So there's this thing called an internship...and it rules my life

Hey all!

As I expected my internship rules my life while I'm here. But what I've experienced in just three days has been pretty awesome.

My first day of work I was given a super quick orientation. I met the other intern who is here right now, her name is Katie and I relearned that the world gets smaller every day. She's from Minnesota, she lived in Rochester, and went to the U of M. How crazy is that! She's studied here before so she's kind of my insider's guide to Chile. She's pretty cool.

After our orientation Katie and I were asked to edit some articles. Then we were given an address, told to go to a press conference, and that was it. "Go do." seems to be the theme at this place which works wonderfully for me. So we go to this press conference, we don't know exactly what we're there for but we were told that we were going to this thing called SANFIC, an international film festival that takes place here every year. It turns out that this press conference is for Willem Dafoe (the guy who plays the Green Goblin in the Spiderman movies) and his wife Giada Colagrande who have made a new movie called "A Woman" that is premiering at this festival. After about an hour we had what we needed, I took the notes, Katie got some sound and pictures on her Iphone and we were ready to go. The writing's all Katie, but it was fun to be there. Like Katie said: that was pretty cool for a first assignment. "A Woman" Press Conference

Yesterday I conducted my first interview in Spanish with Fran Caselli, a chilean designer who is trying to teach people in Santiago the art of the weaving loom so it doesn't get lost to the pages of history. It was a very interesting interview and she understood all that I asked. Rescuing an almost lost art

Today we were told to stay home because there were major protests in the area during this strike of labor workers and the US embassy was concerned that it could get violent, it did. The boss is American so he decided he'd rather keep everyone safe than make us travel across town to the office. So, I played social media specialist all day from home, watching media outlets here, watching twitter,  translating information to English and posting it on the site to help keep the public informed. It was hard work but worth it. Chile Timeline Thankfully my editor was able to pick up the timeline after 5 so that I could write my news brief for tomorrow and try to enjoy the rest of my evening.

I've put up one news brief so far and the other one will run tomorrow but below is the one that ran this morning. Chile's Daily News: August 24, 2011

I think I've learned a lot more and done a lot more in three days than other people have done at some of their internships so I think I'm right where I need to be. It's exhausting but it's fun.

Until next time,
Avery Cropp