Asia Society Internship Blog

This week was a very relaxing week. Our supervisors were initially occupied with tours and other matters, so we spent the first few hours working on our personal assignments and tying up loose ends from last week. Once Mei and Phuong arrived they told us that Asia Society was hosting a fundraising gala tonight that was important for the organization's funding for future projects. We spent most of the remaining time talking about the exhibits that Asia Society is planning to organize in the next few years, including the "Train to Asia" exhibit we have been working on for a while. Phuong and Jennifer had just recently returned from a trip to New York a couple of weeks ago, to view the other Asia Society center for inspiration. They hope to implement some of their ideas here in our Texas center.   Afterward, I talked with our supervisors personally about my NHS project proposals. I decided that I would like to help volunteer/organize a public event apart from my intern hours...

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 ...