Theresa Steixner at registration desk (c) OeWF (Florian Voggeneder)

Today I am writing my second blog for the OeWF which means that I have already done half of my internship. Time flies really fast at the office because there are always a lot of things to do.

What I have done most of the time during my last 1.5 months was of course still mailing around the world but also hanging on the phone a lot. However, this is really interesting for me to work with people from all over the world. For example, some of the Principal Investigators are from Canada, Italy, Oman… which I had to call to get some information for the second Dress Rehearsal. Exactly this is what I did most: Annoying a lot of other members of the OeWF with my tons of E-Mails and phone calls (sorry for that but this is really necessary! ;-) ). One of the highlights at the OeWF was definitely the teleconference with the Omanis the week before the signing ceremony. Dr. Gernot Grömer, Sophie Gruber and I were sitting in the OeWF office in front of the notebook. What I was expecting was another team of three or four Omanis sitting at the other side and talking about the signing ceremony in Oman. That moment when I realized that their camera went on as well, I was stunning: About nine traditionally suited Omanis were sitting in an elegant conference room on a long table with camera teams running around behind them. I did not expect that and hope that they didn’t realize my surprised and stunning face at that moment!

Launching waterrockets

After more than one month here I can say that at the beginning of my internship it was quite difficult to follow some conversations if you don’t know all of the abbreviations OeWF is using and there are really a lot! RSS, JRP, FCT, GS, PI and many more. Anyways, now I can happily and proudly say that it’s definitely getting easier!
On the 3rd of November I finally got to know the Field Crew because the second Dress Rehearsal started. It felt really good to be at the registration desk and get some more faces to all of the email addresses!

A highlight was definitely last weekend were I took part in the Analog Mission Basic Training (AMBT). Through my internship I already knew quite a lot about the basics of the OeWF Mission Support Center we got taught during these days but through the course I finally got an idea and understand what it would look like during the AMADEE-18 mission in February. Furthermore I got to know a lot of new people from different countries which is always really nice!

AMBT group photo

Altogether I am looking forward to the other half of my internship at the OeWF because every week I got some different things to do and keep on learning both, organizational and science tasks!

Author: Theresa Steixner