Hello everyone!
My name is Sigrid and I have now been at InternChina for a little over two weeks. I study international management with international relations at university and after having just finished my second year of university at McGill, I am now doing a sales and marketing internship with the InternChina office.

My decision in coming to Qingdao is twofold; firstly, I wanted to experience something that was more ‘Chinese’ than the more familiar big Chinese cities. I wanted a proper experience in which I could learn as much as I possibly could about the key building-blocks that mould the Chinese way of doing business. My second reason, was because of the incredible opportunities which I will have in the future, not only in China, but all over the world due to the knowledge I will have leaving Qingdao in the end of August.

I will get to experience China during a period of recent strange happenings, the fall of Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, the possible murder of British businessman Neil Heywood by Bo’s wife and political tensions in the Party related to the incident. A lot of odd things are happening in China that weren’t happening before, politically. This, along with the economic downturn in Europe and the United States, China’s two main customers, has exposed Chinese exports to increased competition and decreased appetite. With China in the forefront of attention, not for its immense growth, but for other factors, it is very interesting to see how China and the individual partner firms, which I get to see or hear from on a daily basis, deal with these new hurdles. This is something that I am excited to see develop within the next few months that I am here.
The cost of living was one of the major things that came as a shock to me. I had heard from others that the amount of money that would be spent would be little, but being here and experiencing daily Chinese life, I now realize how correct they were. With taxis, lunch, a beer costing a little over a euro, this place is paradise for a student like me!

Looking out of my office window and seeing this view;

also reaffirms that this is the perfect and productive way to spend my 4 month summer vacation from school. I have sun, I have the beach, and I have an incredible experience that I will get to put on my CV and make me stand out that much more from my future competition.
So to conclude this blog:

Qingdao: Bring it.

During these couple of weeks, everyone in the Qingdao office has been very excited and eager to meet Philippe and Leo from the Zhuhai office. I personally was very eager to meet them since I have heard a lot about them and only talked to them on Skype, so it was nice to finally get to see them in person. Yesterday, the Intern China crew in Qingdao went to have dinner and Leo suggested one Korean restaurant that served really good food, so we all went to find this place, which, we thought was still in business but apparently it did not exist anymore. So we wandered for about 30 min to search for this restaurant, which, apparently did not exist anymore. Well, also because we were kind of lost and could not find the right street so there we wandered back and forth but it was kind of hilarious because Leo and Yifan are locals, yet we were somehow lost However, the 30 min walk was definitely worth it! We tried a new Korean BBQ restaurant and we sure made the right decision! The food was delicious and they served a lot of side dishes (which you can order more for free).

Since Leo did not have any breakfast or lunch that day because his flight got delayed and he was stuck in the airplane for quite sometime, you can guess that he was really hungry by just looking at this picture of Leo drinking from the whole bowl of cold noodles!

We ordered a lot of meat 고기, vegetables 상추 and cold noodles 냉면. Soon after that, Frank arrived and he was also very happy to see Leo. The dinner was really nice and we sure laughed a lot that night! And also thank you Frank and Yifan who paid for this delicious dinner!

If you wonder where the rest of the Intern China crew is, I will give you a short update! Antoine and Stefan had already made some plans so they could not come, Jenny is in Zhuhai and Philippe was not feeling well that day (stomach ache). Too much coffee, perhaps? We at Intern China have organized a dinner for all the interns and since Leo will work in the Qingdao office from now on, I’m sure he is really excited to meet all our interns in Qingdao ☺