visited the companies that we would be interning with–first Toth Tecnologia for Allie and later Rockhead Games for Latané.  Professor Filipi also gave us a tour of a maker space in TECNOPUC called Freezone, which has ended up being a wonderful resource for me.

 

Freezone

Thursday of the first week was quite the jam packed day and despite the fact it had been rainy all week, this was the first day it rained heavily while we were out and about.  Unfortunately, Allie had been sick for a few days so she did not come in, but Latané and I joined Professor Carlos and Professor Villwock in visiting HP, which is where I am interning.  We received an informal presentation/demonstration of the project that I would be a part of, which is a smart conference room space.  The description of the project was very software and electrical based, and as a very mechanically trained mechanical engineering, I was freaking out a little bit inside (don’t fret, my fears disappeared once I actually started interning–keep reading my blog to find out more!).  After the presentation, we actually picked up Allie to take her to the doctor to get her checked out and prescribed some antibiotics.  We then dropped her off back at our residence again to sleep some more, and by the time I got home again that night, she was looking so much better from the antibiotics.  I was very relieved, firstly because as a friend I didn’t like seeing her so miserable, and secondly, because as her roommate I didn’t want to get sick too!

After the doctor visit Latané and I returned to Dr. Wettergreen and Amy and a number of the PUCRS professors for the “needs finding” portion of the Engineering Design Workshop, which was taking place in the physical therapy building associated with PUCRS.  After finishing that and getting a snack, Latané and I waited on campus as the others left because we had been invited to attend a presentation happening at HP by John McCormick, who was visiting from the United States.  The presentation was interesting, hearing from people who had been working in the software industry for many years and their thoughts on where both HP and the industry were heading.  Certainly a solid introduction to the company I would be spending 8 weeks working with.

Friday morning we had the opportunity to visit the Science Museum next to campus, which is a quality museum.  It even has a human gyroscope! (I would highly recommend).  In the afternoon, Professor Carlos gave us a tour of the engineering labs, which were interesting to see, especially the Micro Gravity lab, in which they do experiments simulating the effects of being in space on the human body.

Me in a Human Gyroscope

Overall, the first week in Porto Alegre was busy but very interesting.  I was certainly ready for some rest on the weekend though!