8 Hours a Day of Awesomeness!!

Sooooo..... holy junk has a lot happened since my last post. And I shall tell you all about it right now! Probably in more than one post; it just makes more sense. Let’s start with the super, fabulous, wonderful, marvellous, awe-inspiring, enjoyable, tremendous, excellent job that I love, like a lot.

Right now I am working as an intern for the Canadian Consulate in Guadalajara. This post only offers two of the three services that Consulates can offer; the trade sector and consular services (helping Canadians who go to jail, lose their passport, etc.). I am working as a research/legwork assistant to a couple of the trade commissioners. I mainly work with David, the Vice-Consul who is from Canada, is super young for the position he has and is quite hilarious ! Basically, a super awesome boss and a lot like me in many ways. For example, the other day he walked into my office and said, “Randi, your work sucks. You need to do better.” And then he immediately started talking about how on ANTM they give feedback that really is useless and doesn’t help them at all. Haha! So much joy!

I swear I got the good end of the stick on this job. There is one other Canadian student here right now from the UofA, Peter. He got here a week later than me and I swear that week was SUCH a blessing for me. It meant that I got paired with David. This is awesome for a number of reasons. A) His sectors are more interesting to me. Right now I am mostly working with the forestry industry and I also am working on this report about the level of danger present in Guadalajara. I believe this beats the cattle sector and marbles. Haha! B) David and I get along and can relate a lot better than I can with the other trade commissioners. We have a similar sense of humour which means we joke around a lot more than I do with the other commissioners and we are closer in age than the other trade commissioners. C) I seem to get some pretty awesome activities that for some reason, Peter, just seems to miss out on for whatever reason.

For example, I got to attend the Aerospace Meetings – this giant expo about, well, Aerospace. This was a three day event and it was a BLAST. On Monday night there was a cocktail party that the Canadian Consulate and Embassy were hosting together. It was interesting to watch this networking meeting. It was really like an ant farm of people schmoozing. I felt COMPLETELY out of place because I was a student and really had no need to network with anyone but I enjoyed the free food and drinks! Hahaha! And at the end of the night, I didn’t need to catch a cab home because David drove me home! Bonus!! Day 2 was a really, really long day. I started at 8:30 at the expo. Basically my job for two days was to man the booth that we had and promote the Canadian Aerospace Industry and hand out information. It was really interesting. Something most people won’t know – Spanish in a French accent is practically impossible to understand. There were a lot of people from Quebec there so I interacted with a lot of French. I decided I need to learn that language, especially if I want to end up working for the Federal Government which I really think I want to do. So, I hung out in the booth and practised my Spanish, stumbled through French, and made a bunch of contacts. Pretty awesome. I finished up at around 6 and was going to head home, but there as this Gala Dinner and Vero convinced me that I should go and I am SOOOO glad that I did! It was awesome. I drove there with David and we just laughed and joked. Seriously, it is so nice to have at least one person here who I can joke around with. The Mexicans really don’t get my humour most of the time. The Gala Dinner was at Cabañas, which is this huge castle like building in Centro Historico. This is the same building that Obama came to when he came down to visit Calderón and they had a big catered dinner for him. When you go in, there is this gorgeous courtyard with orange trees all around. We stood around for awhile and had more alcohol. I love the looks people give you when you turn down tequila down here. (ps.... Jalisco, the state I am in, is the home of tequila.) The whole time there was a full on Mariachi band playing in their cute little outfits. So quaint! After that we went through this hall where there are tons of super famous murals on the roof. It was breath taking and the pictures really don’t do it justice. Finally, we ended up in the inner courtyard where they had DECKED out the place. This was an all on gala dinner. Nothing was held back. There was your choice of basically anything to drink and waiters in their little outfits everywhere. While we were eating the mariachi band played and we had a bunch of traditional dances. David and I made fun of their outfits basically the entire time. We mocked everything from the guy who looked like he had a ping pong paddle on his head to the person who looked like a walking piñata. Dinner was hands down THE best meal I have ever had. Seriously. We started with a bunch of appetizers. Who knew I would like a tuna stuffed/breaded chilli pepper? Then we had basil soup. I seriously wish my camera hadn’t died cuz I wish I had pictures for you. First they brought out all of the dishes that were decorated at the bottom like a little colourful garden and then they came around and poured the soup on top of it. It felt so rich and classy! Then we had a choice of fish or some kind of meat. I have given up on asking questions about the meat here. Finally we had THE BEST dessert I have ever had. It was this banana, chilled sorbet-ice cream thing that was to DIE for!! Seriously, sooooo good! We left at that point but as we were leaving they were giving you a choice of whatever coffee you would like, espressos, lattes, the whole bit. It was the coolest thing I have ever been to. Seriously, the perks of my job are awesome!

And then on Friday, Vero asked me to help her with some photocopying and such and as I finished it she said she was going to do a presentation at the University of Guadalajara and asked if I would like to come. I said sure. It beat doing research on pesticides in Guadalajara! On the way she briefed me on the purpose of the presentation and then told me that I would have 2-5 minutes to talk about my University back in Canada and tell the kids in this auditorium to take advantage of the exchange programs. At the end of her explanation I said, “So, I can do this in English right?” And everyone in the car hesitated and then said “No...... Spanish would be better.” So, here I was with about 15 minutes to prep a 2-5 minute presentation on the UofA. Turns out I really don’t know a whole lot about my school! Thank heavens for the little brochure they gave me! I totally nailed it though! It was awesome! I really didn’t think I would but it worked out soooo good! I even had the whole place laughing and got to sit and talk to some of the students after. It was so awesome! And then I got free lunch (even though I got tricked into eating sushi. Oh and I had a cucumber and lime drink. Quite good actually!) and the rest of the afternoon off to go and see the Alberta Learning Office thing that is set up here in Guadalajara.

Basically, after all of my rambling, the conclusion you should draw is that my job is awesome. It is exactly what I have been studying in University. It deals with different cultures and languages which I love. It gives people the opportunity to explore the world and travel around to different areas and get paid to learn different languages. Basically it is my dream job. So, I am now taking applications for any boys who want to be my husband and travel the world with me. Contact me if you want further information on the application process.