Two reasons why I embarked on the internship abroad in India

[:ja]吉田[:][:en]Shinnosuke[:] [:ja]真之介[:][:en]Yoshida[:]

by Shinnosuke Yoshida

Hello

My name is Shinnosuke Yoshida did an internship abroad in India for a year. I took a gap year in the 4th year of university and engaged in an internship at a travel agency and an educational NGO at New Delhi in India for a half of year each. My main role was sales to sell package tours to India at a travel agency and I was in charge of fundraising asking Japanese companies at India at NGO. In this article, I’ll introduce the trigger why I decided to join the internship abroad and my real experiences during the internship. Those who have anxieties to do an internship abroad or are interested in but thinking whether you join, please refer it.

Two reasons why I embarked on the internship abroad in India

The reasons why Shinnosuke participated internship abroad

First of all, I had two reasons why I got being interested in an internship abroad. The first one was that originally I loved travelling abroad and I had a thought that I wanted to live abroad for a long time before graduating university. The other one was that when I thought the aim of living abroad, I wanted to get practical experiences would help me in the future while studying languages. It depends on the company you join though, in the internship, you can engage in the real jobs of the company as a full-time staff with limited-time. Through my experiences of actually working, I wanted to improve my skills, and at the same time, I wanted to try whether I could create values abroad.
And the reason why I decided to do the internship in India was I wanted to do something different from people. Most people imagines that India is dirty and dangerous. I thought I wanted to gain toughness I could survive in any environment, through embarking on such a difficult environment. And in unusual space where unexpected things happen, I wanted to gain a new set of values. That was the reason why I joined the internship abroad in India.

Encountered culture shock everyday!

Feeling culture shock
Every day in India life in one year was a continuation of culture shock. In the early days of the internship in India, I was cheated by expensive taxi charges, I bought items at a rip-off price at a market. The bus that I used to commute was always about 300% on boarding, and the Indians rode on the outside of the bus with grabbing the window. I ate curry almost every day and I feel like I ate curry for the whole life in India. The living environment couldn’t be said good, and cattle were walking on the road. Although you might feel there are only strange things in India, I got used to the life in India strangely while spending days there. I had a lot of discoveries and difficulties in India but there were many opportunities to learn the difference in culture, so it was very valuable experiences for me.

Insights in the internship abroad

Insights from internship abroad
What I felt good at participating in the internship in India was that I was able to experience what it is to work with foreigners by meeting various people. In detail, it was great to realize that working with foreigners not only overcomes language barriers but also accepts cultural differences. Because work culture (how to work) etc differs according to each country. For example, Indians are careless about time, being late are commonplace, and it is quite common to not keep promises. Furthermore, because they put importance on their family very much in India, so some people take a break from work when their family becomes sick, or take a holiday from a week to almost a month at a ceremonial occasion. As I went ahead with work together, I was often confused at the beginning, and I had a hard time accepting “Indian time”.
I think I couldn’t experience such things in my country. Living abroad for a long time, you can know both good things and bad things about the country more deeply. Occasionally, you might encounter an event that changes your sense of values significantly. At such a time, I felt that whether accepting the new discovery regardless of whether it is good or bad is important.

Before I had a feeling that everything I knew was all, but now I became to be able to think to accept everything once and try to absorb. I think this is the point that I have changed through the internship in India.

Message for you

As a message for those who are thinking about joining an internship abroad, to be honestly it’s different with traveling, an internship abroad is not only fun. However, experience hard things or put yourself in a difficult environment, I’m sure that it will give you confidence. And you will meet many people overcoming the tough environment together. That is once-in-a-lifetime meeting.
Let’s embark on the adventure of internship abroad!

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