sensitive but unclassified

Here are some pictures from the month long internship I did in January before starting my travels. Above is most of the office at PA in Seoul. I had a really, really great time...I got to see and do exciting and challenging things and I loved getting to work with the people there.












While doing the internship, I lived on Yongsan military base with the three other January interns (from left to right in the above picture) Jenny A, Colleen, and Melissa. It was really weird--and fab--living in the middle of Seoul but also in an American suburb. Our house (above right) was one in a row of identical, American-style houses, connected by American lawns and American sidewalks. We had access to our own American movie theater, restaurants, bowling alley, mall, gyms, library, and best of all, grocery store. We had central heating, beds, fitted sheets, full-sized towels, furniture, real showers, a dishwasher, a dryer, and a full kitchen.












Needless to say, we spent almost the entire month on the base, and specifically (for me), in the kitchen. It was glorious having an oven and endless supplies of dairy products...and even more glorious to be able to control when and what I had to eat. Colleen had never done any cooking before (she cracked her first egg, with much ceremony, into some cookies I was making the first week), so in the evenings she became my cooking intern. The above pictures showcase her senior thesis project from our last week on the base--vegetarian lasagna--for which she was awarded High Honors.














I thought that essentially working in America for a month would keep me safe from the mainly Asian preoccupation with karaoke, but sadly, I was very, very wrong. These last two pictures are of karaoke--the left is Colleen and me on a night out with our coworkers and the right is me singing backup for Ambassador Vershbow (he's the only dude).