We woke up this morning feeling a lot better after a decent sleep! Wake up call was a very nice, albeit a little awkward personal knock on the door by our group managers/teachers. Though, this was done at a civilised 8am for an 8:30 breakfast. We headed down to the group room where we clapped and shamed all the latecomers in and went to breakfast. This was an adventure with the American food, which was different, but nice enough (even the bread was sugary! What is the world coming to!?). We also had a good time Table Testing the Froot Loops cereal. After passing the box around the table and cautiously picking one or two each, we ate them together. The verdict on flavour was ‘fly spray/mosquito repellent?’. It was a no from us, so we decided to feed them to Flibbles instead.

 

In the morning, we had our CASE opening ceremony, complete with an anticipatory countdown and raucous cheers. We cheered as B24 group manager, Gabi, and teachers, Philipp and Chris walked across the stage. So much that some of the other GMs jokingly asked them how much she paid us, to much laughter. The videos and introduction were super inspiring and decidedly American, and a great way to get hyped up for the day to come. We watched a video providing a brief glimpse into the type of adventures we would be getting up to in the next 2 weeks. This led into a briefing session for ‘Challenge X’ which is a competition project we are starting work on tomorrow, for which we have a $750,000,000 theoretical budget to come up with and thoroughly set out a company dealing in space tourism or space junk. Lots of points are up for grabs, and the competitive spirit is already beginning. After that, we grabbed a snack of Garden Veggie Straws and, lo and behold, a piece of fruit!!! Those are pretty rare around here and it seems that Americans, or at least Texans, don’t follow our same ‘5+ a day’…

 

Lunch was a Texan classic- tacos from Bodegas Taco Shop near Rice University, our main destination for the day. Apart from the excessive portion size, the unanimous agreement was that the taco bowl salad was on the whole tasty and authentic. The meal was served with a rather questionable cucumber lemonade that had mixed reviews among the group. After being stuffed full, we took a leisurely stroll passing the Museum of Natural Sciences, which we would be visiting later in the week. Our group teacher, Philipp took great delight in explaining the wonders of the sundial installation outside the museum, capable of indicating the time of day and months of the year depending on the shadow cast.

 

A short bus ride later, we drove (the wrong way) through the grand gates of Rice University. We had a tour from Andy, a student at the University of Houston, with inputs from our Group Manager, Gabi, sharing her own knowledge about the infamous pranks that took place on Rice University grounds. Our favourite prank was the engineering feat allegedly executed by a group of engineering students armed with a self-created A-frame device. Over a singular night, the statue of William Rice that stood pride of place facing the entrance was turned 180 degrees. This stunt reportedly cost the university millions and took months to rectify as the perpetrators never revealed themselves. We learnt a lot from today, but one of the most memorable life lessons: Never confess to a crime and you will definitely get away with it. Fun fact: A feature of the Art Building is the row of indentations next to the door, that when a finger slides down, a rather satisfying frog noise is made. 

 

While standing around and marvelling at the statue, we hear a slightly more morbid origin tale of the university itself involving founder, William Marsh Rice. According to Gabi, his plan to donate his lavish fortune into creating a private university was almost derailed when his butler murdered him and tried to take the money. However, thankfully with the intervention of Rice’s lawyer, his vision was eventually realised with Rice University’s establishment in 1912 – “thanks Gabi”

 

There is a significant connection between Rice University and US space history given it was the site where President John F Kennedy gave his inspirational speech, in which he famously declared, “We choose to go to the Moon… not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. At the library, we saw the podium JFK gave his speech from, as well as a piece of the moon gifted to the university. We swiftly navigated our way back to the bus, many of us awed by the sighting of a number of squirrels in their natural habitat, ignoring the beautified? University and taking pictures and videos of the treasured creatures instead.

 

We returned to the hotel and did some ‘CASE Move it’ – a rather unfortunate amalgamation of Just Dance and Jump Jam, tailored for space school. We didn’t have much energy for it today, but are keen for our 7:45 ‘wake up Jeff’ session of it tomorrow morning! Before dinner, we had our first official guest speaker- DJ, marathon runner and NASA radio controller Andrew Rechenberg. Full of life he gave us a talk about his journey from a little boy dreaming of being an astronaut, to a young man passionate about physics but restricted in university study by his family situation and the need to support his grandfather at home, to getting his job at NASA, which he has held for the past 4 years. A key message we could take away was the value of time- the most precious thing we have. He told us not to be afraid of trying things and of change, such as in our study and careers, but also to prioritise and make sure we get the most out of the time we do have- something to think about given our hectic lifestyles!

 

Dinner tonight was awesome- the best so far we reckoned. There were little salad pots (salad!! Hallelujah!!), gnocchi with spinach and cheese, and pasta with tomato sauce, as well as sugar cookies to top it off. We all returned to our rooms tired but pleasantly full and ready for another good sleep!

 

All in all, it was a pretty full on day, at the end of which, many would have been glad to finally get some rest.

Jemima, Ananya and Anneke over and out