Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Paragliding, Juanes, IMAS internship, and Español x2

Well the end of last week and my weekend were quiet interesting. After I wrote the last post I went to my semester internship for the first time. I work at IMAS- Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social, which is basically the government run HUGE social services department. They do all sorts of work basically all the work that you think of a social worker doing except this is on a regional and national scale. I work at the national headquarters in San Jose and basically help out with whatever projects are at hand that week. My focus is within the educational programs and more specifically their ADVANCEMOS program for kids ages 7-21. That was an interesting experience because from the beginning my internship experience here has been a bit of a run around and this is actually the second location where I was sent to as my original internship ended up falling through. It is also really interesting switching from a working mindset in English to one in Spanish, even for me who comes from a Spanish speaking family this transition has most definately been an interesting and challenging experience so far. I literally had more literature to read as "homework" for my internship then my other four classes combined this past weekend. But even though it is tedious it is really interesting to see how this style of company works in another country.

I also found out that day before my classes and internship that the group was going to a Juanes concert, I am beyond excited about this as I've never been to a concert and my first one happens to be an extremely popular Latin artist right now. I am sooooooooo excited so that is in two weeks and I'm really looking forward to it.

Over the weekend I went back to San Ramon, which I've come to feel is my home away from home. I live with a local family here in San Jose and have classes and work in the city but being able to leave the city and enjoy some time with other friends has been a great stress reliever and lets me just get away every once in a while. Well Jose, a friend I visited who I've already mentioned is a paragliding pilot well I got the opportunity to do this again this past weekend and to just enjoy that gorgeous view from where the flights take off, if you don't know what I'm talking about go check out some of the pictures.

Because of some switching around on hours with the internship I'm getting to take a second more focused Spanish class by myself with a professor so I actually get to work on what I really need which is writing and literature in Spanish. Well I had this class today for the first time and I absolutely love it, my instructor is great and I get to work with a lot of interesting material so it's actually great to just have a one-on-one class instead of dredful thinking you are the only one with an instructor, but I really like it and am looking forward to that class.

Well this weekend the group is off to Monteverde, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Costa Rica so I'm really excited and am sure I'll have some great pictures from that too, we are all also doing the ziplinning again so that should be fun. I'll write about that next week.

Hope everyone is doing well.

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