There Goes the Dream...

Well, people, after all most 4 months of living the good life, it is going to come to an end. On Monday.

What I mean is, I will be starting "work" on Monday. And by work, I mean an internship. With no pay, of course. JOY.

I guess I can't really complain, since I don't need the money anyway (thanks Mom & Dad!), but still, it would be nice to work for something other than the few lines that will be added to my resume.. but I won't get started on un-paid internships because that is a whole other topic that I could rant for days about.

Anyway, the wheels started turning on this little plan long before I even landed in Taipei. My parents decided that I could not spend a whole year in Taiwan doing nothing but learning Chinese (because, you know, Chinese is such an easy language to learn and all..............) so they decided to call up a distant relative and offer them my free labor.

Now, call me naive, but I kind of thought I would just stroll into the office one day, be shown to an office, given a couple of the standard office supplies and be put to work, but no, no. I assure you I was quite mistaken.. and quite surprised when I was asked for my resume. And then told it was going through HR. And then called to come in for an interview.

So much for the "casual internship" I thought I was signing up for.

So anyway, no big deal, played dress up and put on some business casual outfit that hasn't seen the light of day since last Spring, practiced some Chinese phrases on the walk over to the office ("Hello, I'm Jessica. Wait.. what do I say after that? And how do I say it in Chinese? Ok, calm down, this will be fine. Just be yourself. How do I be myself in CHINESE??? Hello, I'm Jessica. Hello, I'm Jessica......."), showed up 10 minutes early ("YES! good move, me."), got put in a conference room to wait for the HR lady, politely made tiny sips at the water given to me (I mean, hello, I don't want to have to pee during the interview), looked around at brochures on Guam ("excellent.. they do tourism. this is looking up.")...

then a lady walks in and says: "Can you please start by translating these two articles?"

me (in Chinese): "....................um, the thing is, I don't know if my Chinese is good enough........."

interviewer lady: ".........................."

me: "Ok, I'll try!"

OH. MY. GOD. You have to be kidding me. At this exact moment I'm silently cursing myself and my parents and the situation because, let's face it guys, if someone showed you an article in Chinese I'm pretty sure you'd be like What. The. F***. Do. You. Expect. Me. To. Do. With. This. which is exactly how I felt. Surprisingly, I found that I recognized most characters in the article. The only thing about Chinese is, even if you recognize one character, once you put two or three characters together, it means a totally. different. thing. So I did what any smart kid in my situation would do: the most general and probably RETARDED summary I've ever done.

Oh, and have I mentioned the article was about environmentalism, the UN, and the COPENHAGEN MEETING ON GREENHOUSE EMISSION GASSES. In a very fortunate turn of events for me (thank you Big Man Upstairs), I had just learned how to say UN quite literally the day before. But of course, I had no idea that a certain four characters meant "greenhouse emission gasses" or "Copenhagen" for that matter, so that was really fun.

Anyway, after the article episode, a lady walks in with my application (which I also had to fill out in Chinese--what do these people not get about me NOT BEING ABLE TO READ CHINESE) and my summaries and I'm so embarrassed because by now I know she's read it and probably thinks I'm one of the dumbest people she's ever met. But to my surprise she pretty much tried to sell me the internship (it's like my parents said after all: I'm not completely stupid, and more importantly, nobody turns down free help).

After a lot of hoo-haw and boring nonsense that you really don't need to know about, she basically asked me to re-email my resume to her once more as well as a writing sample. I got an email today saying they want me on the team and I will be starting Monday.

Goodbye dream life.