One of the classes I'm taking here is an internship/internship seminar with La Unión Iberoamericana de Municipalistas, a government organization that works with local governments of Latin American countries and holds conferences and training programs on how to be more efficient, how to fundraise, how to handle issues like recycling, unemployment, etc. etc. What I've been doing ranges from data entry to calling hotels in other countries to check availability for possible conferences. (http://www.uimunicipalistas.org/)
I like having an internship because I think I'm learning more about Granada society than I do with my host family or at my UGR class. The people I work with are really nice, and there are people from all over Spain and Latin America. My supervisor, Flavia, is from Argentina. The working environment here is very different from the U.S. and I had a hard time adjusting to the slower pace of working. I feel like employers in the U.S. do not take free labor for granted, and supervise you to make sure you're using your time wisely, and I like this because I feel like people take volunteer jobs to learn things. If I waste time in a volunteer job I feel like I'm wasting both a learning opportunity and valuable leisure time - I could be sleeping! For example, the first day I was at Casa Cornelia Law Center, I got to call clients and ask about their paperwork, etc. Immediately, I had to be confident enough to call strangers in Spanish and ask about forms I knew nothing about. Of course, I had to ask for help and eventually hand the phone to a real lawyer, but I learned a lot more than I would have if they had me spend the day touring the office.
My first few days at la UIM, my supervisor told me to check my email while she found something for me to do. They have interns all the time, but do not prepare projects for them ahead of time. So, I checked my email. I picked up some pamphlets and read about their programs, and I looked around their website while I waited. Eventually, I got to upload some articles onto their UN page (they recently won an award from the UN for a great newsletter on eliminating violence against women!). This was really frustrating because I had woken up at 7am on a day when I had no class to be there. We have a weekly internship seminar with other students in internships (there are 7 of us - all women of course! boys are lazy - working at la UIM, a library, a museum, a hospital, teaching English, a vet's office, and a cultural center) where we talk about what we learned at our internships and do some cultural awareness exercises. I mentioned that I felt like my time was being wasted when my supervisor didn't have anything for me to do. After a few weeks there, my attitude has totally changed.
"No pasa nada" is my new favorite phrase - This is just the way things are here. Going to breakfast for an hour and a half is not a waste of time, it's an important part of the work day. Un café con leche y una tostada is absolutely necessary. They enjoy their work because they develop meaningful relationships with their coworkers, and probably also because they close between 2 and 5 for lunch and a nap. I've realized that even when I have "nothing" to do, there are plenty of ways to learn and enjoy my work. I read articles on their website, I chat with my coworkers, and I generally have an upbeat attitude and that makes me much happier to be there. No pasa nada if I just sit and listen to them talk, or if I sit and read. If nothing else, I'm learning how Spanish people interact in the workplace, and enjoying the good company.
Something we read in the internship seminar is a good example of the difference in working style. Say you go to a butcher in the U.S. You take a number, and he asks number 1 what they want first - meat, cheese, fish, whatever. Then he asks number 2, then number 3. If he skips number 2 and serves number 3 first, everyone is outraged. There is an order to these things! Here, the butcher will ask customer number 1 what he wants - cheese and chorizo. Then he asks if anyone else wants chorizo, and serves it to number 1, number 3, and number 7. It doesn't matter that number 2 has been waiting longer. All the work gets done, but in a different order, and the butcher and the customers are all eventually happy. No pasa nada!
A few anecdotes:
- I came at just the right time, because everyone's birthday is in March so we eat cake (tarta, not pastel) all day. When it was Rosalida's birthday, we were about to start singing and I go "Estas son las mañanitas..." and no one else does! Here they sing "Cumpleaños feliz", and it sounds just like Happy Birthday. Lame.
- At this same birthday party, Rosalinda, who is from Bolivia, cut the cake, but the slices were not triangular. Apparently in Bolivia, they slice cake with a circle in the middle, then cut short and fat slices from the circle to the edge of the cake. This is so that the middle piece goes home with the birthday person. All the Spanish people and I could not imagine there was more than one way to slice cake.
- At breakfast the other day, they were talking about their upcoming conference in Toluca, México. Then they got on the subject of Catholics in Mexico, and Edna said she could not understand how such religious people could worship death. I was pretty confused at first - I do not personally know about death worshippers - but then I realized that she was talking about Día de los Muertos. I wanted to explain that it's not death worship, and that it's more of a cultural tradition than a religious one, but by the time I figured out how to say it they were on a new topic. I need to learn to speak up at breakfast.
besos!
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