CIEE Study Center in Seville, Spain - Summer Internship

I loved my experience in Sevilla. Although its not one of the typical study abroad destination cities (like Madrid or Barcelona), I fell in love with the area and Andalusian culture. The internship program is great; it offers legitimate working experience but at the same time is realistic. All of the companies CIEE work with understand that they are working with foreign exchange students, and are basically taking on interns for the sake of giving back to academia as well as the advantages to having an English speaking intern.

I went to Sevilla basically fluent in Spanish, but at the end of the day had to accept that there is a language barrier and that working in another language kind of simplifies the work that you can do as an intern. I worked for an investment/consulting firm called BolsaSur, a subsidiary of a larger European investment firm called Eurodeal. Other friends had similar placements with consulting firms, HR firms, and sales departments. There is also a really great internship with the local futbol club (a little more PR and translating oriented).

I did a lot of basic research for them -- I put together news clips on general financial happenings (mergers, IPOs, etc.) and my pet project was watching a venture capital fund the firm had in the US and translating all of the news and information about the company for the senior executives. This means that I have huge research reports of SEC filings, financial information/statements, etc. that have been extremely helpful to use as writing samples when applying for jobs. I also answered phones, did some secretarial stuff like preparing contracts and letters, and did basic programming for some web advertisements. My "tutor" (intern coordinator, basically) was an analyst and walked me through a different aspect of technical analysis every day. I learned SO much, both in a technical aspect as well as just observing Spanish business culture. The clerical stuff isn't glamorous, but you do have to accept that as educated and capable as you are (I was interning in Congress before Sevilla), you are gaining some amazing experience just by interacting in that European business environment, even if you aren't working directly with clients or taking on a ton of responsibility. It was a lot of baby-stepping for me -- little moves toward doing larger projects as my business Spanish was improving and I adapted to the environment.

The internship program in Sevilla is AMAZING. I wouldn't have traded that experience for anything. The orientation and the CIEE staff are really talented, amiable people. They make sure that you're comfortable as well as help you adjust to a pretty hard cultural transition.

It is a lot different than the language and culture programs -- you can't go out every single night until 5 am if you're trying to intern in a different language the next day and actually get something out of it. You still have a ton of fun, though. Its a smaller group of people usually, so you form a pretty tight bond with your program. It´s also great because you can compare experiences and learn from eachother during the internship. Traveling was great. The program sponsors a trip to Morocco (incredible), and we traveled around Spain and Portugal (the beaches are gorgeous and so close).
I can't encourage you enough to go through with this program!