The penultimate week is upon us over here in brown Houston, where almost 2 months has passed without substantial rain fall, leaving all grass areas unattractively brown. Unfortunately my skin hasn’t followed suit and I am still awkwardly white.

This drought has put many Texans in the odd situation of praying on a tropical storm. I heard one guy at work punch his desk in frustration when Hurricane Irene took a turn for the East coast, peculiar times indeed.

This week at work saw my second week in Corporate Communications, where I am keeping myself busy with the mammoth amounts of work I naively agreed to last week. One of my major projects is setting up an intranet site for the Houston WGGA (Wood Group Golf Association). I never really considered making a website but, for some reason, I thought it would be easy.

 I was very wrong.

I never realized that so many factors needed to be considered, layout, structure, testing, content, end user accessibility and use, files names, efficient file organization, font size, etc. This all combined is starting to make the 2 week time frame look shorter and shorter.

This is what I have come across time and time again since I have been on this internship, the picture you have in your head of something is very rarely the way it actually is. I thought large organizations would be faceless and slow reacting, this isn’t true. I thought employees would see as just an intern and not give you their time, not true.  I thought we would be in for 8 weeks and ‘coffee running’, not true.  I thought American light beer was drinkable, not true.

This internship has also made me realize the importance of experience Even if it’s only for 8 weeks, the learning curve has been substantially steep.  

This weekend the newly named ‘Team Texas’ made our way back to Austin for our final weekend together. As this blog seems to have a ‘lessons’ vibe to it ill sum up the weekend end with more lessons ‘Team Texas ‘ learnt from Austin.

Lesson 1 –

While tubing in the Comal River make sure to look down the river once in a while.

If we had done this we would have realized we would come across a 4ft t waterfall crashing onto rocks. Luckily we all came out unscathed, unfortunately my flip-flops didn’t.

Lesson 2 –

Don’t accelerate 22mph over the limit past a Police car, it WILL be expensive.

Lesson 3 –

Don’t ‘pole dance’ around a square pole, there will be blood.

Lesson 4-

Don’t walk near an American hen night in your kilt. I’m pretty sure my ‘bottom half’ was on show for a large proportion of the night.

(note Chris's 'That girl is crazy' look) 

Lesson 5 –

Go to see the Bats in Austin.

Unfortunately all good things have to come to an end, and this was Team Texas’s last weekend together.

With trips to San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Las Vegas and 2 trips to Austin it’s clear that we made the most of our weekends!

It has been an awesome last 8 weeks guys! I look hugely forward to the crazy reunions when we get back to Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh!

It’s been awesome

Jack