I am doing my internship in Rhodes Island, Greece. Rhodes is such a beautiful island and I have fallen in love with it. There are so many historical places to see here and truly amazing beaches. Now in the middle of summer the weather is unbelievably hot. Almost +40 degrees in the shadow during the day. And everyone says it will be even hotter in August! It has been quite difficult for me to get used to this kind of weather but I am doing it somehow. Luckily, we have air conditioners in our office and our apartment, because without it, the weather would be unbearable.
I have enjoyed working here even though it hasn’t been quite what I expected. Although, I have already learned so much and will learn even more before this internship is complete. At first my work was mostly picking up students from the airport and taking them to their hotels where they started working. It really didn’t seem like my work had anything to do with marketing or human resources (that’s what I was supposed to be doing). However, I soon started to other things while I was taking the students to their hotels. For example, I met with the hotel managers and talked to them about co-operation with our company. I also created all the necessary documents for the students and went to different Government offices to get them approved. Now I find the work really interesting and versatile which is very good because I am learning something every day and now my work is actually related to my studies.
I have had a lot of spare time here. I thought I was going to work 6 days per week here but it turned out that I only work for five days per week. So, every week I have two whole days to visit different places. Mostly in my spare time I go to the nearest beach and just relax. Sometimes I visit other places like the city of Rhodes, Lindos or the other islands nearby. I live in such a small village and there really isn’t much to do here. