Oy vey what a day!

Not really. It was just long.

So the last two days we've had "project management training" which was really just like this woman telling me stuff I already knew, but in Spanish. There were a couple interesting moments, but really it was just a waste of time. And those were some damn long days. For example, for about four hours yesterday, we learned about the database that her branch of the UN uses to track projects, but it's a database that INSTRAW will never have the resources to purchase. Very helpful.

Today, I started my training for taking over my boss' job. Today I learned mostly about information management, which was mostly about the listserves she subscribes to, what she does with interesting and pertinent information, how she managers our own gender peace and security listserve, the newsletter that we publish monthly, the virtual discussions that have been held and how to hold a virtual discussion. I'm going to have a lot to do! I think it's going to be a good mix of administrative tasks and content-based stuff, which is perfect. During this and my last internship, I have found that I usually have a small number of tasks that are largely content-based. While, the content-basedness of it is really nice and I feel lucky that I have had internships that have provided me with such an amazing amount of time to learn, it's hard to do that all day and I feel like it's also unrealistic as most jobs are mixed between content and administrative. I'm sorry, but sometimes I need something mindless to do. Editing, reading, writing, thinking all day is exhausting. That may sound lazy, but that's just the way I am.

After work, I had a bit of an adventure. I had my first Spanish lesson! My teacher lives a bit far away - it takes about 25 minutes to get there from work. But I found my way and had a good lesson. It was hard to focus after 8 hours of learning new stuff at work, but I did it. The thing is, I can understand Spanish - when it's spoken "correctly." When people speak slowly and without slurring their words, dropping endings, etc., I can more or less understand. It's just that in the DR, and anywhere really, they talk super fast, drop endings, use a lot of idioms, and slur their words. It has made me more cognizant of how I speak English and I have been trying to speak better English around non-English speakers. But yeah, the lesson was good and I think it will be really helpful. Yay! I am totally going to learn Spanish.

And now...time for exercise and then thesising!