Day Nine

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So I've been at my internship for a couple days now and I really like it, especially compared to the stories that other people are telling about their internships.

There is another intern there right now, named Laura and she is awesome! She helped me figure out the bus system and we've hung out a couple times already. There is another intern, Anais, who is french. She is really awesome and I love her accent.

Emily is my internship supervisor and she is super nice. She's letting me pick my own projects, in addition to the couple projects they need done now. The first thing we did was sit down and talk about the NGO itself, what the program's mission was, my internship, my duties, and what I want to accomplish. I was a little worried when they asked me what I wanted to accomplish. First of all, I had been so excited about just being in Israel and Tel Aviv that I didn't really think about the first day of the internship, even though it is a job and I need to treat it like one and second, I only knew so much the NGO itself and felt like I was running a little blind. The website can only tell me so much... So I wasn't prepared at all for the question but I just said what I wanted; I wanted to help with anything they needed, work on substantial projects, and hopefully make a lasting impact on the program itself.

I also met Rutie, who is in charge of the whole operation. She seems very nice but I didn't interact with her that much. She does seem to want to include me as much as possible and even asked me to proofread an email she was sending as she was afraid the syntax sounded wrong. Whether she was just humoring me or whether she actually wanted my opinion I don't know. I'm hoping it was the latter.

My very first day I didn't go in until noon as my supervisor returned from the states just the day before. As stated before the two of us sat down and really discussed what I was going to be doing. After that they set me up a computer to read the magazines they produce. There were only a few translated to English but they were really interesting. Learning about the conflict through the eyes of children and teenagers is very interesting.

The youth often have interesting points, even if the opinions they express are somewhat simplistic. That simplicity is nice though, as compared to the incredibly detailed and somewhat convoluted opinions I received during seminar. It's refreshing to see the conflict boil down to the actual issues, instead of the many superficial complaints that you encounter.

I started grant writing the next day and while it is a bit tedious it's also really great because it's a highly sought after skill. I came on the program to learn and I'm happy that I get to. I also started organizing a few trips to the West Bank, one for a humanitarian aid drop and one for a birthright to Bethlehem. Windows tries to organize supplemental trips to the West Bank for those traveling on birthright as their original trips don't take them into the West Bank and Windows believes that it's important for them to see how Palestinians live and their culture. At first I wasn't sure about these trips, whether they actually make an impact but I don't think there is any harm in trying.

All in all, Windows is a great place to work. The people are awesome and super helpful. I have meaningful work (in addition to some tedious gopher like tasks, but you gotta do what you gotta do at an NGO this small) and I'm excited to be actually contributing.

Hopefully in a few weeks I'll love it there even more!

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