Kyle Rasmussen - BRIT/Andes to Amazon
Week 1 & 2

Week 1

This week was an amazing week. I arrived in Fort Worth, Texas not knowing what to expect as I began the first part of my Pinhead Summer Internship Program at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT).  I met Roz Rosenthal, who would be my host for the next four weeks that I would be in Fort Worth. We became friends instantly. When I exited the airport and got into Roz's car and met Bea which is short for Beatrice. She was Roz's nurse and one of her housekeepers. Roz said that she wanted me to meet her son, Billy Rosenthal. He was at his meat packing company. She also said that there was a famous chef there, Paul Prudehomme. After we arrived at Billy's company, I met Billy and everybody else that was in the building. Roz introduced me to almost all of the people. I could tell already that she was a philanthropist. I finally met Billy, and Chef Paul Prudehomme. Everybody was extremely kind. We did not get to talk long, but the chef signed a can of his spices for me as a souvenir. We left and headed to Roz's house. We pulled up to a gate and I knew that Roz lived in this neighborhood instantly. Bea gave me a tour of the house. There are no words to describe how lucky I felt to be staying in this house for four weeks. She had everything for which I could ask.  There was a pool, a big bed, and lots of food. That night I got to meet some of Roz's friends. We all had dinner together. I felt like things were going to be great for the rest of the trip.

The day after arriving in Texas, I finally went to BRIT. Roz took me so that we could socialize together and get to know each other better. She told me the story of how she and her family became so successful. She said that her husband, Manny, who died not to long ago of Alzheimer's, started a meat packing company a long time ago. The company actually did end up crashing. But they did end up pulling the company out of the hole with the help of their friends and family. Ever since they pulled out of the crash they have been doing what their friends did for them, for other people. Roz personally donates to many organizations. We finally arrived at BRIT, which was impressive. There were huge cabinets that were filled with tons plant specimens. There are actually over one million specimens just in BRIT alone. I have already learned so many things in the few first days that I spent in BRIT. I had a different job every day for three days. The first day I worked on data entries. Not the most fun job, but it was a learning experience. The next day I got a small tour of how the website was going to work. That is one of my major jobs at BRIT. I am designing a tour of Atrium with one of my mentors, Jason Best. The day after that I had to go through plant specimens and make sure that they were in Atrium. These jobs were small, but helped me learn much. Not just about plants, but about how BRIT works itself. For example, on each plant specimen there is a label that biologically describes the plant with its genus and species name and other pertinent information. Sometimes there is an annotation label that is made by another scientist who had a different opinion on what the plant was compared to the original label.

I also got to go to a play with Roz and some more of her many friends. It was a blast. I have had one of the best times of my life in this first week and I look forward to getting up early every morning and going to BRIT. Roz, her dog, and her housekeeper, Bea are the kindest individuals that I think I have ever met. I feel like I have walked into the gates of heaven. I look forward to writing more journals and coming home to tell everyone about my endeavors.

Week 2

The weekend was over and it was time to go back to work at BRIT. It had been raining a lot and the air was very humid and hot this week. I continued with the same work that I started on last week and started to plan out how I was going to do the Atrium tour. Dawson White, another Pinhead intern, had appeared and Monday was his first day at BRIT. He was going to go straight to Peru with Dr. John Janovec, a plant collector at BRIT. However, John postponed the departure by one week. Dawson and I went to a couple of places in downtown for lunch a couple of days. Dawson had a little bit of chaos this week. When he changed his ticket information the order did not go through. He ended up having to pay for a totally new ticket and those tickets are not cheap at all. I felt really bad for him. My ticket had not been purchased yet because John had not yet gotten to me on when he wanted me to go to Peru. This week at BRIT some how flashed by and was gone in an instance. I actually thought that it was Thursday when it was really Friday. It is sad to see the weeks go by so fast. Dawson had left on Friday evening to go to some of John Janovec’s  family’s house for the weekend and fly to Peru on Sunday. It only made me excited to see him leave for Peru, because soon I would be following him.

After work, Roz had planned almost every evening. Tuesday night we went to an amazing piano concert. The pianist was John Owens. Because I was friends with Roz,  I was able to meet John Owens and his wife. I told them that I played piano and was planning to get back into lessons. That is when Mr. Owens’ wife asked me if I would like to come over on weekends to learn a few things from her when she taught her students. We went to another piano concert on Saturday. This pianist’s name was Menahem Pressler. This concert was even better than the last concert. He played with the Emerson Quartet. They got a standing ovation and deserved it. Before we went to this concert, Roz showed me her son, Billie’s house. This house was about three times the size of Roz’s. He had an Olympic style pool a very nice weight room, lots of bedrooms, and the house was right next to a golf course. He was also on a hill away from all of the people. The house was very contemporary which made it unique from other homes. He also has paintings throughout his whole house. Every painting is the original. Some of Billie’s paintings are Andy Warhol originals, a very famous modern artist. We had to leave the house against my wishes, but we had no choice because we had to go to the concert. Roz is so wonderful. She has a story for everything and is a great conversationist. Bea would take me into work sometimes and we would also talk. She asked me if I would like to go to Six Flags with her and her grandson. There was no way I was going to deny that offer. Six flags was so much fun. Her grandson is fifteen. We went swimming at his house after Six Flags. He introduced me to the game Guitar Hero and we had a great time together. This marked another end of another week. Everything was perfect.