Como se dice internship?

Hey guys, it's Allie!

Since I only have 3 more days until I get on a plane to start this new adventure I'm starting to brush up on my spanish before I go.

I would like to think that I'm somewhat proficient in spanish. I've been taking spanish ever since I was 8 up until last year. I learned so much during that time, but in the past year I've started to forget a lot of what I learned. When it comes to languages, the phrase "Use it or lose it" comes up a lot. When you speak a language daily you begin to adapt to the new sounds, pronounciations, and grammar. In years past I had to speak in only spanish during class. Although I felt inept while struggling to say a simple sentence I learned quickly. The pressure to perform and communicate well was on, so I adapted well to that. Hopefully it'll all come back to me while I'm in Costa Rica.

I'm trying to do a few things to re-learn spanish. I've started to listen to more spanish music in the hope that a few new vocabulary words will pop up. Singing along to Shakira definitely helped me learn how to pronounce words a lot better (that and who can resist dancing along? Shakira is the Beyonce of Latin America after all.)

 In addition to that, I've also changed the language on my phone to spanish. It was confusing at first, but after a while you make connections between the words and the actions they produce. From what I've been told, it's good for you to associate an action with a word rather than the english translation. For example, when my phone asks me if I would like to save something, it asks,"Quieres ganar este informacion?" I picture the word informacion, imagine the action of storing it away, and connect the word ganar to saving.

Another thing I plan to do is to is use the spanish words I know to ask about different words. For example, I want to find out if there is a translation for the word "internship". I might go to a native speaker and ask," Cual es la palabra por un persona que ayada un professore o un persona scientifico con un proyecto" Now for anyone who speaks spanish, I apologize for that butchered sentence, but it gives a sympathetic native speaker an idea of what you want to say.

Finally, I'm going to do my best to avoid speaking english while I'm at EARTH. Many students and staff speak english, however I'd like to try my best and stop myself from using english as a crutch. If it's something crucial that really needs to be said, I'll ask it in english or I'll ask the person speaking to me to explain it in either simple spanish or english. This is definitely going to be the hardest part.

Well, wish me luck with this!
-Allie