EDSA begins.

Last Monday was my first day as an intern at EDSA. For those of you who don't know, EDSA is a large, prestigious landscape architecture firm that has been established for over 50 years. I was accepted for an intern position from January until August. EDSA finds housing for the interns (but we still pay for it), so the other intern, Terrah from Ohio State, and I live in a really nice house. A new hire moved in last Friday too. His name is Tyler and he interned at EDSA 3 years ago (and he is from ISU!). They are both quiet, but hopefully they will become more outgoing.

Anyways, back to last week. The firstweek of the internship is always a design charrette where the interns are assigned a project and then we have to come up with something to present in front of principals, project managers, etc etc of EDSA.

No pressure right? Our project was called the Las Olas Gateway. Las Olas is the main touristy road that runs east, crossing the large canal and leads to the beach. If you've seen "Where the Boys Are," you know about the Elbo Room, and that is at the very end of Las Olas. Anyways, our goal was to create a gateway/arrival to the beach on Las Olas, to let people know once they crossed the bridge that they were at the beach (the views are distorted by a curve in the road and a lot of date palms). There is a lot of traffic at that intersection because there is a road called A1A that splits and runs north on the beach side. Many people cross the street at the intersection to go to the beach, so we needed to open that area up to have more potential gathering spaces. There's a lot more to it than that, and if I get a hold of our work, I'll post it.

Anywho- it was a stressful week because it was basically a studio project smashed into one week. We didn't get paid for overtime but we had to put a lot of extra hours into it because of the fact that it was 'only EDSA'.. duh. We had two landscape architects be our project leaders, and they helped us a lot during the week. It was difficult working with someone that was also a complete stranger And a new roommate. It is definitely not good to get to know someone during a stressful situation. We are good now though, and the presentation went really well that Friday. After our presentation, we had the traditional intern banner signing, they told us which studio we would be in during our internship, and then we got to drink beer by the firm's pool. (Yeah, they have a pool.)

That night I went to bed Early because I was exhausted from that week. On Saturday, Ryan Jardon, a friend from 4-H and a graduate from ISU, came to visit. He recently got hired by John Deere and is living in Orlando for two months. We went on a 9-mile run/walk, and then he, my roommates, and I went out to eat at a pizza place called At-A's Pizza. Tyler loved it when he interned, and it was good. After that we went for a few beers at a bar/restaurant at Tarpon's. Pretty chill. It was nice, nothing crazy. The next morning Ryan and I went to the beach for an hour before he went back to Orlando. It was a good weekend, and I'm glad that Ryan could visit.

This Monday was the first day of my Real intern work. I am in the Larrea studio. All the studios are named by their principals. The principal of mine is Marco Larrea. Tarrah is in the Kissinger studio, and Tyler is in some studio with three principals combined. There are also the Lalli studio, Dugan studio, and a handful of other ones that I cannot remember. Too many people here! Just kidding, I love that it is a big firm. It doesn't have a big firm feel though, probably because the studios themselves are very intimate. My studio is very small. It does pretty much all projects in latino countries including but not limited to Mexico, Columbia, Spain, Puerto Rico, etc etc. Marco is from Ecuador and the majority of landscape architects in my studio are latino too. Its very cool because Spanglish is being spoken all day long. Its great! There was only one other girl in the studio before me. Her name is Josephina, and she is super cute and nice. An Iowa State grad from 2006 is also in that studio. Everyone there is extremely nice.

Rather than being an AutoCAD monkey right off the bat, I cleaned up a master plan concept in Photoshop, and now I have been putting together a booklet in InDesign for a project called Isla Navidad in Manzanillo, Mexico. They always give the clients a really nice hardbound book of their process and conceptual designs. Its pretty sweet. Tomorrow (Friday) I hope to help Justin render (in marker!) the two conceptual master plans and maybe even the enlarged plans of the . I cannot wait to learn how they do it! Their hand renderings are just beautiful, and they are incredibly fast at making them.