For those who did not have any basic Korean language skills, we were provided with a crash course 101 on Korean culture and language.

In my first week, I learnt about the Korean history, culture and fundamental Hangul. Since I was a quick learner, I managed to pass my Level 1 Korean test with ease. However, the second week was challenging. Not only I have to learn to speak conversational Korean and to be able to converse properly at work in Korea. I was awkward like a robot when speaking Korean and Bo Na will often tease me with my weird accent. Since Bo Na was a full-fledged bilingual with English and Korean under her flags, she never had to attend the course and she was allowed free time for a week.

What I struggled with was my Korean speaking skills. Luckily, my makeup skills were able to make up for it. Luckily, despite the fact that they said we were going to be assigned according to our Korean skills, we were not. We were assigned with random employers for a week and we will rotate after a week until we have worked for four different employers. They were grouped respectively into: magazine team, hair and makeup salon team; fashion designers team and cosmetics team.

Coincidentally, both Bona and I were sent off to the magazine team which was my favourite pick of the lot. During the week, we oversaw a shoot at Dazed as we had to co-plan, design and implement a theme for the next season. It was fun working with Bo Na since she was my translator when I stumbled through my words when I was presenting our idea. Dazed was celebrating their 7^th anniversary and managed to invite Suzy as the model. Our theme was chic and casual so we had her posing in daily places. The concept was well-received and was given the approval to go!

“We hope to see both of your creative ideas in the future!” The editor held onto both of our hands as she gave us a warm farewell hug. The work at magazine firm is interesting and dynamic, my experience here has placed it as my priority choice. Since Bona and I were in a same group, we got paired as a group for other rotation as well. Well, lucky me as I have a translator with me to avoid misunderstandings and non-understanding (when people do not get what I am saying that is).

Off we went to the second rotation, since we were no professional hairstylists, we were led to the Wedding Shoot department at Jenny’s House instead. It was fascinating to learn from famous hairstylists and makeup artists in creating flawless and fairy-like styles for the bride to be. We both learned a lot and I discovered I seem to have a flair in styling hair which was surprising as in New York, I excelled in makeup and neglected my hair styling abilities. Bo Na and I were given the task to come up with promotional wedding shoots and here is our result! The manager was satisfied with our effort and praised us, “We hope that you two will be able to work with us after your rotation! I am sure we will all work well together!”

After exerting all our creative juices, we had to use our scientific part of our brain. The cosmetics team turned out to be a cosmetic company and we learnt about the research and development process. We were given the chance to develop some foundation and lipstick. I found it to be intriguing but I was never brilliant at science and those chemicals that we mixed made me feel more like Marie Curie, though I will gladly be part of Marie Claire. Conversely, Bo Na was finding cosmetics development more interesting than I did and she cannot stop telling me how electrifying the experience of making rose mask pack was.