Shana Aoyama ‘07
Brattleboro, VT

Shana Aoyama is an Anthropology and Latin American Studies major. She had a summer an internship at the Center for Cross Cultural Studies in Spain.

I had visited Spain before, but with this internship, I got to experience it on a whole different level because of my language fluency. 

When: Summer 2006 (between junior year and senior year).

Why an international internship: I love the Spanish language. I had just returned from my study abroad in Peru and wanted to continue with applying my Spanish skills. As I am interested in the overall process of study abroad, it was interesting to see it from the administrative side.

What language did you speak: Spanish, English.

What did you do: My internship was spilt over two locations: Seville in Spain and Amherst. In Spain, my tasks varied according to the department I was working with. One of the departments taught English classes to Spaniards. Another dealt with cultural travel, where I helped in organizing educational trips for senior citizens, as well as intergeneration hostel trips. We worked on implementing more long-weekend trips in the study abroad programs for college students, which involved a lot of research and logistics on my part. On the administrative side, I compiled evaluations of the programs. More generally, I helped around the office - archiving and answering student questions. In Amherst, I took part in preparing the students who were going to Spain the following semester, sending information packages to people interested in trips and looking for conferences where the center could advertise the programs.