Hello! I have been in Malta for almost two weeks, but it took me a while to set up this blog, so over the next few days I will put up backdated posts I have been writing.

Thursday May 20, 2010
After leaving Miami on Tuesday, flying through Detroit and London, I arrived in Malta on Wednesday. I'm staying at the university dorms, where undergrads from all over Europe and the US live while studying abroad here (I suppose the country is so small that Maltese students don't really need to stay in dorms). They're about to take finals, their semester started in February. The dorms are organized into flats of 8 bedrooms with a common kitchen and bathrooms--it's very L'auberge espagnole.

Thursday was my first day of work at Jesuit Refugee Service. Kristina, one of the social workers, picked me up. Everyone at the office is incredibly nice--I met one of the attorneys, Roberta, the other intern, Armandine (law student from France), Celine, who also came here from France and ended up staying a few years, two cultural mediators, Hassan and Goitom, Luisa the receptionist, and the director, Fr Joe.

I spent the day reading reports and publications of JRS. Observing office life at JRS reminded me of my old job at Catholic Charities--clients dropping in, people speaking 8 different languages at once, lawyers and social workers tag teaming to find solutions for the clients' problems. It made me feel right at home! I am so incredibly happy to be in this environment again and far far away from law school.

After work, Celine, Armandine, and I went to a training at UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). If you've worked with refugees for any amount of time, it's kind of amazing that I got to go to their office on my first day of work. Or at all, really. They had a rep in from the Geneva office who gave a short training to legal aid lawyers on how to use Refworld, which compiles country information, policy documents, and legal info which is useful for anyone working in refugee or asylum law (Cabrini take note!) The website it fairly self-explanatory so we didn't really need a training, but Celine wanted us to go to meet some of the legal aid lawyers. In Malta, there is no right to have an attorney when submitting an application for refugee status, but one can be appointed if an application is rejected and the individual wants to appeal.


Tuesday May 25, 2010
Malta has 359 Catholic churches. I may not have time to visit them all.

Important Note: If you make plans to meet a friend by your office after work, do not casually suggest that you meet “by the church.” You will inevitably end up at different churches. Even if you’re talking to said friend on the phone and are so close to each other that you can hear the same church bells ringing in the background, it is still possible that you will each walk to a church a few blocks away and be at different churches. Not that I know from experience, or anything. Just...saying.