Greetings from Bosnia and Herzegovina!
It's gonna be interesting meeting that noon posting deadline, 'cause I'm six hours ahead of all of you, but we'll see how that goes. Also, sorry I'm late on this post-- in addition to forgetting what my gmail account was, when I did manage to log in, everything defaulted to Serbian. Joys of living abroad.
I am currently an intern at Internews in Sarajevo, the capital city of BiH. They're a really cool international organization that specialize in working with post-conflict societies and societies in transition (think Orange Revolution) in establishing and supporting independent, local media.
So far, most of my work has been editing reports. Since our mission is to support LOCAL media, most of the people who work here speak English as a second language, so it's my job to re-read the work they write and make it sound more fluent and native. I've also sat in for a couple meetings for this project called Innovation Lab. I don't know much about it yet, other than they want me heavily involved. It'll be happening sometime around the end of July, so I anticipate my workload increasing over the next month.
I'm also taking four classes through American University at BiH, so I work here 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week, and then take classes in the evenings. It's a pretty packed schedule, but I really feel like I'm making the most of my time here.
Cao for now!
Kathryn
And on our next edition of "Where in the World is Kathryn Mill?", Kit hits up Sarajevo like a boss. Seriously, I think it's great you're traveling to all these different places. Keep on keepin' on.
ReplyDeleteAt my job at Champlain's Writing Center, we do get international students come in who have difficulty writing the English language. It's quite the challenge and can require a lot of patience. I once worked with a Russian woman who needed to write a paper in English and tried to help her out. It was one of the most difficult things I've done since working there. Best of luck to you.
The Innovation Lab sounds like something from a J.J. Abrams show. Hopefully you'll find out the mystery behind it.
Hi Kit,
ReplyDeleteI'm so happy to hear about and see pictures from all these unique countries you're going to--I can't even imagine all of the things you've done since you left here. I'm glad you found such an interesting and engaging place to intern while you were away this summer.
I can't wait to read about more things that you get to do and where this project will go.
While I'm reading through what you're up to, I'm wondering if you will get some flexibility to determine what reports/articles/stories you work on or if it is mostly collaborative like it seems? I think it sounds great as is, but was just thinking of what kinds of things you would do if they asked you to write your own stories.
Have fun out there!
I'd say you're making the most of your time there! You've got a full schedule.
ReplyDeleteI bet it's a challenge to make the writing sound more native. I googled and learned that Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian are the three languages there. How fluent are you in each? What's the most common language?
What classes are you taking at American U? Look forward to hearing about the Innovation Lab.