This week in class was very interesting, as the Wall Street journals discussed were very relevant. I thought that the one regarding the change from Delaware to Nevada was because of the interstate taxes. We also discussed why capitalism is very important. I thought that the podcast we listened to was important, and opened my eyes to the positives, and why it works better than socialism or especially communism. Also, Wall Street is a great film, and Michael Douglas’ speech about greed is one that I hadn’t watched in a while. It reminded me of important thoughts to live by and to put myself first over all else. As far as the economy goes, it reminded me that capitalism is great because it incentivizes making a profit instead of anything else.

This week in class we started off by talking about preparing for the networking event next week. We then moved on to talking about international communication barriers. Some things that are different are the way people are greeted, the fact that WhatsApp is used instead of email, and age, which is important as a seniority kind of “rule.” When it comes to this communication, people are more direct, trustful, and implicit when there is less context. When there is low context, you don’t read between the lines whereas when there is high context, the instructions given may be more vague. Italy is in a place pretty close to the middle where some of the time, clarification is not needed however it all depends on the situation.

This past week, I grew my relationships with my co-workers more. I found out that they don’t have prom here, so they asked me about my experience. We also talked about different holidays, and how they are celebrated here. They really don’t celebrate many holidays, but they do have Christmas, Carnival, and a couple of independence days. Something that surprised me was that they celebrated one of their independence days as a day that they were liberated from the Nazis. This surprised me because I always thought of Italy as being on the same side as the Nazis and on the Axis side, but that is not how it is viewed here I guess.

This past weekend, I went to Venice with a small group of students on the trip. We had a great time on the day trip, ate great food, and took a nice boat ride. Although we didn’t have anything specific planned, we were able to piece together a great day where we walked around and saw all the famous canals. We took a boat ride to San Marco and saw some beautiful churches and some cool museums. Although we had some good food, we also had some bad: don’t get the squid ink pasta!! On Saturday, I also watched the Italy versus Albania soccer match in Milan, and it was very interesting to see the passion that Italians have for the sport.