In my second meeting with Emilia, we were able to meet face to face at the Puisto coffeeshop in the city center. It was great to see someone in person for a change and I hope our future meetings could also take place in person since it is easier to notice reactions and gestures.
Our topic for this meeting was the books we chose to read for this Each One Teach One course. As I previously noted, Emilia and I want to write essays based off of books and help each other with grammatical details and writing style in both Finnish and English. The book I chose was in Finnish, and it is called “Konflikti Päivässä”, Or in
English: Daily Conflicts. It is supposed to be about business culture, and the movement from more strict rules and regulations to a more free and open-minded culture. I am hoping to one day have a leadership position for our student business and I am hoping this book can provide me with insight on how these entrepreneurial culture changes have developed, and what to expect when conflict arises. It is a longer book, and will definitely challenge me, but that is what I need right now to increase my motivation.
Emilia decided she wanted an easier or lighter read so she could write a blog style essay. After we discussed her options she went for a book about the story of Karl Lagerfeld, the man behind the modern revival of the fashion company Chanel. I thought this was a really inspiring choice for Emilia because she is very into fashion, loves the story behind the brand, and can learn a lot at the same time from the business and English language side. I hope to see Emilia writing a reflection from her read and what her thoughts were while she was reading the story, because it will create a really powerful blog text.
Between our conversations of the book, we also talked about some stories of travelling and different cultural differences we had noticed. As Emilia is a flight attendant for Finnair, she has travelled to a lot of places, and I learned a lot. For instance, I never realised how big of a bargain culture the Asian countries like Thailand have, and how much they rely on tourists to earn a profit. Another interesting point she made was that a lot of cities who host flight attendants will offer discounts for showing a flight attendant ID. So she mentioned one time when she was in Helsinki at the Chanel store and she received a discount because the owner of the store used to work for Finnair, which I thought was really special and a nice story.
We also ended up talking about the U.S., and when Emilia first visited when she was 15, it was major culture shock for her because of all the shopping opportunities and crazy tax prices being calculated at the register. I never realised how immune I was to that topic, because after living there for 16 years and understanding that it is always worth preparing a little extra money at the register because of the taxes being added there, it became habit. It is these small details that I don’t realise until someone else tells me about their experiences in the US where I notice how the United States did have a big impact on my life and how I make decisions now.
One final note, was that to make sure we practiced both English and Finnish, we alternated with each language, and when we spoke about our chosen books, we chose the language the book was written in. In addition to that, we each took notes during the meeting to prepare for next week and to write the blogs, and we choose to write in our weaker language to strengthen our writing as well. So far I have really enjoyed the meetings with Emilia, and I am looking forward to learning more!
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