My Workplace

So I´ll blog for real about work some other time, but its a weird place. I´m supposed to be immersed in ¨Spanish culture,¨ but the paid employees are two Spaniards and two Italians--so they don´t really do anything ¨Spanish.¨ That´´s it for the employees though so the office is TINY. Especially since volunteers and interns keep arriving and there isn´t really enough space for all of us.

Other interns have come and they´re from places like Sweden and Wales and whatnot. So basically I´m not getting immersed into any culture, because it feels a lot like an American office where everyone is from everywhere so no one does the same things. No one here leaves for the siesta, for example. They all bring their lunches and eat at their desks (or go out quickly and grab something).

Even so, they´re all really nice and that´s good. The director of the program had said they wouldn´t be friendly and we´d have to win them over, but since they´re not Spaniards they don´t act the way she said Spaniards would act. So that part is nice. Also, the Welsh guy has an awesome English (the language, I know he´s Welsh and not English) accent. Just sayin.

That´s the other thing. No one here speaks Catalan because only two of them potentially know how. And everyone here speaks Spanish with different accents and often as a second, third, etc. language. It isn´t bad, but I´m also not really sure its what I was expecting as far as working in Spain. The other people on my program are not having this same experience with non-Spanish coworkers. They´re all experiencing the things our program director warned them about with Spanish culture, and I´m not. In some ways I feel like I´m missing out.

Oh, and don´t ask me what I´m doing at my internship. So far all I´ve done is read lots and lots of material about the Red Cross/Red Crescent (its the Red Crescent in a lot of Arab/Muslim nations) and about the different cooperation efforts in the Mediterranean countries (which is what they do here). I´m beginning to think I was mislead about the purpose of this organization by the internship placer person. There has been no mention of anything political. Or of trying to change the policies within non-EU countries. Just lots about what you think the Red Cross does. Because that´s what the Red Cross does. They´re apolitical.

As long as the people keep being this nice and they give me a project worth working on it should be good, but I wish I´d been told the truth upfront, you know? Oh, and the keyboards here are different! The ? is above the apostrophe, and I just now realized when I typed that that the apostrophe is next to the 0 and I´ve been using the accent button as an apostrophe this whole time. Hahahaha that´s kind of amusing. No wonder it looks so much bigger. But the apostrophe is in a different place and the ´ works  as one and is in the apostrophe place on our keyboards, so I'm just going to keep doing it that way (I didn´t that time, did you notice?).

Wow. This was going to be a quick blog post. I guess not so much. I guess for now this is my actual workplace-related blog posting.