Internship

So here I sit at the computer in the office of Centro de Amigos para la Paz (Center of Friends for Peace), the place where I am doing my internship. I just got here (I try to get into work at about 10 in the morning), and my boss Isabel and the treasurer of the organization, Maria Elena, were just heading out for a meeting. They asked if I would mind waiting around here for about an hour until they came back. What else do I have to do? I said yes. I decided that this would probably be a good time to tell you a bit about my job.

As they were walking out the door, Isabel called to me over her shoulder and asked if I would be all right answering the phone and taking messages. Once again, I said yes, acting like it was no big deal, when in all truth my stomach clenched a little at the thought of it. So far, the phone has rung once, and I ran around for the first two rings trying to find a pen to take a message with, and someone else answered in this meantime. Whew. I´ve always had this thing about talking to people I don´t know over the phone...it´s gotten better over the years - I´m now totally fine with talking to people in English - but this task is daunting because not only will I have to converse over the phone in Spanish, where I can´t read lips or facial expressions, the people that usually call here are elderly Quaker folks who speak the kind of rapid, slurred Spanish that is impossible to comprehend, even for some native Spanish speakers. Eventually I know I´ll have to answer the phone, and I´ll let you know how that goes when it happens. It promises to be very entertaining (at least afterwards).

I started this internship about three weeks ago now. I had no idea what I was getting into, and Cata, the person at International Studies Abroad who is in charge of all the volunteers in the program, told me to be prepared to be patient and flexible, because not only is this a non-profit organization, where the term ¨organization¨is used rather loosely, but it is a Costa Rican non-profit organization, which means that some days there might be quite a few things to do, and other days there might be nothing. The latter has proven to be the most common occurrence thus far. It´s also a very small organization, with only 3 or 4 actual employees, and then a board of Quaker members who decide actions and meet about various issues that the Centro is dealing with, but who aren´t employees and who are only here a couple of times a week. Right now the only people here are one of the employees, in her office in the other room, the host of the hostel (the Centro has a hostel that is connected to the offices, and that hostel is essentially how this organization gets its money), me, and Jorge the cat. Usually there is a little French girl named Anouk here with her mom, absolute cutest thing ever (other than Mariana, of course). She is 4 years old, has adorable brown ringlets and a little upturned nose, and speaks French to me in her tiny little girl voice, every once in awhile inserting something in Spanish to try to help me understand what she´s saying better (she knows only a few words of both English and Spanish). She´s not here today though, which makes me kind of sad, because I could use the company.

Both the office building (once again, term used loosely) and the hostel take up about an entire block, situated near the three giant legal buildings, about a 10 minute walk away from the center of downtown San Jose. It´s only about a 15 minute walk from my house to here, and I usually opt to take that walk, unless it´s raining, in which case I take a taxi. I still haven´t really utilized the bus system. It´s not unreliable, persay, but you never know if it´s actually going to come on time, so I never want to rely on it to get to work. Besides, the walk is a fairly nice one. I´m usually sweating a bit by the time I get to the office, because the temperature is very warm here and there are a couple of hills involved, but it´s nice to be outside and see people walking around. It´s a pretty safe walk, too (this is for you, Mom), because like I said, the office is near all of the legal, courthouse buildings, which take up about half my walk, and the rest of the walk is either through a nice residential neighborhood or by other office buildings, and I never carry a purse, so I´m not really a target for mugging. The most I get are a few honks from cars and some overly friendly hellos from various men, but that´s normal here in San Jose, and I don´t really notice it any more.

Centro de Amigos para la Paz is in an older building, and since they don´t have very many funds, it looks pretty worn down and lived in. It has a distinct personality, though, and I don´t think I´d want it any other way. All of the furniture is donated, so one of the couches has a few holes in it and the other sinks down almost all the way to the floor when you sit in it, and there are various non-matching chairs scattered throughout the building. They have an old television and a slightly newer DVD player that I used to watch a documentary about getting rid of all arms used in wars that use depleted uranium (Isabel´s current passion) on my first day here. There is a random piece of ornate wood with a giant mirror in it that looks like it used to be the door to a wardrobe, and there are a couple of tables where the board meets set up in a couple different rooms. In order to get in you have to buzz at the gate and have someone buzz you in, so every once in awhile the ¨bzzzt¨ will sound. I´m not technically supposed to open the gate for anyone, since I don´t know who is allowed in and who isn´t, but I have a few times anyway because sometimes there is no one else around but me.

It´s always very quiet around here; occasionally there are guests from the hostel sitting on the couches checking their internet or reading, but right now it´s completely silent except for a couple of women talking in the other room and the sound of the keys on the keyboard clicking as I write this. It´s nice and peaceful, and it´s especially pleasant when it starts to rain outside and you can hear the pitter patter on the roof.

I am, however, still tense and waiting for the phone to ring.

My first week of work here began on a Tuesday, and since I only work through Thursday, it was a pretty short week. I basically came in and learned about the organization and Isabel told me about the various issues and projects I could work on (many, many things). The next day I came in and watched the documentary I mentioned above, and I don´t even remember what I did that Thursday. The next week consisted mainly of me helping Isabel by using Microsoft Word to create booklets of proposed laws in the Costa Rican legislature about banning arms that use depleted uranium, as well as a booklet containing the Costa Rican government´s official stance on the issue (not having a military, Costa Rica is, obviously, against the use of any kind of arms, much less ones that have depleted uranium). I made these booklets for Isabel to take with her to the United Nations in New York, which is where she was for all of last week, at various meetings and getting to know various people in an attempt to make this issue a top priority. Because she was gone, and didn´t really have email, last week I essentially did...well...nothing. Which sounds really fun and relaxing, but quickly got boring, because all of my other friends are in school and have homework, so they didn´t have much time to hang out, and I did not take the initiative to go out on my own and explore San Jose (something I have vowed to make up for the rest of my time here). So last week was a lot of sitting and doing nothing, which was kind of nice because it reminded me that I actually do like to be productive, but I also felt like I was at home in Stillwater on some kind of break from school, with absolutely nothing to do because all of the rest of my friends that went to other colleges were at school and there wasn´t anyone around to hang out with. Needless to say, it was kind of nice to be able to come in to the office with hopes of having something to do today (though that´s still not a guarantee...).

One nice thing about this job is how flexible the hours and workdays are. I am not getting credit for this, nor am I getting paid, so I am able to take off as much time as I want or need. That will come in handy in the next month or so, because my family is coming to visit for Thanksgiving, and the week before that four of my friends are coming and I want to travel around the country with them, and I also have to take a few days off next week so that I can go to Panama for 72 hours in order to extend my Visa (I can´t be here longer than 90 days without leaving the country for 72 hours). The one thing that is lacking from the job is that I often feel slightly useless, because I am still getting adjusted to what the organization is all about, and how it operates, so I´m not yet at the point where I can take my own initiative and find things to do on my own. Hopefully that will change...I´d like to feel productive and useful. Part of me feels like I should have just done a month of class and then taken the next three months to travel around the country on my own...ah well, you live and you learn. Next time.

All right, well...soon I´ll write about last weekend when I went to Puerto Viejo, but for now, that´s about all I´ve got. Hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about what I actually ¨do¨ during the week! Have a fabulous day. Much love.