Internships...Follow

So applications for the summer internship I want opened today. I'm gonna start filling out my application form as soon as their site is back up.

As far as I understand, I'm supposed to put down a choice of five countries. I've decided on four (Pakistan, India, UAE, Malaysia), but I'm really unsure on my fifth choice.

Note: I'll only end up in one of these.





Short info:
Qatar is mostly because I'd love to go shopping there and it's got good and cheap flight routes for weekend/week trips to all sorts of cool places. I've got the same reasons for UAE, really, and it seems like a lovely enough place.
Jordan... aah. It was my second choice of country to go to university after Pakistan. (I have no idea how I ended up in Scotland instead.) Plus from what I gather it's a magical place with lovely weather, lots of internationals and awesome landscapes. And kind of cheap. I know a few people who are in love with it.
Bangladesh is mostly because it's cheap, really close to other cool places and I've also got contacts in the city where they do exchange programmes, so that'd make things far easier. Plus, my Bengali is far better than my Arabic. It's still crappy, but my Arabic is pretty much limited to talking about religion.
The fourth option is "somewhere between Western Europe and Southeast Asia", pretty much - if it's one of the 4 options I've already decided on, that leaves one open again; if it's the UK, I don't know what that'd mean for my choice. Could be Iraq, although that's unlikely.

Yeah, kind of need to know what the internship is for.

So you're following a guy to an Islamic country/wanting to learn more about culture in an Islamic country? Did I glean the right thing from the non-answers?

I don't see how working in a random country is an "internship." Internships where I come from are more "experience in a job relevant to your chosen field of work." Unless interacting with random foreigners is your chosen field of work, of course.

Why all the Middle-Eastern/3rd world countries, though?

Also, Qatar for no particular reason.

I'm intending to do my postgraduate degree in the Netherlands already.


Basically, the choice of countries is pretty much because very few of them are viable choices for postgraduate study, and I'd prefer to settle down in Europe or a place where I've lived before. That'd cover the "lived before".
And really, when am I going to be able to do a 3-4 month placement in a completely random place if not before I graduate?


Oh, no, those are jobs I've been offered randomly. Mostly PR type stuff (goray = great PR for any Asian company). I don't want to do PR type stuff, especially since it's totally not relevant to my degree.

You're engaged already...? Wow.

This has to be one of the most retarded things you've ever posted.

It's just jealous that nobody wants to put it in a harem.

I want to go to India as well, in fact I very much plan on going there within a few years.
Hopefully I'll be able to do some photography related work while I'm there.

Edit: I've been to Nepal and I really enjoyed that. Next time I want to fly to Kathmandu again and travel through Nepal and India from there.

Edited, Oct 11th 2011 7:27pm by Aethien

It's only semi-retarded. While the likelihood is low, there is still a risk to unescorted women traveling to some of the very nations she seems very enthused about traveling to. As long as she sticks to well known institutions, she should be ok. But she should not make the assumption that her own interest in the culture of that part of the world makes her immune to the potential risks she's taking.

Human trafficking is very real and young women traveling alone with minimal family ties and contact are prime targets. Roaming about on your own may seem very romantic, but it can be dangerous. I don't think it's wrong for someone to toss a warning out there just in case. She absolutely should take precautions.

Given that most of the countries she's talking about are on either teir2-watchlist or tier3 on that map, I think it *is* a concern. A single college aged white woman traveling alone (in those countries) puts her automatically into a much higher risk group. If she's got blonde hair, she's pretty much at the top of the grab list for that region as well.

As long as she travels with friends she trusts and other friends back home know where she's going and who she's with, she should be reasonably safe. While the odds of being taken are very very low, her description of her activities just seem like textbook examples of what not to do. About the only thing that would be higher risk would be if she was working as a stripper or model doing freelance work with some fly by night manager she just met (don't do this btw). What gets young women taken is their willingness to walk into new places with someone they just met recently. Obviously, certain professions are much more risky than others (because they require doing just that). But any time you decide to just hang out with the locals and wander wherever the winds take you, you are lighting off flares for the bad guys that you're an easy target.

It sounds stereotypical, but there's something to be said about staying with the herd. Kaliva's stories of her travels make it clear that she doesn't do this, and prefers to just meet up with new and interesting people. And from a certain perspective, I see the appeal. But, she's absolutely taking a risk doing this and should be very very careful. I just don't find anything wrong with making sure she's aware of that. I'm sure she is. She's traveled a lot. But it doesn't hurt to repeat the warnings.