A Great Opportunity
By Mildred Serra

It all started when Mr. De Jesus, Math supervisor of Toa Baja, went to my school. He was checking my binder and said I would be a good candidate for the Pilar Barbosa Internship. It really was a surprise to me because I am an English teacher. He said it was open to all who were willing to spend some summer weeks in Washington DC. What did I have to lose? Opportunity knocks once at your door either you take it or lose it. I took it.
I remember that I applied and had faith I would go. I went to the interview and felt confident. Want to bet what happened? I was chosen to go with 24 other professionals. Not all were teachers; some were librarians, social workers, and even district superintendents. We had a welcome at San Juan and were told about the final details.
Time had arrived and me and another member of the Borinquen Project, Elizabeth Ruiz, were ready to go to. We would be roommates and that was great. We had a lot of expectations. The trip made us a little tired but not to stop us from the adventure that awaited us.
As the group arrived to its final destination, nothing to be compared with the movie, we were received with pizza and refreshments. We were then told that part of the group would arrive later that night. We also were asked if we were interested in going on this adventure and see where we would meet part of the time. We said ok, never thinking it would be such a long walk.
We walked from Virginian Suites, where we would stay to Roselyn Station. Then we took the orange line, on the Metro, to DuPont Circle. There we had to walk like 3 or 4 blocks to Washington Center. We were taken to the room where we would have our meetings and some workshops and then back to DuPont Circle arriving at Roselyn Station and then walked back to out rooms. We were exhausted, not knowing that the next day we would have a Scavenger Hunt; which was a walk through all DC and we had to visit places, get a funny souvenir, bring back a pretzel, and a nice picture; and finally be back on time. Our group met with another one and we became one big group. We accomplished the task and were back on time with our feet aching but full of a wonderful experience.
The experience was incredible; we met with the next governor of PR at his commissioner’s office in DC. It was nice; we had a chance to be a while in his office. We met at PRAFA, we visited museums, went and took workshops that taught us new things and about new sites. We met Mr. Zimmerman, who has a site for comic strip making. We found it could be very appealing to our students. We also met Gingrich, a human rights leader. We met a lot of interesting people.
We had the 4th of July off and who do you think Elizabeth and I saw? Did you guess? It was our ex Governor Mr Rosello. So, we did not lose an opportunity of taking a picture with him. The fireworks were fabulous.
We will miss DC but the learning that we went through will be with us forever.