martes, 20 de enero de 2015

Vivi's Internship

In the third year at my university we have the brilliant opportunity to take credits through an internship in community outreach in a developing country. I, of course, could not miss this opportunity and started looking for internships in South America, my native contingent that I love so much. Para La Tierra immediately offered me different options for my project and so I decided to travel to Paraguay. As part of my project I helped Becca and Jorge in their school visits and the starting of Futuro Paraguayo. Having the kids at the reserve and seeing their enthusiasm for nature was one of my highlights at Laguna Blanca. Starting from November, with the arrival of the first tourist groups I started taking surveys on the weekends, trying to find out what sort of tourist comes to the reserve and what their interests are. That meant working on Sundays while everyone else was enjoying free time, but sometimes I met interesting people and had a nice chat. I soon realised that Paraguayans don’t know much about nature and often aren’t interested, which makes it exciting when someone does! And those are the people I wanted to reach. People have to be fed with information, they don’t look for it, that is my main discovery with the interviews and the ecological station at Laguna Blanca has lot of potential for that. During the other days I followed other interns with their projects, learning about amphibians and reptiles, small mammals, birds, and bigger mammals (monkeys) at the reserve. I had the chance to expand my knowledge that way, and I am really grateful to everyone that helped me achieve that! During my last month I helped Becca with her project, together with Lore (a volunteer from Belgium) we went on daily walks in the Atlantic forest looking for the Capuchins. We ended up creating the “Wospers”, an ingenuous device for cutting down the wasp nests from the branches along our trails, which made our days adventurous. I can say it was a successful internship, it was good for my career, for myself (you grow a lot during these experiences!) and for my friend network, I made very important friends that I hopefully will see again somewhere. I send you all much love from Uruguay, where I am still trying to let go and get ready for a new, exciting semester in Zürich, Switzerland! CIAAAOOO Vivi Vivi Magistra Switzerland September-December 2014

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