Hello Everyone!
This is my first entry in the FEA blogging network, and I hope to share all my adventures with you over the course of the summer. I’d like to start with a little background about where I am going and why.
Earlier this semester, I enrolled in a study abroad trip to Taiwan as the capstone classes for my minor in Mandarin Chinese. I had always looked forward to studying abroad, and I am glad that I get to learn the beautiful language of Chinese while traveling! However, the study abroad only lasts for a month over the summer, so me, being the over-achiever, yearned to have something to fill up my time during the rest of the break. While searching through internships at various companies across the country, I found many to be mundane and sort of “paper-pushing” jobs. So, I pulled out a stack of business cards I had amassed during my two semesters in college and while sifting through these, stumbled upon an old connection I knew who worked in China.
On a whim, I contacted him and asked him if there were any positions open. One thing lead to another, and now I’m sitting in Vancouver International Airport waiting to board my flight to Hong Kong to begin a new life and job that will last the next two months. While in China, I will be working for a company that manufactures model airplanes for marketing events for airlines and aerospace companies. I’ll be responsible for quality control supervision and translating communications between the plant in China and the headquarters in Los Angeles. I’m excited, scared, and exhausted to say the least.
Hopefully in China I will find some way to survive without the comforts of Instagram, Snapchat, and most of all Google because, at the moment, I am not anticipating the “protection” of the Great Firewall of China. I guess this is the best way to really indulge in the culture without outside interference. At least after these two months I get to travel to beautiful and censor-free Taiwan! But until then, I’ll enjoy the most interesting journeys in Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
Anyways, my flight is about to board and I must be off! Catch you next week~
-LM