Exhaustion

Well the adjustment here finally hit me. I woke up this morning with a possible light fever (basically just very warm), exhaustion, and signs of dehydration. I took some Advil for the fever, and proceeded to drink water and figure out other things I could do for the dehydration. I asked around if anyone had any gatorade or the travel pouches or squeezes of flavoring for water and one of the girls sleeping in my room had some Great Value brand electrolyte additive. I drank that and water consistently throughout the day, but it didn't help my exhaustion any.

Today, I chose the least labor intensive task because I was so tired. And it just so happened to be one of the few things I haven't done already. I decided to work with the coils today! We started off by practicing soldering, which I haven't done since middle school, but still wasn't too bad at. Then we moved onto hand turning the coils! They had lots of copper wire laying around that we put in a turning contraption to make the coils (shown right). The coils for our stator (shown left) had to be 70 turns around, but no more than 450 grams, so they needed to be wound extremely tight. The one I did was 480 grams, the next one was 445 grams and another was 470 (the least weight was usable too). We only got through one more coil, but the scale had broken, so we haven't had a chance to weigh it then. I mostly sat around and tried not to fall asleep today. I thought that was the best option due to my exhaustion in regards to safety for myself and others in the shop as well.

The others in the shop continued practicing welding, electrical component work, and rotor work. We all watched the resin being poured into the rotor mold this morning, and had some issues with the vacuum seal (shown below). We'll see how it turns out when we open it tomorrow. We also have to do the next rotor that I helped make yesterday, so there's plenty of opportunity to continue seeing that. They prepped the rotor I helped with for the resin today by sewing on the carbon fiber and cutting more fiberglass for the mold. It was all set to be filled with resin when we left.

A notable funny language barrier remark: this wasn't even about a Spanish to English barrier, it was an American to New Zealand barrier. One of the shop leaders asked if a girl from New Zealand could use a jigsaw, and she thought he meant a jigsaw puzzle, so of course she said yes, and then when he handed her the saw she was quite confused. It was pretty funny! It's quite interesting seeing the different pronunciations and words for different objects between the countries. I almost feel like I'm going to come back to the US saying weird phrases, or even having a bit of a foreign accent that's not even Peruvian.

The only really annoying thing I will never get used to here is the dog across the street, on the roof of the house who will not stop barking constantly, even at night. It's sometimes difficult to sleep near the window where my bed is, but I'm working on it. I also have some ear plugs for a last resort situation.

I'll end with a photo of the beast I promised. WindAid bought this vehicle from the French Embassy here a while back, decorated it for a spring parade with grass and their logo, and the decorations never came off because they would've ruined the paint underneath. Thus it was further known as the beast!




That's all for now! Still having fun, despite my exhaustion!