06/08/16
Hello everyone, my name is David Yoon and welcome to my blog!
In this blog, I will be sharing my experiences, thoughts and reflections throughout my internship in the Philippines. The blogs will be posted weekly and I will be posting photos as well!
I have been accepted into the IWU Freeman Asia Internship Program where I will be working for the Food and Nutrition Research Institute-Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DOST). This was all possible due to the generosity of the Freeman Foundation, where our school was offered a grant that will cover airfare, housing, living allowance, internship placements and visas. FNRI is a principal research arm of the government of the Philippines in food, nutrition, and health. They are responsible for the development and improvement of food products in terms of nutritional value, sensory acceptability, packaging and shelf life. We will be working in the Nutritional Assessment and Monitoring Division to help conduct health and nutrition survey in various provinces to collect anthropometric, clinical, health, dietary, socioeconomic and other data. After 3-4 weeks of field immersions with various survey teams, we will be working in an office with the Nutrition Statistics and Informatics Section in data editing, cleaning, processing and analyzing the collected data. Among three other IWU students I will be working with my on-site supervisor Dr. Cecilia Acuin and my off-site supervisor Dr. Victoria Folse in achieving internship goals, assignments and academic requirements. My main goals for this internship include: to enhance knowledge of the nutritional needs of the Philippines and seek individual approach to promote health, to enhance research method knowledge, and to immerse myself into the culture of the Philippines.
In approximately 12-hours I will be boarding an 18-hour flight from Chicago to Minneapolis to Tokyo to Manila. As I am finishing up my packing, all I can think about is what the next two-month would look like. I am very excited and a little nervous because I have never been to a foreign country for longer than 2 weeks. What drives my excitement is the uncertainty this internship brings. To be honest, I don’t have many expectations for this trip because I am not exactly sure what I will be doing, where I will be going, nor where I will be staying. But this is what makes traveling so exciting, entering the unknown. Philippines is a country that I have always wanted to visit and it feels strange that it is actually happening. The main challenge on this trip would be the language/cultural barriers because I know none of the language spoken in the Philippines that is not English. I heard most of the people there speak English with different levels of proficiency so I should be okay. As I eagerly wait for my departure I will be killing time by binging on Arrested Development, listening to some tunes and hoping that I didn’t forget anything important.
iwufreemanyoon 