Asia Society Internship Blog

This week was more of a return to normalcy, as we returned to researching for the Education Project. Our supervisors briefly discussed with us the results of the Night Market last week. It turns out that more than 6,000 people attended the event. Although last year garnered a thousand more attendees, this year was still considered a massive success due to the rain forecast. I'm glad everyone had a great time! Phuong introduced the next topic of our research, which was building off of our work last year about different Asian foods. We had to search for restaurants and supermarkets that sold that specific type of food in the Houston area. For example, one of the foods was "coconut jelly." I love eating coconut jelly, and so I was able to use my knowledge of the places I like to go (such as local Vietnamese restaurants and cafes) to recommend for the project. This information will be used in a future exhibit, and the idea is to have interactive screens that can provide infor...

There was a lot of hustling this week due to the Night Market event. When we arrived on Thursday, all the Asia Society employees were scrambling around to finish all the last-minute tasks before the big day. Mei came by and hurriedly told us to complete the wooden LED signs that we started two weeks ago and so we got to work on that. Since we already drew the outline for the letters with a marker, the only step left was to hot glue the lights on the signs to be displayed at night. While Everest and Jeremy worked on the signs, I helped by cutting out tags for the volunteers that would be assisting during Night Market, myself included. Mei told me that we had a record-breaking amount of volunteers who scheduled for this event, which was interesting because the weather was predicted to be rainy–not ideal for an outside event. During the Night Market, I was assigned to answer questions and manage crowd control in the Yokai exhibit. I stood in front of the doors with a clicker to count the ...

This week was an exciting and eventful one! We had the full squad again and the three of us headed to the office to get the assignment of the day. Amal Hasan, the Performing Arts and Culture Programs Manager, gave us the project that we would be doing for the weeks leading up to the night market. Once again, I'm eagerly anticipating this annual event since I missed it a year ago. Anyways, our project was to design wooden signs displaying directions such as "Otaku Valley" and "Beer Garden" for the event. We wrote out the block letters and decorated them with LED lights to really make them pop out for the evening. After we completed a sign, the Asia Society staff showed us a "surprise." The "surprise" was that they were planning on converting the disability entryway into the location for the upcoming "Train to Asia" exhibit that we spent a great deal of time researching for last year. Although official plans haven't been made yet ...

I went alone this week since my fellow interns were occupied due to scheduling conflicts. But all the more fun! I met with Ashley Gelato, the University of Houston intern that I met last week at the luncheon. Our assignment for the day was to revise the facts about several Asian countries for one of the upcoming exhibitions. Basically, these facts would be featured in interactive stations in an exhibit, and each button would have information about a part of the country's culture. For example, I wrote a fact on how BTS added 5 billion dollars last year to South Korea's economy, which is almost half of the country's total. The goal was to make them concisely within a specific word count, as well as make them more engaging for younger audiences.  We worked on this assignment for the entirety of the afternoon, and after Gelato went home I finished up the remaining bits because of the pressing deadline. Overall I think we did a good job refining the facts for the exhibit, and I ...

We started off this week by being briefed on the upcoming events by our Education & Outreach coordinator. Phuong told us that the crown jewel of Asia Society's public events, the Night Market, would be happening again in a few months. We were invited to volunteer and attend the event afterward. Personally, this was one of the biggest events I was looking forward to this year. When Everest and I began our internships last year, Night Market had already happened a week prior. It was a shame that we missed this festive occasion but I'm excited to be able to participate this year! After the briefing, we had the task of folding pamphlets for the next day's event: The Intern lunch. Little did we know that we would be handed our own pamphlets due to the attendance invitation by our coordinators. After folding the papers, we were assigned to give feedback on the Asian comic website prototype ahead of its public release. This is the culmination of all the feedback we have given ...

This week was technically week three, but due to a school event, we had to skip an internship session. Everest and I's coordinator Phuong was out of town, so we talked to the Business and Policy manager instead about the assignments we could start working on. The first assignment was to research the significance of tea and tea ceremonies in Asia for a future virtual program. We began researching statistics on tea consumption in Asian countries, mainly the top five that Asia Society prioritizes: China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and India. It turns out China is the world's largest tea-drinking country, taking in 1.6 billion tons per year and making up 36.85% of the world's consumption annually. Additionally, we looked at how important tea is in many Asian cultures. For example, in Vietnam tea is traditionally for the Vietnamese elders, accompanying peaceful activities such as writing poetry and enjoying nature. Recently, however, tea is making a comeback among the younger ...