Hola everyone! I hope you are having a great Monday and an amazing start to your week. It is hard for me to believe that I have completed half of my IIP to Madrid. It feels like yesterday I flew into Madrid trying to figure out how to get to my homestay and now I sadly only have less than one month left until I return to the United States. As time has passed here, however, I must admit that I was really missing my family and friends this past week and although Madrid has been an amazing experience, I know that I will be excited to go home and catch up with them after eight weeks apart.
This past weekend I had the unique opportunity of traveling to Ávila and Segovia through the organization I am interning at. My organization, Expanish, currently has a group of students from the University of South Alabama and when they planned the day trip, they accounted for their professor in the ticket count. However, she had already returned home and they had an extra ticket. The group’s chaperone reached out to me and asked if I was interested in going with them and taking photos of the group. These last four weeks I have been traveling with them on their walking tours to take photos of them for the company and for their university. I said yes enthusiastically and had an amazing day; the weather in the two cities was perfect and our tour guide was entertaining and deeply knowledgeable about all the different sights. In the city of Ávila, we got the opportunity to see and walk on top of the wall that outlines the city. Our guide said that it took 50 years to construct and that it protected the city during the Napoleonic Wars over two hundred years ago. Along with the wall, we also got to see the Ávila Cathedral, which historians believe is one of the first churches constructed in the Gothic style.
After we finished in Ávila, we drove an hour to the city of Segovia. Segovia is famous for its massive aqueduct that brings water all the way from its neighboring mountains. Along with that, we also got to visit and enter the Segovia Cathedral, which is the last church constructed in the Gothic style. The church was massive and I could see it throughout various parts of the city!. After we left it, we headed over to one of the coolest sights I have seen so far here in Madrid: The Alcázar de Segovia. This castle was once home to Queen Isabella’s family and a vacation spot for the Spanish royal family when they visited Segovia. It is an amazing structure that tourists can tour and the views are breathtaking. A fact we learned from our tour guide was that this was a location where Christopher Colombus asked Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to sail west for India in 1492. Unlike in the United States, Spaniards still view Colombus as a national hero in Spain and our guide felt proud when he told us this fact. This opened my eyes because it showed me how diverse groups of people can interpret different historical events and the power of perspective.
While on the topic of learning, through my internship I have been developing transferable skills. One skill I have been developing is communication. The organization I work for is multi-sized, multicultural, and international. Because of these facts, communication is extremely important so that everyone is up to speed with what is going on and on the same page. One way I have improved my communication is through responding quickly to emails or messages so that I show my bosses and colleagues that I am dependable and am quite easy to reach. Another thing I have done is tell my bosses when I finish a task. Each time I complete something, I tell my boss and then I tell her what project I will work on next so she knows I am not wasting time, but rather I am being productive.
Along with transferable skills, I have also gained technical skills at my internship. The biggest hard skill I have learned is with Google Sheets. At Expanish, every spreadsheet is on Google Sheets instead of Excel. Although this may seem negative because Excel is very prominent in the United States, I have seen this as a positive because they operate very similarly. During my internship I got to learn about the Ctrl + F function, which allows the user to search the entire spreadsheet for a keyword argument and highlights corresponding cells if they match it. This is a lifesaver in massive spreadsheets because it allows me to search for something in it very efficiently. This function is also in Excel, which adds even more value to it.
My internship has also given me global competencies that have allowed me to navigate cross-cultural situations. The biggest global competency that has been useful for me is the ability to read body language. Body language is extremely useful because even when I do not understand every word a person is saying, their facial expressions, tone of voice, body posture, and actions can help me process their message. For example, if my host mom told me something, but I missed her words, I can analyze her tone of voice. If she spoke to me in a happy tone, I know that she is in a good mood and that we are having a positive conversation, or if she is showing me her phone, then obviously she wants to show me something. This old saying in English is truly a lifesaver when abroad: Actions speak louder than words.
