It’s been awhile since I wrote my last blog . To give you a quick update, since the end of my 2 nd year in April, a lot of interesting things happened to me. I spent a month in South Korea with my parents. Afterward, I moved to Changchun in China and spent a month at Chinese local automobile company. It was my first time to China and I learned a lot from interacting with the  local employees and learning the Chinese culture from them. After my one-month travel visa expired, I moved back to Korea to renew my visa and this time, went to Tianjin which is the third largest city in China. Actually, a friend of mine from Queen’s was doing a summer internship at an American company there. He was kind enough to invite me and I did 12-week summer internship at European investment consulting company. Tianjin was a co-hosting city for the Beijing Olympics so I attended four Soccer games in Tianjin and as well as in Beijing. This summer for China meant an opportunity to showcase its economic, cultural and infrastructural development to the rest of the world. I am sure many of you watched the game. Oh, and I also watched the Canadian Woman Soccer team to win at Olympics Soccer Game for the firs time in history.
The reason why I spent three months in China this summer was to prepare myself for exchange program at Guanghua School of Management of Peking University. Queen’s Commerce has extensive exchange network around the world and I decided to come to China. While three months of working here gave me a good understanding of the culture, n ow that I have completed two months of exchange at Guanghua , I gained a good combination of management theory and the real life experience by working with Chinese employees and interacting with Peking University students.
I am taking a few International MBA courses as well as undergrad courses that are mostly based on case studies on different topics. We often observe the greater Chinese market, its recent development and its major players. Outside of school, I am taking a few Mandarin courses to continue improving my Mandarin. I believe my ability to speak Mandarin has proven to be quite useful and will be essential for me to do business in China in the future. I am really glad that I got this chance to come here and study with the smartest students from China. Last week, two of Queen’s Commerce students who are doing exchange in Hong Kong came to Beijing and we went for dinner together and just talked about Queen’s and our exchanges. It just felt good to be with my Commerce friends and talk about our school half way around the world.
Although my blog will not be directly on the topic of my semester at Queen’s, exchange program is a huge part of Commerce program. I will update you how my exchange is going.