Hello everyone! 

I’m back with some more weekly updates: 

Last weekend, my program and I went to Incheon for a fun, touristy excursion. If you didn’t know, Incheon is where the international airport is located, so I’ve flown in and out of there in the past, but I never actually took the time to explore the city and discover what it has to offer. Incheon is home to a pretty popular Chinatown, Songwol-dong Fairytale Village, and Wolmido Theme Park. My program group and I travelled from Seoul to Incheon via their subway system and we only had to take one line for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. When we arrived, the subway station is right across from the entrance to their Chinatown, so we all got to look around, take in the beautiful architecture, eat tanghulu (candied fruit AKA my favorite treat), and sit down for a very filling plate of jjajangmyeon (black bean noodles). Then, we walked around Incheon’s very cute and whimsical Fairytale Village before going to the amusement park! It was a very fun trip, and I plan on attending more of my program’s excursion trips while in Korea. 

As far as the work week has been going, all is well in the office. It’s still very hot and humid here in Seoul, but the rainy season has definitely arrived. In Insadong, where my office is located, I am still discovering new restaurants and cafes during my lunch breaks, as well as unlocking more streets and shops! Like I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, Insadong is so full of culture—from the traditional restaurants to the novelty gift shops, it’s a great place to actually experience Seoul. I feel very lucky to be able to work in and experience a place like this everyday. It’s unlike any place you would ever live or work in when in the U.S.. 

At my company, Korea Volunteer Agency, I found myself being a little uncertain about my role in the company and what my expectations were at the very beginning of the internship. I knew that this was a normal feeling, and expected as much when starting, but just recently—two weeks in—did I start to feel a clarity around what is expected of me. At KVA, my main task is to help Korean clients practice their English and prepare them for work or volunteering in an English speaking country or in Europe. Over the phone, I speak with our students who are scheduled for different talk sessions—either a small talk, mock interview, English evaluation interview, or situational roleplay as it applies to the industry the student is trying to work in. On my first day, I was thrown into these calls with unclear directions. There were scripts made previously for questions to ask or topics to talk about with these Korean clients, but I was struggling to find everything in the Google Drive and within folders before my scheduled calls. I also was having a difficult time logging into our Zoom account and making sure I was ready to conduct the interviews or free talks. After I finished the calls, I found them to be fairly simple and the task is now easy, but that was a time when directions were ambiguous and I had to trust myself to do my job well from the very start of the internship. 

So far, my other task is to search for potential organizations in the U.S. that my company can reach out to and try and work with to send our clients for their working experiences. Although it is not difficult at face value, I have realized that the task is so broad and ambiguous that I was not sure if I was doing exactly what was being asked of me. In order to attempt to understand what the company needs more, I talked to my supervisor about what he was looking for and his explanation helped me in my search a bit more. Now, I understand a little bit better what the standards are for potential partners and it has helped me search more specifically within different industries. As my internship goes on, though, I have come to understand that my main position is to conduct KVA’s English study sessions, any uncertainty I do have around the partnership organization research is unwarranted, because it is a task given to me to fill the rest of my full-time hours when calls are not scheduled. I plan to talk to my manager about how that task is going more often and to inquire about doing research for partner organizations in other countries that we like to send our clients to as well.