I have just finished my first full week in Seoul and first week as a marketing intern at Adventure Korea, and I have a lot to look back on and reflect on already.

Every day, South Korea, and the ever bustling city of Seoul has shown a new side of itself and offered up something new for me to experience. The transit system has been a delight to use. Whether it’s on my commute to work or going for a quick trip to go shopping or out to eat, it’s clean, fast, and quiet, offering plenty of time to relax outside of the heat of Seoul’s summer. Speaking of food, that has also been a highlight of the program so far. Between going out for fried chicken with friends, grabbing some baked goods for breakfast, or grabbing dinner with my boss and coworkers in a company dinner/lunch, the food has been both delicious and cheap, so I have only positive things so say there.

My internship has been a great experience so far as well. I am in an office about an hour’s commute from my residence in the heart of Seoul. This is example 1 of where time management comes into play during my day. They commute consists of a short 1-stop bus ride from the hotel to Seoul Station. From there I ride Seoul subway line 4 almost 20 stops for about 40 minutes to a station called Indeogwon station, and from there it’s a 10-15 minute walk to my office. Since the trip takes a decent amount of time, and I need to be in the office at the same time every day, I’ve had to make sure that I get up at the same time every day and get on the first bus around 8:30 every morning so I make it on time.

Once I’m inside the office, time management comes into play heavily as well. Throughout the day, I am given various tasks to do. Though some are given more priority than others, or its easy to tell which are more important for the company, overall I have to manage these tasks on my own and time management plays a vital role here. I often need to look at the big picture and make sure that I am spending the most of my time on the most important tasks that need to be done first. Along with this, I need to prioritize the time I spend researching topics or looking for info when completing my projects. For example, the company has had me working on various brochures that they can distribute to schools when they give presentations on their trips. Since I haven’t ever lived in South Korea or studied it intensively, I often needed to spend time researching the areas in order to create write-ups on them. This was pretty fun to do actually since I got to learn more about other areas of the country, but I still had to make sure that I wasn’t spending an excessive amount of time on the research aspect. While it would have been nice to read about South Korea all day, I knew that was not a good use of my or the companies time, and I should focus on the actual task too.

This upcoming week I won’t be in the office at all actually. My supervisor is sending me out on site visits including a royal palace, Gyeongbokgung Palace on Monday, and the War Memorial Museum on Wednesday. These site visits are intended for me to learn more about the country, and I will be writing an article on both the palace and museum for my company’s website. They use these articles to generate traffic to their page, in turn promoting their other trips due to exposure and During these days, it will seem almost like a free day, since I am doing things that I would do as a tourist, but its still important to keep focused and stay on track, both task-wise and time-wise.

Overall the introduction to my internship in South Korea has been a great experience so far. I’m very pleased with my placement; my boss is super nice, my coworkers and co interns are super nice and fun to work with as well. I am super grateful for everything that has allowed me to participate in this program. I have already seen so many great things in Seoul and I am excited to explore more of the country soon.