As I enter my third week in Milan, I am beginning to adapt to the culture of the area. At my internship this week, Jon and I presented an analysis of USA vs Italian real estate. In the presentation we included topics on the buying and selling processes, a look at USA real estate firms, a comparison of review management websites, and finally the differences in Customer Care divisions. Overall, I think we did very well on our analysis and it seems that our supervisor was satisfied. The most difficult part of our presentation was the language barrier. It was very difficult to try and interpret US real estate terms to Italian terms. For example, due diligence is a process when buying a house but because they were unfamiliar with the term, we needed to articulate it in a way for them to understand. In the end, we were able to communicate what we wanted to.

 

In our class this week we explored a lot more on businesses and taking moral actions. One example was the mini debates that were held for real life situations. One of the debates I was apart of was if banks should be held liable for transactions involving scams. I found this a very interesting dilemma to debate. For the given article, the older widow sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to an oversea account because she was told she won money. After the wire transfer, she found out she was scammed and sued the banks for putting the transaction through. On one hand, we have a older woman who may have not been the most mentally or emotionally strong who was being taken advantage of. On a moral side, it seems like banks should be doing all they can protect her. But on the other side, there’s only a certain amount a bank can do before they start treading on privacy concerns for these types of transfers. This moral dilemma is just one of many that happens in business and it is up to us to determine was is right and wrong.

 

This week I went to many different places. To start, I went inside the Milan Doumo, one of the most famous landmarks in Milan. We went up 220+ steps to the roof where we got a beautiful view of Doumo plaza and the surrounding area. I thought the most impressive aspect of it was inside the cathedral. The beauty of the artwork and stain glass was so breath taking we spent a while just sitting and admiring everything. Later in the day, we went to AC Milan’s final game of the season. The rumors that European football being very crazy was confirmed at the game. AC Milan ended up winning and we even had the honor of witnesses in the retirement of one of the greatest football players in the world, Zlatan Ibrahimović. To finish up my week, I took a train to Genoa to see the coastline of Italy for the first time. Genoa is a very nice port town where we spent time at the pebble beach we found. This culture immersion has been so exciting and I can’t wait each week to find

something new to do.