Today was my first day at Deutsche Welle!! Now, as you know, DW is a German broadcaster....I do not speak German. They do.
When I got there, Lori (the secretary) set me up at my computer. It's in German. Oh and the keyboard? German as well. So I'm like, I got this, I know Spanish and English, German can't be that different!! It is. My first task was to create a gmail account, so I go to gmail.com andddddd you guessed it! German! So I decided to take a break from attempting to understand German and Lori told me I could catch up on today's headlines. GOOD NEWS!!! CNN.com was in English!!
Luckily, there is another intern at DW. Her name is Lisa and she is from Germany. She has been at DW (is everyone ok with me shortening Deutsche Welle to DW??) for 4 weeks now and her last day is May 18. She is very nice and she helped me find important things...elevator, bathroom, coffee room....you know, important things! Around 11:30am Lisa and I went to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. There was an event titled "Afghanistan: An Update from the Field." Major General John Toolan was the speaker. He recently completed a year-long deployment to Afghanistan where he served as Commander overseeing more than 15,000 US troops in Helmand. The presentation was about Helmand and all the improvements that have been made. It was actually very interesting. Lisa and I took notes so we could report back at DW!
When we got back we typed up our notes and passed them on. I then decided to go back to my first task and conquer the gmail account...in German. Honestly, I just kinda clicked everything I could until the form to create a new account came up! Luckily that was in English (who knows what my username/password would've been if it was in German....) So it was a success and I completed my first task! WOO! No one gave me a cookie though.
Then Max, one of the correspondents, told me he had a few jobs for me. After talking to Lisa I learned that when the correspondents have a story idea they tell the interns. The interns then do all the research on the topic and provide a report. The interns also make all the contacts and set up any interviews/phone calls that need to happen. The correspondents then go out and do the stories. So I'll probably be doing a lot of research/phone calls...which could be interesting. So anyways, Max told me about a few stories he wants to do. He knows I'm a sports person so he told me I could research the NHL and see if there are any players from Germany who we could highlight in a story. There aren't any German players on the Washington team, but there are about 8 total in the NHL so I'm sure I'll be making phone calls to all the different media people for the teams tomorrow! The other story is about the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. I'm interested in this story as well because as most of you know, I'm from Canada.
Then the hardest part of my day....logging off the computer. After looking at my 6 German options for about 3.5 minutes, I finally just asked Lisa how to log off. She helped me. Thank God.
So that was day 1!! It was a lot of everyone speaking German and me....not. By the end of the month I'm sure I'll be fluent!!! Or....I'll be fluent in Spanglan....Spanish, English, and German! Oh, and the guy I'm living with has a British accent...so I'll come back speaking Spanglan...with a British accent!!
The weather here hasn't been fantastic. It's been raining and cold both days now. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and in the 60s...so I'm looking forward to that!
Other observations....no one uses turn signals here....if you want to turn....just do it.
More tomorrow....unless something life changing happens tonight....which is highly unlikely...sooooo more tomorrow :)
Shelby*
P.S. Prince Harry will be here on Wednesday. I plan on meeting him and falling in love and having a royal wedding at 3am. The end :)
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