In the last week, I spent over 40 hours travelling 9000 miles away from home. I tripled the number of continents I’ve visited and more than doubled the amount I’ve countries I’ve been to. The long journey was equal parts challenging and thrilling, and it was made especially fun by the fact that it was shared with five of my amazing peers and fellow interns. (Seven once we finally met up with Kyla and Liseth in Johannesburg!).

Between the five of us that flew out of Houston together, we had 11 checked bags, each weighing 50 pounds! Six of the bags were filled with supplies for the MUST university design studio.

I was a bit apprehensive of flying multiple 10+ hour flights in a row. Before this week, I had never been on a plane for more than three hours before. Luckily, I had good company to get me through all those hours (shoutout to Nimisha for teaching me how to deal with long flights). Our first stop was London, where we had a 10-hour layover! It was like a dream come true to be able to leave the airport and explore Harry Potter’s city. We saw lots of iconic sites that will definitely make my mother jealous: Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Big Ben, the London Eye, etc. My favorite part was seeing Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station.

This is a photo I took of the flight tracker on the screen in front of my seat on the flight from Houston to London. I can’t believe I traveled all the way across the ocean!

 

Here is the five of us who flew to London in Trafalgar Square during our layover.

After the London layover, my travel memories become a bit blurry, because this was 20+ hours into the journey and I was a bit sleep deprived. We took an 11-hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, where I slept almost the entire time. After this was smooth sailing (not counting the couple hours our next flight was delayed) all the way to Lilongwe, Malawi. Here, we met the wonderful and warm Mr. Richard – the bus driver that drives Rice 360 employees and students between Lilongwe and Blantyre whenever they visit Malawi. He explained that he’s known “Rebecca and Maria”, Dr. Richards-Kortum and Dr. Oden, for over 10 years! Shortly after meeting him, we met the four interns from Tanzania who are living with us at Kabula Lodge and working with us at the Polytechnic University. They were so friendly, and I can’t wait to spend these next two months getting to know them better.

We spent our first night in Malawi in a hotel in Lilongwe and traveled four hours the next day to reach Kabula Lodge, where we will reside for the next two months as we work. It’s about 10 minutes away from the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (Queens) and the Malawi Polytechnic university (Poly), where we will be working most days. The valley in which the lodge sits is beautiful. We’re surrounded by rolling hills and mountains covering in sprawling trees and flowers. No view in Houston could ever be as breathtaking as the one from the balcony on which we eat breakfast every morning here.

The view from the Kabula Lodge is so beautiful!

Yesterday, we dropped by Queens and Poly to meet some of the people we will be working with over the course of this internship. Some of the Malawi interns even gave us a brief tour of the university! Lots of their buildings are painted this really nice light blue color, which is refreshing after spending four semesters surrounded by the dark Rice navy and gray. We got to see the design studio, too. The people there were incredibly friendly and seemed excited to start working with us on Monday. It’s Saturday morning as I’m writing this, and I have many conflicting feelings. I’m both excited and nervous to get to work. I can’t wait to learn from the Malawian and Tanzanian interns as I work with them. I’m nervous because I know that this internship is going to challenge me. I was initially convinced that the most challenging part of this internship would be the times my engineering skills will be pushed and expanded. Now, I’m realizing that the most challenging part of this internship is going to be pushing my communication skills and confidence. As scary as that sounds to me, I’m more than looking forward to the growth that will come from these challenges, and I can’t wait to get started.

Here’s a bonus picture of Nimisha after tucking in her mosquito net! I couldn’t have asked for a better roomie. 🙂