The one benefit of jet lag is that when you travel west it’s really easy to get up in the morning, I actually woke up before my alarm which gave me lots of time to explore my vast new residence. My primary objective was to work out where the coffee was located, after a good 15 minutes of exploring the kitchen I found a french press and after a further 10 I’d located a bag of columbian coffee.

The first excitement of the day was seeing all of the Apple signs as we drove towards NASA. I’m living in Cupertino and so the commute involves driving though one of the smaller apple campuses. The other thing I noticed on my way to NASA was the palm trees, usually palm trees are only allowed in nice places, where you go on holiday, not where you live!

As we approached The Ames Research Park (a former Navy Base which is now a world-class, shared-use research and development campus with partners such as Google), the first thing that caught my eye was the space shuttle perched behind the security gates. It instantly added gravity to the situation! I suddenly realized that I would be spending the next year as a research associate at NASA!

I met with my sponsor company to go through more paperwork and to meet some of the other research associates. Ravi also gave me a tour of the research park, though I can’t go into the actual research centre until I get my security clearance, which is supposed to take another week. It’s really interesting walking around the base: there are old jets and planes on display as well as the famous ‘Hangar 1’ of course, which is staggeringly big!

I’ve just landed at San Francisco International after a great flight, I was almost first off the plane and managed to get right at the front of the immigration queue. I was then surprised by an extremely warm greeting from the immigration officer, all my previous experience of entering the US has always been a little scary. One time in Florida we were actually told that the officers had been sent to Disney for ‘friendliness training’ (I’m not sure how true this is but it makes for an interesting anecdote). This time however, I was extremely pleased with the way I was welcomed into the USA, I even recieved a short motivational talk from the immigration officer about working really hard so I can become an astronaut one day!

After collecting my bags I was welcomed by Ravi from my sponsor company ‘STC’. He dropped me off at my accommodation, a place called ‘The Rainbow Mansion’, which is an intentional community of driven, international, passionate, and socially conscious people trying to change the world (http://www.rainbowmansion.com). As we arrived at the mansion a big communal dinner was being brought out to the table and I got the chance to hear what everyone was working on. Everyone living here is doing something really cool, with jobs ranging from asteroid mining to working with Virtual Reality, there are even a few people who work at NASA living here.

And so it begins! I’m on my way to NASA.

So far, today has been one of the most emotional days of my life. I’m currently sat on a jumbo jet, 10363m over Greenland, flying away from my entire life at 890 km/h (I definitely didn’t read this off the inflight map)! This morning I said goodbye to both my parents and my girlfriend and last night was the last time I’ll see my best friend for half a year. I’ve done this all before when I left for university but now that I’m moving 6000 miles away everything feels… further away.

But I’m also increadibly excited! The crew on the flight are taking fantastic care of me (they were very interested in talking to me once they found out I was going to NASA), and I cannot wait to experience a new way of life. I’ve been on holiday to Florida and Boston before but I’m really looking forward to experiencing life in California. That said, my day to day life will involve performing research on a project at a NASA research center and the house Mansion I’m going to be living in resembles the show “The Big Bang Theory”. It’s safe to say I am very much looking forward to arriving in San Francisco.