Interning

Got back two and half hours or so ago from a night meeting for my internship...the office/team I'm working for met up with the people of a barrio (neighborhood) to go over county lines and stuff and also the process of delimitation. I won't bore you with the details, but if there's anything I've learned so far about the social interactions here in Ecuador, it's that everything (at least here in Ibarra) is very democratic, and not at all very efficient. Haha. Very opposite of many things in America, no? Of course we say we're democratic, but I think we respect efficiency salted with a bit of democracy more.

I suppose I should give you the background of my internship, since that hasn't happened yet....I'm working for the municipal county government of Ibarra, Ecuador, which is the capital of the region of Imbabura (so it's actually Ibarra, Imbabura, Ecuador--think capital city, state, country, or something like that). Since I'm interning in Urban Planning, and one of my majors is Policy Studies (with a concentration in Urban and Social Change), they assigned me to the sector of Participación Ciudadana, or literally, Citizen Participation. It's a social program, but what I really do is act as a liaison between the social and technical side of urban planning (the social side is Área Técnica de Participación Ciudadana--literally, Technical Area, where they do most of the logistical stuff of meetings, etc., and it's not actually very technical--and the technical side is Planificación--aka planning--where they use AutoCAD and ArcGIS to make maps, plan the city, etc.).

Which leads me to why I was almost in tears the first day of my internship. After I had arrived in Ibarra from Quito by bus, my host mother (Ceci, who also works at the Municipio, aka the municipal government) took me to meet everyone. I was then told that I was meeting the mayor (O.O GAH taken off guard), who turned out to be a strict but amiable-type father figure. The meeting only lasted 10 minutes and it went well. Then I met my co-workers/a bunch of other people in Participación Ciudadana, and I was grilled by one of my bosses on what I would be able to help them in. Basically, there was a mix-up (they hadn't paid attention to what my resume actually said) and they thought I was a graduated architecture student who would be able to help them with the technical side of planning, and I was like, ......no. And then they kind of all looked meaningfully at each other (3 people were there at the time) and started sighing and laughing, and even though I couldn't understand everything they were saying to each other (rapid Spanish-speaking is still a bit hard for me to mentally translate), I could understand that the gist of it was, "Wowww what are we going to do with her? She's useless to us as it is."

So I felt pretty humiliated, and it wasn't even my fault! So then I, being determined that I did not come all the way to Ecuador to be useless, was like, "Well, what do you guys need? I can learn whatever it is." And they replied, "We need someone who knows how to use AutoCAD! But you don't know how to use it." (None of them knew how to use it, which is why they needed someone who did.)

Me: "Well, I can learn it."
Them: "Yeah, yeah, of course you can learn it, but how long will that take? Haha."
Me: "I can learn it in a day or two. Let me learn it."
Them: *laughing and shaking their heads and ignoring me for a while*
Me: *struggling to maintain a sense of dignity and reminding myself to both be humble and man the heck up* "Look, let me learn AutoCAD. It'll just take a day or two, and then I can come back and help you with whatever you need."
Them: "Mmhmm.....sure, a day or two."

Basically, after all my pushing in struggling Spanish, and after a day and a half of that, they were finally like, okay, fine, go learn it--not like there's anything to lose since she doesn't know anything right now. And before they packed me off to the office of Planificación, I had suggested to them that they get ArcGIS, which is a program that I thought was more suited to their needs (not that I knew how to use that one either). And they were like, "Yes! That program is what we want! Do you know how to use it?" And I was like, "No." And they were like, "Sigh." And then I said that I'd learn that program, too, since we found out that a couple people in the other office had it and knew how to use it.

So BASICALLY the result was that I learned both AutoCAD and ArcGIS the following Monday and Tuesday, defying all expectations (yes, I did feel smug and somewhat redeemed...), and finished making the initial maps that they needed by the end of the week.

And now, after 3 weeks of being here, we are all friends, and they no longer think I'm useless (quite the contrary, and rather depend on me to do the digital work and also use me as an example when they're trying to convince the people to try something new, aka delimit their neighborhoods, and I find that kind of ironic/amusing). So yes, this is a happy ending, and I am very grateful to God that it is (ending to the initial fiasco, that is). This past week, the team and I have been getting to know each other better by traipsing around the Ecuadorian countryside together (no, like, literally traipsing up and down and around the mountains and neighborhoods here) in order to accurately delimit the barrios. I'll go into more detail of my team and why we're doing all this later, as this post has gotten too long! Suffice it to say that the work I'm specifically doing will eventually go up on the City of Ibarra website (according to my bosses, who are now really more like colleagues)! That is exciting =].

So yes, I will end it there, even though I have paragraphs more to say about what I'm doing (for later!).

Also, I'm going to Colombia this weekend. Heheheheheheh. Just a day trip on Saturday since the border is only 2 hours away, but super exciting nonetheless. I'll let you guys know how it goes! =D Good night =].