Nanjing, Day 23

Today was the second day of my internship at SPD bank. Lop and I arrived at 1:50 pm after having some difficulties with our taxi driver and his knowledge of directions. When we get to work, we greet our boss, the vice president of the bank, by saying “你好，我们来上班了”(Hello, we have come to work), because she likes for us to speak Chinese with her, and not English. Yesterday, we stayed at the bank branch and took a lot of pictures of us doing daily tasks such as talking to customers, and using a machine to assign numbers to customers waiting to be helped. We work with two other interns originally from Nanjing: Ruth, a grad student at University of Pennsylvania, and Lester, a sophomore at University of Montana. Ruth and Lester help us by translating when we are unable to understand either the workers at the bank, or the customers who are talking to us.

Today, after arriving at SPD bank, we talked to Guo Hang Zhang (President Guo) for a few minutes, and then headed out to see a hospital with Lester and Zhang 老师, a worker at the bank. The hospital was called BenQ Hospital, and it is a Taiwanese hospital that is well known for its international doctors as well as its Western and Chinese traditional medicine. BenQ is a technological company that sponsors this hospital, and the hospital is also a center for medical research and development.

SPD has a long working relationship with BenQ hospital, and as a result they were willing to take us on a tour of the building. We walked around the whole hospital and had a tour of most of the departments including the OBGYN center, Endoscopy center, Transfusion center, and Pediatric center. The hospital was really clean and looked like it was either fairly new, or recently renovated. In the lobby they hire a piano player, and while we were there I heard him play traditional Chinese songs and western ones, such as Auld Lang Syne and My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion.

So far, I am really enjoying the internship, although it is keeping me very busy. With four hours of Chinese class, four hours of internship, homework, and a paper due tomorrow it seems like no one is getting very much sleep these days.  This weekend we have some free time which everyone is looking forward to, and hopefully we will all be able to catch up on some sleep.  

Love from Nanjing,

Kelly