I realize that the blogs have been getting fewer and farther between these days. It is one of the difficulties of finally beginning to fit in, not have problems around every corner and have a normalization of routine. It is obviously a more desired state, but more boring one for you guys. But I won’t go too much into my life…as I am gearing up for the three month bench mark and my quarterly review!
I have now been at the Instituto de Derechos Humanos for over a week now, so I think that a check in is due. In fact this was my first week with both internships…and man I have a hang over, both from last night and from working so much this week! It has been an interesting experience so far, much more formal than my experience at Educaser yet still relatively informal in comparison to the jobs in the US. Wait let me reassess…not informal, since people were suit and nice cloths to work every day (including me) but disorganized. Everything is is relatively disorganized in this country. It is interesting to watch them struggle towards more official organization of both the Institute and the masters program (begun 7 years ago). There is a lot of room for me to help here. Honestly if you came here you would NO IDEA you were in a law school. THEY SMOKE IN THE BUILDING! IN THE CLASSROOMS! IN THE OFFICE! There was a dog wondering around the building the other day…..Most definitely not an American institution.
Since my champagne filled inauguration last week, I have spent my time getting acquainted with the people in the office, I sit out in the office and act as a back up secretary so I am learning quickly the answers to all the important questions.
On Thursday I had the pleasure of showing up to work, to be whisked away and asked to translate a meeting between the director of the institute and a woman from The Canadian International Development Agency, who fund some of the programs at the Institute. It was more of a program review session, to see what was being done with the money they were given, and how many of the projects they had done would be sustainable after the money had dried up. So it was relatively informal, accept that the institute is penniless so they were trying (not so subtly) to ask for continued funding, and the woman (also no so subtly) had to tell that there was no more funding to give. So I had to be a learn real fast to translate tactfully. But it was incredibly interesting to learn more deeply about all the projects that the Institute is carrying out right now, and where the funding is coming from and how they work with other institutions. And then I was given the chance, when I walked her out, to chat with her for a while about what CIDA does, they are Canadian version of US Aide.
So besides being an improptu interpreter, I am also starting my project there. The project consists of compiling a data base of links to/information about organizations that have on line resources (like papers and articles attacked to their web site for download) and organizing them according to the different concentrations in the masters program. I basically have to build a virtual resource catalog to be used by the students and professors. It should be pretty interesting.
So over all my life is ruitinizing and mundainizing….I think I just made that word up….as I knew it would. But i will continue to try to make stuff up so that there is something to read!
[...] less depending on evens or other conflicts in schedule. For the first few months I worked solely on a data base, and when I expressed the repressing boredom of filling in a database 20 hours a week, they gave me [...]