As I pack for my trip to Barretos, Brazil, I begin to think how normal it all feels… I am, as always, packing way too many shoes; however I am also packing a disassembled laser cut wooden box sandwiched between my pants and diabetic foot ulcer models among my socks. Definitely not staple travel items in my book. These new additions to my packing list, among other things introduce a feeling of the unknown to my trip preparations. I am confronted with the battle between foreignness and familiarity.

For the past two weeks Nikhil and I have been working in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) on our cozy Rice University campus. Familiar. We worked extensively on producing seven diabetic foot ulcer educational tools created by a senior design team at Rice, which involved even some artistic painting depicted below.

My works of art whose not so aesthetically pleasing appearance serve

to warn patients of what could happen to their feet if they don’t treat them.

Although my classes usually do not have me channeling my inner Monet, designing and building ideas into reality is something engrained in the Rice engineering experience. So once again…Familiar.

For the first few days Nikhil and I did a lot of planning and contacted as many people as we could to get a sense of what to expect in Baaretos. We soon discovered that our main objective to find and develop needs is pretty intangible from five thousand miles away. Foreign… definitely foreign. In all my design classes thus far we have always been challenged with a problem to solve. An underrated part of the design process is finding that need and crafting it into a problem that can be worked on, a skill I am excited to develop and experience.

After wrapping up our work in the OEDK, the actual trip to Brazil, known to many as a land of soccer, samba and steaks, became the true focal point. Although people usually envision Brazil like this:

Exotic and very much foreign, I actually see it as my other home. Though a unique circumstance, the fact that I am traveling to Brazil is a very familiar act. Born and raised in America to Brazilian parents kind of makes me Brazilian too, especially when all my relatives still live there. Visiting every other summer and having parents stubborn enough to put us in school during our vacations in Brazil truly allowed us to become fluent speakers. So language? Familiar. Knowing Portuguese will open new doors as Nikhil and I work towards furthering collaboration between Rice and the Hospital de Câncer de Barretos (HCB). Both of us are looking for problems, which future Rice student design teams can solve. Being able to communicate and listen to locals, patients and doctors in their language will hopefully provide new insights we can use to achieve our goals.

This is, however, the first time that I am going to Brazil without my parents. In a city I have never visited or even heard of until earlier this year. I will be working in a healthcare system I know little about, and a hospital that seems to do the impossible, provide high quality cancer care for practically free for its mostly low income patients. Back to foreignness once again.

Though there seems to be a contradiction or a battle between what I know and what I don’t, I believe there may be a productive combination of the two. The familiarity keeps you connected to the people, the culture and your surroundings. Meanwhile the foreignness keeps you alert of new angles, different perspectives and most importantly, undiscovered opportunities for collaboration. Here’s to embracing both.