Thank You to our 2017 Interns!

ppy interns — Fun with Project Pengyou interns!

The year 2017 has come to a close and here in our courtyard in Beijing we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge a special group of people who help make our office productive, creative, and most importantly, feel like a home – Golden Bridges interns.

Over the past year, we’ve had the pleasure of working with interns from across the U.S., China and Malaysia. Each individual brought their passion, talent, and dedication to the team and together we’ve been inspired by and learned from each other.

The diversity of experiences in our office range from fully bicultural to an emerging but avid interest in U.S.-China relations and reminds us that there is always more to learn and improve in our own knowledge and practice of cultural exchange. An excited and engaged team keeps the Pengyou spirit alive even when its cold – not to mention all of the funny and heartwarming stories and lively office banter that brighten our hutong office.

A Day in the Life

Because we are a small and close-knit team, Golden Bridges interns have the unique opportunity to dive deep into our organization’s operations and understand what it’s like to work in the field of educational exchange in China. Starting with the basics of blogging and online content and building up to more involved and complicated projects, GB interns flex their skills and creativity here and often show amazing progress as the semester continues.

If you’re curious, don’t take it from me; check out this video that was entirely scripted, filmed and edited by our 2017 summer intern team:

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with each of these individuals, and I can’t express enough my deep admiration for their drive, work ethic, openness, and commitment to our success. Many of the wonderful resources on our website including our U.S.-China related jobs, events, and the bulk of our helpful blog posts are due to their time and efforts. We work hard and have a lot of fun together, and without them, we surely wouldn’t be able to accomplish so much. Here’s this year’s rock-star team of Golden Bridges interns:

Alex Mitu – University of Washington ‘17
Amanda Cotter – The Beijing Center, Seattle University ‘20
Annika London – Butler University ‘17
Guantao Xu – Beijing High School No. 8
Hadeel Said – Butler University ‘17
Jiawei Teo – University of Pennsylvania ‘20
Karisma Wilson – The Beijing Center, Loyola University Chicago ’17
Melodie Ha – Boren Scholar, Tsinghua University, Georgetown University ’19
Rochelle Yang – University of Pennsylvania ‘20
Shani Cave – Tsinghua University, College of William & Mary ‘19, PPLF ‘17

These students are the cream of the crop, coming from schools all over including UPenn, Yale NUS, The University of Chicago, The University of Washington, Georgetown, and Loyola University of Chicago. Some are even recent graduates testing their wings in China!

We are thankful from the bottom of our heart for all the wonderful people who’ve been part of our pengyou family over this year. You’ll always have a place in our hutong and our hearts.

Interested in an internship? Follow this link for more information and to see how to apply: http://projectpengyou.org/about/careers/