Week 1
Ah the first week, time to settle in and get aclimated while sitting through the introductions and initiation of the program. So much and yet so little happend this week. So lets take it from the top.
Day 1
I think I may have hurt my hip yesterday with all of that moving things in and out of elevators. Probiably that and that first night of sleeping in a bed way back combined really. Not sure, but I think I did. Still, nothing a good night of sleep shouldnt fix, and I shouldnt be doing much walking right? Wrong! The day started nice and early and Dad decited to accompany us to the first day. He probibaly needent have bothered. Dr. Kar (the lead of the program) picked us up in the morining and drove us to the Texas A&M Corpus University Christi (TAMUCC) campus and showed is the iCore building where we will be working. From there one of his grad students Jimmy took us on a walking tour of the campus. That was miserably. It was hot and humid that day and combined with my hurt hip I was limping arround trying to keep up while sweating litteral buckets. Still, I managed to make it through the tour. We ended up in the Student Service Center (read SUB) with temp student ID cards and an hour to kill before the next scheduled event. Fortunatly the next scheduled event was lunch! Well a presentation lunch, we got free food in exchange for sitting through some presentations about what infact is the actual goal for the reu. Truns out that want us to each write a paper that does not have to be published, but can be. And do a presentation to everyone else sumarizing what we did this summer at the end like we would at a research convention. Some of us may even go the an actual convention somewhere to give a presentation, but maybe not too.
He also told us what to do incase a Hurricane hit the area! Boy was Dad happy about that! He was worried we would be driving through tornado ally only to find out that supprize supprize We are in hurricane ally durring hurricane season! (yay, go team...)
After that there was nothing except a recomendation to learn the bus system, so we took the bus back to the appartment. Turns out the student ID also functions as a free bus pass! Neat! From there we decited that since Dad was flying out in the morning, we might as well go and make sure he dips a toe in the Atlantic ocean, or atleast, the Gulf of Mexico. To get there you have to drive across a fairly wide streatch of open water to Padre Island. Or I say open water, but some sort of sedement based bridge spans most of it featuring the higway, a frontage road, and a small store? All in the middle of psudo ocean.
However, there is the bridge, and boy when they bridge they BRIDGE! Absolutly HUGE!
Affter the brige we found a turn off for the beach and headed down it. We know we where getting close when the road actualy started to get covered in sand... and then noncerimoniously end in beach with a smooth transition from asphalt to sand. Apparently you can just drive up and down the beach... We didnt try that, but we did park on the sand.
For some reason this beach just... feels different than the Oregon Coast beaches do. Not sure exactly what it is. But it probibly is partly todo with the wind. It is so windy out here that I discovered these.
Now that makes the beach look like it would be hard to walk on with bare feet, but they are soft, not hard or sharp at all. I was interested so I took a closer look. Each one of those ridges extends to the lee side of a peice of debris. Anything heavier than a peice of sand will resist the wind more and build up a protected ridge of sand behind it! Its a really neet effect!
I also descovered that the ground beneath my feet has some sort of "crystal" structure so that when I walk on it it supports my weight over quite a large surface area as evedenced by that area cracking in crators as I walk.
Still, why go to the beach and not enjoy the ocean right? So dad went and dipped his toe into the Atlantic Ocean! Unfortunatly due to a few factors including habit, confusion, and trust, we ended up calling it the Pacific Ocean by accident. Also, I think my camera slipped a filter on while I wasnt looking. Either way it made nice looking photos.
And naturally, I want to get in the Atlantic too, so why wait!
After that we came home moved the matress and Dads stuff out to the front room to better facilitate him leaving at 4AM for his flight home. And got a good nights sleep
Day 2
I was right about my hip, a good night sleep and it was fine. That is quite fortunate. Today we had a few "moving out" pains. Did you know that styrofoam plates do not handle heat AT ALL!? Even toast will do this to them!
After that the day passed relativly without note. We attened a machine learning class in the morning, which covered linear regression in less detail that my stats class. Then on to some presentations followed by a "UAS Demonstration" That consisted of jimmy showing us a quadcopter that was turned off and walking us through its parts including the alternating spining rotors. All things I already knew from my own hobby drone experience. No actual demonstration was done.
