My second week at Ashoka has come to an end. I am still enjoying my internship and the freedom that comes with a job like this. Since a lot of the employees work remotely, especially my team which is based all across Europe, this allows me to work in unique locations. I have been able to explore some cool cafes as well as make use of the outdoor space in my building rather than being cooped up in the office. Although remote work allows for various freedoms like these, it also poses some setbacks. Since my team is mostly remote, I sometimes find it difficult to get clarity on certain tasks and find myself sitting waiting for email/text responses for hours at a time. Also, communicating online only exacerbates the language barrier, sometimes making my questions seem unintentionally unclear. Additionally, late June and July are big vacation months in Prague. A lot of my coworkers are either on vacation or taking them very soon. Sometimes it is hard to keep track of who is available for me to reach out to for help, and it gets lonely in the office sometimes.
In order to try and combat these challenges I have been advocating for zoom calls with my team instead of Whatsapp or Email. I think this allows us to be much more efficient in task delegation and answering questions. Additionally, when my supervisor is in the office, I try to be in the office too, in order to have some face-to-face time with her. Hopefully by next week I will have figured out a good system for communicating with my co-workers.
Last Wednesday, we shot a video for Ed Sheeran at work. Ed has done a lot in terms of talking about and normalizing death. His last album was all about a friend he lost very young. One of the Ashoka fellows is a big advocate for death rights and does a lot of research on it here in Prague. The fellow works closely with hospitals and patients to advocate for their rights as they approach end-of-life care. He decided to film a video for Ed inviting him to come to Prague and work together. For the video, he gave a short speech about his work and me and like 50 other people had to sing a song in Czech. It was difficult at first because I speak no Czech but after a while, I was able to catch on. We filled our office’s outdoor patio, and a professional film guy came to shoot the entire thing. Hopefully, Ed will at least see the video and maybe even respond! I also was able to meet with another Czech intern at the filming and he was able to give me lots of great recommendations I can’t wait to try out in the city.
In terms of exciting things happening around Prague, last week a couple of friends and I watched the Czech team play in the Euros. As a refresher for my American readers, the Euros is a soccer championship in which a bunch of national teams from Europe compete. We found a really awesome fan zone set up by the city in this cool outdoor venue. It was on the river and had areas for swimming and paddle boarding. The area was filled with various sports courts, such as beach volleyball and we want to return sometime to play! It had a large variety of restaurants and even a beach-themed one with an entire sand area in which you could lay out or picnic. It wasn’t too crowded, but there was a decent number of locals there to cheer on the team. Czechia was playing Portugal and sadly lost 2-1, but when the Czech team did score, it was super exciting! They play a couple more times before the eliminations so me and my friends are excited to keep following along.
This next week my boyfriend is in town visiting, which will be super fun. After being here for 3 weeks, I feel like I can give him a great tourist overview of the city! While I am at work, he is out exploring, and then after I get off we meet to do some more sightseeing. We have plans to go to the Prague Castle as well as maybe back to Kutna Hora to see the bone church. I have also been making a list of restaurants I have tried so we can hit up my favorites while he is in town. Prague has so many different places to eat it is hard to keep track of them all! Regardless, I am looking forward to another exciting week in the city!
