my name

Hello unseen audience,

Growing up, I had very neutral feelings about my name. I didn't abhor my name and I at the same time, I didn't have a particular joy of my name. I guess it was kind of cool being the only one I knew to have this name, but at the same time, I was kind of jealous when other people would have the same name as each other and bond over it.

My Korean name / middle name was given to me by my grandmother on my father's side, whom I have little to no recollection of. My name "은주" or "恩 主" means the favor / grace of the master, or God's grace. My english name derives from the name meaning and comes from the root name John.

I have been reflecting and I realized that I am a very poor reflection of my name. In other words, I have very little capacity for grace on people. When someone wrongs me or I feel like someone wasn't fully considerate of my feelings, my heart turns cold towards that person. I also find it incredibly difficult to let go of the wrongs that a person has done against me. Perhaps it is because I hold myself to such a high standard of friendship and that transfers to having such a high standard of those that call themselves my friend. In many ways, I need to grow into my own name and become a person that has more of the Lord's grace for others.

This isn't a super exciting blog post, but felt the need to share that with you all.

bye-bye until next time ^

internship with the port

Hello unseen audience!

So for the last 10 weeks, I had an internship with the Port of Los Angeles, and I've got to say that I really enjoyed it. I think my favorite aspect of the internship were the people that I worked with. My supervisor, Sue, was such a sweet person and gave me so much encouragement throughout my time there. She also gave me a cup of coffee on those difficult mornings, which was so appreciated as well. My co-worker whom I worked with a lot, Mimi (pictured below), always gave me her attention when I needed help of any kind. She would always pause with what she was doing and give me her undivided attention. My whole section was honestly so kind to me and I probably could not go through each one because it wouldn't be very interesting for you all.

One thing that I liked about this internship over my previous one was the fact that there were a lot of student interns. I worked in this shared cubicle with 2-3 other interns (pictured below), which was a lot of fun. We would go out to eat on the patio or have conversations during our breaks. We talked about how Enrique made the most bomb burritos to comparing our different systems of education for civil engineering.

I'll share with you all one of my favorite stories from my time at the Port. So one of my co-workers and I were taking out one of the government cars for a site visit. As we were parking, we heard a cell phone ringing. It wasn't either of ours, so we looked around the car and found a phone on the bottom of the car. We figured that someone who was using the car before us had left the phone there by accident. We went to security to find out who used the car last, and we saw that the person was from the Engineering department and his name "Franklin." I look over to my co-worker, who is very confused because he didn't know of a Franklin in the engineering department, and he had been working there for some time now. So we go upstairs and find another student intern to try and figure it out. I, obviously, don't know everyone, so I look through the seating chart that we had. As I look, I don't find any "Franklin" on the sheet. Then, I recheck the list and see the name "Frank Lin" and have a sudden realization. I turn to my two co-workers and say, "Hey guys, I think I know who's phone it is... Frank.. Lin's." And we all burst out laughing and feeling a bit dumb at the same time. We returned the phone to him and it was all good. I'm smiling thinking about it now.

Okies friends,

bye bye until next time ^