In my junior year at UW, my interest in global health and sustainable development grew while my Spanish abilities improved. With this in mind, I began to search for internship opportunities that would allow me to gain experience with social development issues. Through the International Internship Program at my university I was given a long list of internship options and after an hour or two of sifting through the many options in Spanish-speaking countries, I found the FOSIS listing for a Social Media and Communications Intern. With my experience managing the social media pages for Project 1808, I felt that I had enough experience to take on the challenge of working in a different language. In addition, FOSIS presented the opportunity for me to gain experience in a governmental organization in a foreign country--it was the exact experience I was looking for.
In late May of 2014, just one week after finishing up my final exams, I once again found myself at O'hare airport boarding a flight that would take me to Santiago. For the second time I was traveling south of the equator. For the second time I was the first UW student to work with this organization. But, for the first time I was traveling alone.
For two and a half months I was living and working on my own in Chile's capital city. It was on this trip that I truly learned how to live and travel independently and these are skills for which I am forever grateful. I also gained the skills of simplifying complex statistical data and synthesizing large amounts of information as I worked for the Studies and Evaluations Department within FOSIS. I also had the wonderful experience of doing it all in spanish.
I am currently still living and working in Santiago and I can honestly say that this experience as been the most challenging and rewarding trips I have ever been on. I have learned how frustrating it is to not be able to communicate with those around you, how isolating it can be to live on your own, and how difficult it can be to not have the usual summer weather (it is currently winter here).
I have also learned how rewarding it is when your able to use your foreign language skills, how liberating it is to travel on your own, and how interesting it is to live literally on the other side of the world.
For me, Santiago has presented some of the biggest challenges, but it is an experience I wouldn't trade for the world.
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