Hello world, my name is Daniel Martinez a rising sophomore at Rice University, at Brown College. A quick introduction about myself, I am studying mechanical engineering at Rice, with a minor in both engineering design and entrepreneurship. A fun fact about myself is that I have lived all over the world from Mexico to Romania to the United States. I attended an all boys private catholic high school in Houston, so going into the college admissions process I did not want to stay anywhere near home, did not even realize Rice was really an option until the summer before my senior year when my dad forced me to go tour Rice, which is one of the best thankful experiences I have. After my visit, Rice was not my number one choice but it had made the list. After a long summer, I had no idea what I wanted to do except study mechanical engineering, due to my love and passion for robotics developed by my high school robotics team: Spectrum 3847. I have a lot of hobbies outside of the academic world. I love watching sports, but I also love to play instruments and listen to music, but by far my favorite hobby is golf, so if I had never had to work or study again, one would find me travelling the world playing golf. I chose to study abroad because I have always wanted to study abroad due to my living abroad throughout my childhood, ever since I left Romania I knew I wanted to go back to Europe, and since my mom studied Law in Spain I have always imagined myself studying abroad in Europe. When I got to Rice I thought this dream ended since many study abroad opportunities said engineering is the hardest major to study abroad for, thankfully during one of the ENGI 120 classes Professor Holmes and Besesti mentioned iSeed, after doing so I was set on coming to Amsterdam/Paris. After today, what I am most looking forward to is hanging out with all the other students from the iSeed program (my new friends) as well as meeting the University of Amsterdam students, really excited to meet European students that are my age. When I explore a new city I am definitely a Type B person, I maybe have 2 or 3 things I may want to see but most of it is free flow, see where the wind takes me. I have loved all we have gotten to do so far and can not wait to continue. Meeting the University of Amsterdam people was amazing, I really loved the group I was paired with, they were all super relatable and interested to hear about the United States which was awesome because I had so many questions about European culture especially from a teenagers perspective, since I have only received it from an adults perspective and it felt like I was in Romania again getting to meet a ton of people from so many different cultures and backgrounds. The biggest surprise was definitely the University of Amsterdam school calendar and how they take classes, which I thought was pretty awesome. Anyway, that’s the end of blog 1 peace.