I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but Jiwon is about 5.5 months pregnant with our fourth child in this picture. This pregnancy is in some ways the hardest (she's sleeping all the time due to an iron deficiency). However, with this pregnancy we're taking precautions and she is only sleeping due to the deficiency instead of passing out while driving, blacking out while crossing streets, and the other stuff that went on with the first pregnancy.
Jiwon is still working for BTG, Inc., which has employed her now for about 6 years. She has, however, changed jobs within the company again!
For those of you who don't know (I'm assuming friends and family are the primary visitors here), Jiwon began with BTG as an "Outreach Specialist". She reached out to the Korean population in the surrounding communities, working closely with Korean community leaders to get Koreans active in community health fairs, etc. Much of her time was also spent teaching newly arrived Koreans about laws, police, and teaching English.
Her focus then began to shift, as the company sent her more and more to the police to discuss what to expect from Koreans. Case in point: if you are stopped by the police in Korea, you had better exit your car and go find out what the officer wanted. Not so in the US. If you get pulled over, then get out of the car, the police assume you are up to something.
So, she spent a lot of time during this phase of her BTG career education police about Koreans and educating Koreans about police.
She did a brief stint with BTG working for an Immigration Lawyer and got well acquainted with Immigration Law, which served her well in her next post.
Next, she was placed in "New American Services" and for the first time had a regular schedule from week to week. This was quite a boon for the family. NAS (New American Services) was housed in the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) building downtown.
Her job in this capacity kept her on her feet a lot, but the hours were wonderful and she knew each day where she was going for work. No more speeches and evening engagements were required. She loved that. In this capacity, she basically passed out Immigration forms to new arrivals (and greencard renewals). She also took passport photos according to INS specs. She enjoyed this job, but there were always a few boneheads a day who would lay into her or her fellow employees about Immigration complaints; never were they able to understand that Jiwon and her fellows did not work for Immigration, but were in fact providing a free service which helped to speed along the process in INS for these people.
Another thing that people used to get upset about was that she would not (legally could not) give them assistance with the forms. Immigration Law is quite strict on this: the people who hand out the forms, no matter how well they know the forms and what is wanted, can give no advice on filling them out. The only people who can help are Immigration Lawyers.
While Jiwon was working here, she managed to get her US Citizenship.
Jiwon now works as a Book-Keeper/Human Resources person for the same company. She loves it. The work she is doing there has really spawned in her a desire to read, as long as it is financial material. In the last year, she has read more books on finance and economics than I would want to read in my life.
The sick thing is: she loves it!
Well, maybe our finances will begin to see some semblance of sanity now.