So, according to the Amtrak website, my train is 1 hours and 58 minutes late and we are going at 25mph. No one can really tell us why, but good news: the wifi is finally working! Bad news: They closed the cafe car. I guess no one is really worried about keeping a schedule on Friday night in the middle of Virginia. I wouldn’t be worried either, except my hosts are waiting for me at the train station.

It’s worth it though. I’m going to spend the next two weeks immersed in history. My senior project is Archaeology in Tidewater Virginia. I’ve been in love with history for the past ten years, but until now I’ve focused on learning it, teaching it, experiencing it in historical reenactments, never have I spent time discovering it. That’s new. I’m going to be working with a group called the Fairfield Foundation, a small independent group centered in the Tidewater area, which had its foundlings around the Fairfield plantation. Fairfield Plantation, like most of the sites they work on, is a colonial 17th-18th century plantation. The group also has ties to Yorktown and Jamestown as well as various other sites of the same era.

My internship officially starts on Monday and I can’t wait.

-Hope Lily

The fifth and final day I went to the office and presented my ideas for Copidrogas. I still did not have a lot ideas or ideas that I thought were good, but I had to present anyway. I suggested videos to show the pharmacists how the clients are changing and how technology is changing, too. I also propossed to take them to a modern pharmacy and see how it works and then to a common neighborhood pharmacy and make them realize where the change has to come from and where it has to go. Ricardo said that the ideas were fine and then congratulated me for the ideas for Biotoscana and said that he is going to use them. After that I sid my good-byes and left the office and finalized my internship on a really good note!

The fourth day was a little nerve wracking because I was presenting my ideas for the events to Ricardo. The first thing I said was that I did not really have anything for the Copidrogas presentation but that I had a lot for the Biotoscana one. On the brief that Ricardo had given me the day before about the event, he said it is going to be a conference for doctors in Panama where they will introduce a new product. Since it is during the World Cup they wanted to have that as a theme or include it somehow. The first thing I proposed, which was Ricardo’s and my favorite, was that to introduce the conference and the product there should bea video. The video should be like the begining of a soccer game where an announcer is announcing the games and the players and they could make the products the player and introduce the new product like the awesome new player. I also proposed to have Greek and Colombian appetizers for the soccer game Colombia-Greece and to take the doctors out to the Panama bridge and to a restaurant nearby. Before I talked about the other event, Ricardo stopped me and said to work on it again that night and to remember never to tell a client that you could not come up with ideas, ever!

Just kidding it is not, at least not this time. On the third day I went to the office and Andres, another worker in the company, asked me for help with a translation. PCN was doing an event for a company in Sao Pablo and they had to send emails to the customer in Spanish and English just to make sure everything was understood. After that, Ricardo gave me homework. That day after work I had to think about creative ideas to present to two customers: Copidrogas and Biotoscana. In the afternoon I went with Camilo to check out a conference room in the JW Marriot Hotel for an event. I thought the room was not spacious enough for 280 people, but the customer was happy with it. We took measurements to make sure what kind of equipment they should bring and what size of banners and posters they should bring. After the visit was done I went home and thought about my assignment.

On my first day as an intern in PCN Publicidad I met the company’s owner outside a building, but I was really nervous because I did not even know what he looked like. Once I met the owner, Ricardo Bonilla, he took me to three meetings with different customers. First we went to SHIRE and Ricardo introduced and talked about his company and what they did. I heard the whole conversation and after the meeting was done Ricardo told me he was introducing his company to SHIRE to see if they would be interested in their service.

The second meeting was with Copidrogas and this meeting was a little different. Copidrogas already knew PCN and in the meeting Ricardo was presenting ideas for a conference Copidrogas will be having about how to renovate pharmacies. After that we went to the last meeting that was at HEEL. In this meeting he also presented ideas, HEEL wants to do a video for veterinaries on how to apply drugs on dogs and Ricardo gave them options on how to do it. After those three meetings, I went home with a notebook full of notes!

On the second day of work I went to the office and stayed there the whole day. At first, I was not really doing anything but then work came my way. Not the kind of work I was hoping for, but I had to do it anyway. I spent three hours researching hotel event rooms and then calling those hotels and asking more questions about the room and their availability. It was not my favorite task to do, but I learned what questions to ask when looking for a room to hold an event in! After that, I was asked to look for cheap flights and hotels in Bucaramanga for four days and three nights. Definitely not a heart racing assignment but it had to be done.

For my senior project I went back home to Bogota, Colombia to intern in an event planning company. My project was supposed to be two weeks long, the first two weeks of march, but as soon as I got home I had to get my wisdom teeth taken out. I ended up doing one week because the owner could not make more time to have me around, but it still was an awesome experience to have.