Summer Internship 2016!


Long time, no talk! I have finally wrapped up my junior year of college: I am officially a rising senior - and it is still unreal to think about entering my final year of college. (To those entering or still in college: take advantage of every moment you have.) Fortunately, I will enter the fall semester with a bang! as I will have just ended an amazing summer internship in Praia, Cape Verde.

Cape Verde is an archipelago composed of ten islands in the Atlantic Ocean, sitting right off of North-West Africa. I was accepted as an intern for the Uni-CV Technical Investigation Internship through the Albright Institute (into which I have also been fortunately accepted for the 2017 program!) and funded by the Anchor Point Fellowship Fund. (A huge shout-out to them both.) There, I am pursuing TWO projects:
  1. Dam Poilao management: Working with the government to understand the technical and maintenance issues of the recently established dams on Santiago Island.
  2. UNI-CV connections: Meeting with engineering faculty at University of Cape Verde (UNI-CV) to lay groundwork for service-learning project collaborations with Wellesley faculty.
To say I am excited would be the understatement of the year - the decade, really - but I am also incredibly anxious to dive in. I am going without another intern or my Wellesley supervisor, but I have a lot of support there. I am ready to meet the team, embrace an entirely new culture and come out with a greater understanding of the world. To think, only a year ago, I had not left the country: now I will be able to say I've been to over ten countries, on two different continents/regions. Wish me the best of luck as I prepare in these next two weeks and strengthen both my Portuguese and Criolo! And keep an eye out for more blog posts documenting my progress on the two projects (Coming soon).

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