Lacking

A lot of you asked what I would be doing while I'm in Taipei and what kind of internship it was. I held these questions at bay because I actually had no idea...until now.

I currently am the foreign summer intern at the Begonia Foundation. They are a very small body of people (8 total) that organize other (hundreds)of NPO's and NGO's (non profit/gov. organizations) in order to help current disasters, fundraisers, and other welfare events.

Theoretically I am going to help them by doing a couple different things. One big job is translation - no one in the foundation can speak or write English fluently. I have spent the last day and a half translating some very flowery and formal "thank you" notes from an international conference's attendees. How do you translate "most cordially"???? I have also started to compile a list of vocabulary that I needed to look up on nciku.com (online Chinese dictionary). It is now 4 pages long, and counting (from these letters). Here is one of the letters (in very, very poor chinese grammar) -- good luck translating back into English:
朋友们和同事，

官教授和Dr. Lu, 谢谢您们。再一次你们的有扰和会议的条理超过了我的预料。因为我是一位住在日本的意大利的学者, 我真认为你们的组织的方法和使别人更舒服的方法都很重要。我觉得意大利应该学习您们的榜样。
对您们的SE 文章，我非常感谢。您们的陈述很有意思。我也认为这个会议提供在中间和里边亚洲国家的SEs 的机会学习。这个会议的陈述, 讨论和问题帮助提高我们的SE知识，还把一些看法成为清楚。一方面住在亚洲国家以后，我学 给别的同事指责是不好的事，因此 这样的行为 不应该做。另一方面，因为在英国上学，我也学给别的同事这样的指责是很好的事，对别人工作的发展是最重要的方法。我们的主意和看法 不同的时候，我还认为共享 看法虚虚心心的很重要。如果我们的活动是这样的，因为我们的合作很亲密，很永恒， 所以我们可能建立一个基础。
有一些与会者已经联系了我。因为他们对未来 合作的活动有兴趣，所我真知道这个会议促进了很大的合作精神。明年我们已经有一些对比研究。在别的亚洲国家我们可能做陈述这个对比研究。不带说，如果您们跟我一起想合作，我可能。对在外边和里边的日本学者 的评论和怎么发展我的工作的主意, 我都感谢。
有的人在伊斯坦布尔我可以看，有的人我希望未来 看。

Kind Regards, Rosario

For a good number of you, that was just a bunch of nonsense. All you need to know is that translating formalities into chinese (like "fruitful treasure") has interesting consequences.

Today, however, was the rehearsal for a large conference that is happening on the 8th. I'll post pictures tomorrow! (I hate taking photos. Don't ask me why. I don't know. probably because I'm awful at it).