1st Day of Work (June 11)

Monday, June 11, 2007 was my first day of the internship. Though I am a morning person and love having early morning classes and the like, I am a very hard sleeper so I always set multiple alarms. My first one went off at 5:45 a.m. and I actually woke up rather easily with just that one so by the time the second one went off at 6a I was already out of the bed. Our ride arrived at 7:30a to drop us off at our separate destinations. I had to go through two security checkpoints prior to entering the office. At the first I had to go through a metal detector and leave all electronic devices in a locked cubby locker thing. I was kind of leery about doing that because I was leaving my $100 portable hard drive and my $125 digital camera that I’d just bought, along with my house keys because they have an electronic gate opener. However I prayed about it all day and lo and behold they were still there upon my departure. At the second checkpoint, I had to leave my passport and get a visitor’s badge until I take my picture and receive my official employee badge. Not as leery but still wish I didn’t have to leave my passport anywhere. Regardless, I went into the building and met the Consular General. She introduced me to a few people before handing me over to another employee who then introduced me to some more people and set me up at a desk. Unfortunately the computer system was down and I could not receive my user name/login id so was out of luck the whole day. Fortunately, I was taken out of the office within the first 30 minutes for my first assignment. I WENT TO A PRISON!! Part of the American Embassy’s job (well the Consular Section) is to visit American citizens who are in Panamanian prisons. The one we went to had four American prisoners and after waiting what seemed like an hour for them to come out of the cell we finally interacted with them. The four men were in for various crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking and for various sentences from five years to twenty years. All but one spoke English and Spanish so communication was fairly easy. They all seemed in good spirits and the visit was uneventful. A surprising thing I learned about the Panamanian penal system is that as soon as you are arrested you are placed in prison. Even before you have been charged, even before you have been sentenced, you must go straight to prison. In fact, one of the prisoners was waiting for his trial date. ¡Qué interesante, no! In all, the round-trip took about four hours, including a 45 minute – 1 hour commute each way. Immediately upon my return to the Consulate I went out to lunch with three other employees. We went to this Chinese restaurant that was very good. It was funny because in the middle of our meal this lady came up to us and was like, hey you’re the guy from the Embassy, thanks for giving me my visa last month. Apparently this was the owner or someone important in the restaurant because we were given two full plates of shrimp wantons as dessert at the finish of our entrees. I guess it pays to work in the department because folks remember you for helping them out. However, the flip side could be quite dangerous if you denied their visa application and they see you out somewhere on the street. Let’s hope we don’t reach that point! So anyways, after lunch I came back to the office and learned how to review/approve immigrant visa applications; an interesting yet simple process that requires a lot of paperwork and can take multiple years to complete. For example one application was initiated in 2004 but was just approved today, three years later. Continuing on in the day, I received my list of duties, learned about some of the different paperwork required for visa applications, made some copies (the obligatory intern assignment regardless of what company you work for) and read over a few documents. By then it was 4:00 and because the computers were still down, my supervisor made an “executive decision” and said he would take me home then because there was nothing else to do and he was leaving for the day. So, my day went rather quickly in terms of being in the office and doing “work” but was an enjoyable day nonetheless. It appears I will enjoy the internship and the people with whom I work. The main thing that will be an adjustment for me is the slower cadence of life and of work. Things in Panama do not happen at a rapid pace and people have a less strict sense of time than in the United States. I know I will have to pace myself while working to avoid being bored/idle. This was a lesson I learned (the hard way mind you) during my first internship (2003) and will definitely have to apply here. One of the ladies with whom I work told everyone they should only speak in Spanish to me because I am trying to improve my skills so we shall see how that pans out. While at the prison I did speak in Spanish extensively with the guard and then also with one of the prisoners because he did not speak any English so that was fun. I’m sure the learning curve of vocabulary and speed will be sharp however I welcome the challenge, I mean hey, that’s why I wanted to intern in a Spanish-speaking country!