Greetings readers, I’m switching out my two stepping boots and flannels for heels and blazers as I veture to good ol Mexico. Thanks to the Idaho Space Grant Consortium I am currently in Celaya Mexico, recovering from a very full schedule of talks. Take a look at some pictures from it while I take a minute to compose my thoughts.
First I talked to the Universidad de Celaya’s students about my time in the dome and what I learned. Next I spoke to the university’s engineering students about my thesis project focusing on tensegrity robotics. Lastly, I entertained a group of 65 middle school students from UniAmerica Middle school with a project about Mars rovers and impact attenuation. Basically I gave them lights and had them protect paper robot pods with balloons and try to throw them at a specific place with their eyes closed and their partner aiming them. It was very fun and the kids seemed to have a great time. That was Friday, needless to say I droppedal from sheer exhaustion afterwards at 5 in the afternoon because Saturday I woke up and had one final talk to the residents of Celaya at the Science Center. The students were fantastic, full of questions and everyone wanted a picture. 🙂
Casey and I arrived in Guadalajara at 6pm after an absolutely crazy batch of layovers, that right LAX you suck. We hopped into wat I can genuinely call the best bus I’ve ever seen, and took a 4 hour ride to Celaya which is a “small city” of 600,000 people, roughly 1/3 the population of Idaho, the STATE I live in. When we told our host, Ana, about our small town of 200 people (that’s right, I constantly live as part of the 1%) she could not believe it. She was such a wonderful person to have showing us around the city, taking us out to some amazing restaurants and genreally taking better care of us than we normally take care of ourselves.
Among our whirlwind speaking tour Ana and her sister took Casey and I to San Miguel de Allende which is a super awesome town. It’s a super cool town, very traditional, cool old cobblestone streets and a great main square with a beautiful church in it. As beautiful as is was to look at it was even better to smell, Mexican Sushi was really fantastic and the Mole Poblano which could not be any better if I’d dreamed it up myself.
domesoph 