Well, we left in one piece and came back in three...

Hello! Its has been quite the weekend, we just got back from Lawrence, KS where the ASCE conference was held. We took down both the steel bridge and the concrete canoe. The steel bridge team did amazing, I got to be on the construction team putting it together for the judges. For their first year, Chad and the team did an awesome job in designing and putting it together. They didn't place but went home with lots of ideas for next year.
The canoe on the other hand didn't fare so well.
We finished it Wednesday morning with a final coat of Kiewit yellow paint and spray painted the university name and UNDERGROUND, which was the name of the canoe becasue Kiewit Underground sponsored us, on the side. We loaded it up on a flat bed trailer and took off about 9:00 pm that night. On the way down, the canoe slid too far off of its supports and snapped the end four feet off and cracked it in the middle. My baby is now in three pieces. But we gave our presentation on Thursday that hightlighted the main components of the whole process, set up our display on Friday and brought out one piece, and on Saturday raced Kansas State's canoe from last year. It rained on Thur and Fri but was the most perfect day for a canoe race on Sat, the girls and I are burnt well!
We talked to all the other teams, professors, and judges and have come home with a much better idea of how to build a concrete canoe.
The whole trip was an experience for me from driving the fourteen passenger van to leadership to the canoe to talking with other schools to feeling like country gone to town at KU. All the other schools were open to give advice and explain how they built theirs. My favorite thing about the trip was that after two days of intense design competition, race day was cool to see the application and fun of all the work. I felt like I was back at Creighton doing the rowing team, yelling, sweating, and a good time!

Now its headlong into finals with Colorado being the light at the end of the tunnel!

Concrete Canoe

Well, the competition is approaching faster and faster. We took the canoe out of the mold last Monday and have been working on it all week. Heres just a quick photo update!

Pulling the form

Sparks go flying as Chuck grinds down the edges and the metal chairs.

There she is, all patched up!

China Update

I had a chance to talk with my project manager today for the greenhouses in China. And here is what he told me. We are working for a ministry called Alpha Relief, www.alpharelief.org. They do work mostly in China and North Korea. Their physical focus is food through humanitarian aid and passing out Bibles. We will be working on prototype self sustaining greehouses that will hopefully be built next summer in North Korea.
I leave the US on June 1 and fly to Bejing. From there we go to a city called Yanji and then drive north where Mongolia, Russia, and China meet. I haven't found the exact spot on the map yet. The greenhouses are on a 1000 acre farm so close to the border that you can see Russia across the way. Three greenhouse are already built, two standard ones and one dome. We'll be there to collect data and come up with a cost estimate for each greenhouse.
After a week on the farm, we'll be going back to Bejing for a little tourist action. I've seen the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, but I'm so excited for the Great Wall! What an amazing structural feat! We'll be back in the US June 12.
The team is made up of 9 people, me being the only intern. The others are professionals including mechanical, structural, agricultural, computer engineers and an architect. Its neat how we're all going to come together to work on one project.

Although I don't know if I'm more excited to work on the project or finally have some China Chinese food! Watch out egg tarts and duck!

Bread of Life

Guess what? I recieved my overseas trip and I'm going to China!!! God is awesome in answering prayer. My dad is from Hong Kong and so China is part of who and I and who I want to be. I'll be working on greenhouses that produce food for people in North Korea because, well, you can't minister to dead people! As Jesus did with the woman at the well, we must start with earthly things and move to spiritual. I'm so excited to see how physical food can lead to the discovery of the bread of life, as to never hunger again!! Check out the projects website at http://emiusa.org/china.html . There's not much detail but I'll keep you updated!

Much love and very excited...

Lianne

It is poured....

Jesus said, "It is finished"...but we are far from finished. Yet we finally have an actual CONCRETE canoe!!!! The team and I spent all day in the structures lab at school playing around with the reinforcement and the soupy concrete (ooops that one was my fault). Finally after an hour and a half and some pizza, we were able to work the concrete up the sides of the form and around the wire mesh. VERY exciting because we now have concrete proof, haha. The next goal is to remove it from the form without cracking it in about 14 days...yeah we'll see about that. So, I did a quick calculation, we used 6 cubic feet of concrete and that comes to a whopping 528 lbs even using a lightweight concrete. By faith did Peter walk on water and by faith and a little patching we will float concrete!

Here is the styrofoam form, painted with gray latex paint (to prevent the concrete from sticking) and lined with a wire mesh as reinforcment.

I'm pouring in the first bucket of concrete...here goes!

We worked the concrete up the walls of the form and eventually it stuck to the mesh and stayed. The little squares, called chairs, are 1/4" pieces of wood to hold the wire mesh up.

Woohoo! Concrete canoe!