In person meeting! July 22

Marko was in Las Catalinas for a few hours on Wednesday and I was able to get an hour of his time! We discussed his internship at La Carolina Lodge for most of the hour. Some things that I took away from his experience:

• It was hard and lonely.
• In the end because it was hard it was going to worth it at some later date... that has not shown itself yet. :)
• His expectations of the experience were different than what happened and he learned what it was like to have a job and what it is like for others to have a job. What he realized is that the workers didn't have enough time in their daily routines to really teach him what they do - now was that because they didn't think that he needed to learn - that he didn't ask correctly to learn - that his role wasn't clearly defined by Alejandro - we don't know. But he would have liked to learn more.
• He did learn that he loved milking the cows and taking care of the cows and the horses and the chickens.
• He learned Spanish. The first two weeks were tricky and then he started getting better at understanding and responding.
• He got a lot of sleep because there wasn't much to do at night and he was alone. He also was able to get up early when going to bed at 8 or 8:30.
• He lost weight because eating rice and beans and no processed food for 4 weeks was not as palatable. He was ready for some sugar - chocolate chip cookies that his mom was going to make!
• He missed his family.

I am sure that I am missing some things and we will go over the experience when we meet again this week.

We also double checked that the survey had all the questions that he wanted to ask - and we added one.

We made a plan to meet this week and see what the survey revealed.

Also, we need to spruce up our site! We need a name and a picture and Marko can comment on some of these posts that I have been making.