And then they gave me a key

I'm such a workaholic it's pathetic. The thought of spending a year without work was just too much for me to handle, so I decided to get an unpaid internship in Jerusalem. Because even without making any money, a year with a job was much better than a year without a job, in my opinion.

After arriving at Hebrew University, I realized that I could get an "internship"--unpaid, of course (I like to refer to it as "free labor," but others call it an "internship") and it would satisfy my need for having a job to keep me busy. I was incredibly lucky to land an internship with the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, or ICCI.

ICCI works with Christians, Jews, and Muslims to, according to their mission statement, "harness the teachings and values of the three monotheistic religions and transform them into a source of reconciliation and co-existence." And what they do is awesome. They have year-long dialogue groups with teenagers and college students, they have women's groups, they sponsor lectures and tours, and a lot of other stuff that I just don't know about.

My job was to interview participants from the college-age and teenage dialogue groups from 2010. This was ideal for me because I got to talk to Israelis and Palestinians from lots of different backgrounds about what they liked and didn't like about being in a dialogue group in a conflict-torn area. I learned a lot of things about myself, about dialogue groups, and about what I would do if I were to ever participate in sponsoring or working with a similar dialogue group. And I got to attend lots of awesome lectures for free, from the relationship between Catholics and Protestants at the height of the fighting in northern Ireland to Armenian Christians' presence in the Holy Land to a tour of the Christian Quarter of the Old City for Jews studying Christianity. It was an incredibly diverse learning experience, and I loved my coworkers to boot.

But the best part was the day they gave me a key. Being an unpaid intern, I didn't really need a key. A lot of the interviews that I did were out of the office, and why would I be at work when other employees were not? But on Tuesdays I went to work in the morning, and it was easiest to cross the checkpoint really early. Meaning I got to work about 7 am and sat in the lobby until about 10 am when my coworker came in and unlocked the door. I could still get an internet signal from the lobby, but there were no outlets within range of the internet, so when my computer was about to die I had to go to another floor to plug it in and let it recharge so I could go back down and use the internet. And it was often freezing in the lobby, especially on days when it was raining and I was already wet.

The coworker who saved me from the lobby each morning. No, this is not our office.

One day my boss and I were the last two people in the office. As he was leaving, he said, "You have a key, right?" Well, actually, no I didn't, and I thought this was my cue to leave. "Oh, you don't have a key? I just happened to bring two today. Just lock up when you leave."

All of a sudden a whole new world of freedom was opened up to me. On days when I needed to be in Jerusalem, I suddenly had a place I could go that had internet, plugs, and airconditioning. I started going to the office all the time. I finally had to tell my boss, "Just so you know, I'm not a super over-achieving intern. I'm just doing my homework here because it's a lot closer than the university." And most days I was in so early in the morning that I had the office to myself anyway.

One day, I realized that in order to have real freedom I needed a key to the office and a key to the building (which had several offices). It was a Friday afternoon and my computer was dead (my computer cord stopped working) so I went in to send some emails and get some work done. I got in about 3 and was excited to have three or four hours to work on transcribing some of these interviews I had conducted and writing the report before I came back to the States. And I knew no one would be in the office because, well, it was Friday and people don't work on Fridays in Jerusalem. About 4 I left my office to walk down to the basement to make sure the door to the parking area was still open. I knew they locked the building, but I thought that surely they would leave the door to the parking lot open (and I could jump a fence to get out if they locked the gates).

Unfortunately, I was very wrong. It was closed and locked. I ran upstairs to check the main door. Still open. Phew. I went back up to my office and knocked on the door of the yoga studio next door to ask them when they lock the building. "Probably in about 2 minutes," they said. "Go now or you will be locked in."

So I went back downstairs. Locked. The door was locked. Thankfully I knew that the yoga ladies probably weren't going to stay there all night and so had to have keys, so I went back up and found one who was leaving to let me out. Thankfully it was the last week of my time in Jerusalem, so I didn't have to be too frustrated. But coming back to a place where buildings stay open until midnight on Saturday nights (and on Fridays!!!) was the only thing that saved me from being too frustrated that day.\

Anyway, the point is, the internship was awesome. And the key and the office? Even more awesome.

Oh, and I've decided that if I ever go and live in another country again, I'm going to do it with a paying job this time. I'm tired of all this free labor! Just what, exactly, did I go to college for if I made less after graduating than before?