Thursday 4 July 2019

A typical day of a YCC volunteer tour guide

The volunteer tour guides at Youth Cultural Corps work really hard to provide good quality tours to foreign visitors. However, it takes a lot of preparation to learn how to be great! Let's take a look to find out how our volunteers get through a typical day involving a foreign visitor. 

Our volunteers usually start off by taking a class at the YCC Headquarters before they go to the tourist site. The YCC has its own bus which takes the students straight to the location where they will be volunteering. Here is one of our volunteers getting off the bus. 


The volunteers can be usually found waiting outside of the palace for a tourist to match up with. We usually set up a tent near the entrance of the palace where you can find us. Here's an example of a tent that we use when we are at Deoksugung.


Our volunteers usually wear uniforms which change according to the season. During the summer, you can find them wearing orange polo shirts with beige hats and khaki pants. As you can see, orange is a recurring color in our YCC uniform. 


The tours vary in length, but it is usually an hour long. As long as you fill out the feedback form at the end, the tours provided by YCC are absolutely free. Our students  provide tours in English and Chinese, but not in Korean! This is because we want to encourage our students to be more outgoing. By interacting with people from other cultures, the student is encouraged to be more open minded and creative. 


It's amazing how diverse Korea has become as a result of Hallyu. Many of the tourists that we meet are from other parts of Asia as well as Europe and North America. The YCC usually works at one of the following places, Gyeongbokgung, Deoksugung, Changdeokgung and Namsangol Hanok Village.


After the tour, our volunteers either wait until the others are done or go straight home. If a teacher is present, the students usually get a closing lesson before the day ends. 
To get a free tour with one of our volunteers, go to our reservation page to sign up for a time slot. You can also just stop by our tent any time. Either way, enjoy your stay in Korea!

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