Week 2: Diving In

Hi all,

The first weeks of the internship were fairly hectic. As you might imagine working out of an Embassy has a few more security checks and paperwork that needs to be accomplished before you can get into the actual work. I spent the first two days in numerous security meetings and learning all about working as a liaison of the U.S. Government in a foreign country. By the time I actually settled in and got to working with my team of Senior Trade Specialists it was nearly the end of week 1. When I came back on Monday I was handed a huge project, an American Marine netting company (for reasons that deal with proprietary information I can't disclose the name of the company) based in Nevada. The project was far more hands on then I thought I would get to do during the internship but I dived in, full of enthusiasm. I had two weeks to set up 12 meetings with companies in the Cape Town area and fill a three day itinerary that also featured a trade convention at the Cape Town Convention Center for The Marine Industry. It meant I had very little time to do anything else. I'll pick this up in later posts.

Cheers,
Thomas