Romela Poghosyan, 1st year master's student at the Faculty of Translation, about her internship in Cuba

Greetings to everyone from hot Havana! Though I have already returned from an internship in Cuba, my soul and thoughts are still on Freedom Island. The impressions that have accumulated over two months cannot be conveyed in a nutshell.

Let's start with studying. The Faculty of Translation and Interpreting sent us for an internship at the University of Havana at the Faculty of Foreign Languages. This is abbreviated in Spanish as FLEX. Our classmates said that they call themselves flexianos. In youth slang, this means “students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages.” This word stuck in my soul because it reminds me of Moscow State Linguistic University, in particular, the word “mslushniki”. It turns out that here we have become “flexian mslushniki.”

As you may have guessed from the nickname of Cuba, everything there is permeated with the spirit of freedom, university life too. So we were allowed to choose any subject that interested us, regardless of the year of study. We studied consecutive interpreting (Russian-Spanish), written translation of scientific and technical texts, two-way translation (English-Spanish), introduction to scientific and technical terminology, and we chose such disciplines as national security and defense and didactics of the Spanish language. Every lecture in Spanish is a leap towards improving your listening and translation skills. During our stay in Cuba, we learned to better understand the fluent speech of the locals. And when we started talking, no one guessed that we were from Russia. They named almost all Spanish-speaking countries and then wondered how one could speak Spanish so well. Perhaps this is the best compliment for us, which we, in turn, forward to our teachers, who passed on their valuable advice to us and put a huge amount of knowledge into our young heads.

As for the living conditions, everything was just wonderful. You could say we stayed at a five-star hotel! Our hostel was located in the prestigious Vedado area. We were provided with a separate room with a separate bathroom and all the amenities. The windows overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and Havana's main promenade, the Malecon. Eye-catching!

In addition to studying, we took an active part in events organized by the Russian Embassy and Rossotrudnichestvo. We won the Victory Dictation, attended an event dedicated to Cosmonautics Day, and introduced Cuban children to space. The most significant events were the Russian-Cuban friendly marathon and the Victory Day concert. With my performance, I managed to convey the message to Russian and Cuban viewers and test my strength.

In addition, at the faculty we tried on the role of speakers thanks to a Russian language teacher who asked us to hold a conversation club for her first-year students. I told them about in-demand professions in Russia, and my mate Daria told them about modern Russian fashion. Naturally, we did this much more slowly, since we realized that it would be difficult for students to understand our fast speech. In the last week of our stay, we managed to conduct two more cursive writing classes for 3rd and 4th year students. The guys thanked us for the interesting presentation of the material and promised that they would apply the acquired knowledge in practice.

An internship in Cuba turned into one big adventure! We have created a real mosaic of vivid impressions from visiting colorful places in Cuba. Here we saw the ocean for the first time, swam in the Caribbean Sea for the first time, visited the Vinales Valley, explored the cities of Cienfuegos, Trinidad and Varadero, walked up and down the streets of Havana, were amazed by the beauty of the Capitol, looked at the world through the eyes of Cuban artists at the National Museum of Fine Arts and much more!

We tried to understand the Cuban mentality, made new acquaintances and told our friends about Russia!

Finally, I would like to give advice to our students who have not yet been on an internship.

Don't be afraid to challenge yourself! Never turn down an offered internship. On the contrary, get acquainted with the culture of the country of the language you are learning, its native speakers, explore everything around you, be hardworking and courageous, and you will succeed!