Summer Internship with the Excellence Center

My time at the Excellence Center was an all around good experience. The atmosphere created by the other interns and volunteers as well as the staff is friendly and welcoming, which made the transition to a new country smooth. Ali specifically played a key role in this transition and integration as he gave me a tour of the city once I arrived, introduced me and the other interns to local students, and helped me find my way to the center and my accommodation. Additionally, he was my Arabic teacher and helped me progress immensely from completely no background. The lessons were well paced and bounced off of me well, making it feel personalized and motivating rather than overwhelming (which Arabic can easily feel like). I was given some materials to support the lessons which will be advantageous to keep in the future. Though we reached the advertised 30 hours (for a 2 month internship), I do wish the lessons had started earlier on in my time here and been more frequent and shorter per session. Overall my favorite part of this internship was learning Arabic which was mostly because of Ali!

My accommodation was also a warm and welcoming atmosphere where the host family wanted me to feel comfortable and at home. However, there is great variety in the type of accommodation interns/volunteers receive and little support for navigating the transportation system, especially when you’ve newly arrived. Some interns are quite far while others are close and don’t need to account for transportation costs, which is covered by the intern. Rafat did a good job of being available to address accommodation concerns if issues did arise; however, there was no information given to me ahead of time about where/with whom I would be staying or what I could expect to receive from them (ie, meals, whether I would have an in room roommate, etc).

The experience at the Excellence center as an intern is very relaxed and gives the opportunity for self initiated exploration, such as of the state of migration/integration in Halle and the actual city of Halle. Because of the flexibility afforded in the set up of the internship program, I found that there was less structure and organization than I anticipated or would have preferred. I enjoyed being able to teach the same students English for the entirety of my internship but I found that this combined with my Arabic lessons didn’t take up as much time as I expected. The case study and presentation on refugee affairs aspects of the program were a lot more limited than I expected and my main wish is that this part of the internship was more intentional and expansive. I was able to learn a lot about the integration experience from speaking with the (predominantly) Syrian migrant population at the center as well as the Refugee tour, however. Everyone was so open and lovely - I learned just by being around the interns and students of Halle, as well as having the time and flexibility to travel and explore Germany/nearby cities.