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Our first week has gone by so quickly but has been great so far. After what seemed like days of travelling we finally arrived in Houston to be hit by extreme humidity and heat. The six of us spent our first Sunday overeating and shopping, what I’m sure will be a daily occurrence.

Wood Group seems to be all over Houston; it took us over a day just to tour the offices we will be working in.  We had breakfast at our main office and got a chance to introduce ourselves to everyone. Jen and myself are currently working in Management Services; I’m actually the only intern who will be working there for the full 8 weeks. I’m working in HR for the benefits department and will then be moving to corporate communications.

I had the pleasure of meeting Peter Nicholson, the head of HR, and he invited me to sit in on a couple of meetings. I sat in on a conference call to narrow down finalists of the Wood Group College Scholarship programme, which gave me some insight on how Saltire Interns were picked. The applicants had CVs that put mine to shame for being so young; both academically and with community involvement. I also attended a meeting with my boss Sharon and Peter regarding the effects of Health Care Reform on Wood Groups benefit systems and how the company can be more efficient and lower coverage costs.

I am working alongside Kenisha who is in charge of the 401K plans, the equivalent to pension plans in the UK. Because Wood Group is so diverse they offer 8 different plans that cover over 6000 US employees and Kenisha is responsible for them.

Although working hard, we’ve been able to enjoy Houston so far. We got to attend an event by BABC Houston, a company that connects British and American businesses, giving us all a chance to network. Jen and Dave even got their pictures published on the local papers website!

We even got a chance to go watch the Dynamos play; a very different site to watching British football but the atmosphere was so fun. Our weekend was spent shopping (an extra suitcase will be needed) and lying by the pool. Needless to say we are all very sunburnt.

I am really looking forward to this week because two members of my department have been on holiday, so I will get a chance to meet and work with them and hopefully the IT issues I’ve been having will be resolved.

Hope everyone is having a good time!

Kirst