We started out the week with the Counterpart Workshop, and then I spent the day yesterday at my new workplace, where I will be starting in June. Another trainee (very soon-to-be volunteer) and I are going to the same site, and we are the first volunteers to be at this center. There are a lot of exciting things about this assignment. The one day tour of the laboratories was exhausting, but I think we are both looking forward to starting and having a chance to sit down with the researchers individually to discuss their work and find where we can contribute.

It is a small center with between 20-25 researchers who are professors and just over 100 master’s and doctoral students. Since we, as volunteers, we are neither students are postdocs, so we are basically automatically “visiting professors”. That feels very strange.

So, I joined to Peace Corps expecting to go to Africa, but here I am a professor in Mexico, potentially waiting to install a microscope:

I have a lot of mixed emotions about Tech Transfer in Mexico. We are all just starting the process of finding our places in our centers and really defining our projects. At least it will be different from training, and we have all the opportunity we could ask for to speak Spanish.