Today I started my short-term internship with Amnesty International Prague. I'm really excited about it, in a morbid kind of way. This semester has seen me study lots and lots of death and oppression, and the internship ties in beautifully. I get to read about Vietnam!
Right now, if you go to the library/archive section of AI's website, you can search for all the articles AI has published in the last ten years or so on any given country, like Vietnam. If you're just looking for a specific topic, like capital punishment, you can search for all the articles on that topic. However, you can't cross-search. If you want an article on capital punishment in Vietnam, you have to search through one of the two databases and pick out the relevant articles.
My internship involves creating a summarized cross-reference database. Basically, this means that once the project is completed, you will be able to search "capital punishment" and "Vietnam" and find my article - an overview of all of AI's current articles about capital punishment in Vietnam, and a guide to Vietnam's capital punishment policies complete with quotes and individual case studies.
Pretty cool, right? In any case, I'm learning a lot of really depressing information. For example, if a case is noted because a political prisoner is severely beaten by her escort on her way to the courthouse after waiting six years for her trial to begin, do I file that under "legal injustices", "prisoners of conscience", "police brutality", "prison conditions" or "torture"? Decisions, decisions.
Since I can do the work from anywhere in the world, I was even thinking that I could continue after I leave Prague - all the archives are online, and I email the documents to my supervisor anyway. Something to think about!
In other news, Abby left this morning. I waved and recited poetry under my breath to keep from crying as the cab took her away. I miss her already. We had such a wonderful time together - even the weather cooperated! We sat in the sun on Petrin, the ridge overlooking the city, drank hot chocolate with thick whipped cream at Cafe Slavia, laughed at Everything is Illuminated and stayed up late into the night talking, talking, talking. We weren't apart for more than a few hours the entire week and never really got sick of each other, or ran out of things to talk about. I'm sitting here with a postcard we wrote to Smith Hillel this morning:
I [Abby] think Dane and I have learned a lot from each other this week, particularly about perspective. I see London differently now, feeling lucky to have met people who would fit in at Smith. And I'm (Dane) definitely learning how beauitful my city can really be, especially when it's packed full of people oohing and aahing and sunshine.
A picture or two from Bliss Week (as it hereon shall be called) shall be posted rather soon. Now it's time to massively catch up on laundry and chores, and get ready as Aliyah's visit approaches, followed immediately by Budapest!
2 comments:
Heya I am dashing to class but just wanted to say hi and I love you and chag sameach and I'm glad you had a good seder with Abby, ours was good too and wow I need to tell you about the Hop seder, hil-freaking-arious, AND I really want to know what were the fourth things that were added, and I love you and I hope you get all the stuff I sent you soon!
Love, the moose.
I agree with you- the more happy people are, the less they feel the need to express their state of *happiness* on the internet... remember how I sort of stopped posting things on LJ after a while of being at Colgate?
Oh my... I've been even more terrible than you about keeping my blog updated :P Even my seder was terrible!
I love seeing you smile and laugh, Dane, and that's one of the reasons why I love being/want to be you friend.
Hag sameach!!
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