However, afterward it was my day to explore Corpus Christi without any need of actually knowing where I am going. First I got a ride to the airport and picked up the car. Parking was $8.50, I had exact change for the $8, but somewhere along the way we unloaded the change bin into the appartment, so my usual stash of quarters for just such a thing was missing. Fortunatly they do take cards here. After the airport I found the most important thing in town: The Asian Market. And Guess WHAT! They have both steam buns AND Ramune! I think I am going to like it here!
No rice balls though, but the casher was able to give me some tips about helping them stay together. The secret is to use sushi rice treated like you would for sushi in making the rice balls.
I will have to try that.
On the way back I had to get a picture of these sidways street lights for my brother because of how inconsistant they are. He would love them. You think the dog house lights at home are confusing. Get this, ok, so 4 lights red, yellow, green arrow, and green.
Red=STOP! (normal)
Yellow=Turning to Red (normal)
Red+Green Arrow=You have right of way to turn??
Green+Green Arrow=You also have right of way to turn????
Green=You have right of way to go streight, but you can turn if you see an opening....
I have yet to see just green arrow, green arrow+yellow, or green+red, but it wouldnt supprize me, and I did see the other combinations.
Back at home I set up my BATTLE STATION! now that Dad does not need that floor space. All in all it works good, but I did have to force one of the stands onto the desk, it was just barely wide enough at its largest setting. Still, I got it to work in the end.
And as an added bonus, it functions as a bedside light too!
Now time for dinner, my room mates all had grilled cheese. I had a half a loaf of garlic bread and swiss cheese (other half for lunch tomorrow), but the important thing is that some people in this appartment know how to grill cheese sandwiches, and others.... do not.
The rest
At this point the days just blend together for me. I would blame culture shock except that at this point, the only shocking thing is the utter lack of any cultural difference at all. The only things that have changed is the orentation of the stop lights, abundance of Mexican and TexMex food. The largest shock is probiably the $2.15 per gallon gas in Texas. I have yet to hear anyone with a Texan accent, so far a lot of mid east accents, but none Texan. That is really nice. At some point durring this week I stopped sweating so much, wich is good, but still means that I am sweating quite a bit. Thusly I shower every night wether I need to or not just to get the dayly patina of salt of my skin. There is also a pool here that I use frequently and at one point I got back out to the ocean for a nice "swim". Durring that trip I found "clams" that would burrow into the sand when left alone. I threw some to the seaguls, but they ignored them after getting a good look. I even attracted a mob of about 30 all eagry waiting the next toss. Of what I am not sure since every one of them was not at all interested in the clams. It was quite impressive to see them line up in a flying wall though. Unfortunatly I dont have any pictures from that day as I left my phone in the car because I was intentionaly going to get soaked in the ocean. Other than I discovered some things about the heat, I have a shattered S6 that I leave in the car attatched to the radio as a media device. It charges off a usb. One day I got back to the car and grabed it to start playing something and my phone is all like "woah, I am too hot to charge right now, infact, I am so hot, that I am going into limited usage mode until I cool down a bit." At that point it dissabled the background and all non samsung apps. Just on a rough estimate, that means the phone its self was about 125 degrees. And in that car at some point durring the trip, I left a block of winco chocolote in a bag... Guess what happens to chocolote in 125 degrees? Yep it melts, fortunatly the bag held though, so now I have an interestingly shaped blob of chocolote.
Few other notes, I discovered $10 family sized oven lasagnias, those last for several meals.
and apparently you have to travle all the way to Texas to find Idaho Potatoes
I took a quick selfie one morning at 9 to show the typical morning
and then I took several images of me and the TAMUCC Sign or coast for my wonderfull friends over in the SECC/WorkScholar office.
Week 2
Week 2 went about the same as week 1. We where a bit more focussed this week, but same shtick. We have out mentor and research partner now. I am working with Bert Kreischer Jason 
(Thats Bert, not Jason, but he looks the same) working under Dr. Stark Starek 
(Jk, thats tony stark, here is Starek)
(same dif really right?)
and we will be working on some sort of Bathymetry problem involving drone footage of near shore ocean waves. Posibly estimating shore depth, or detecting rip currents. Not sure. But here goes nothing! We are already 20% of the way through and it does not feel like we have actually done anything yet. I did learn quite a bit about image processing, including the SIFT algorithem. I hope to impliment it in my project for Seth to assist with Landmark Alignment.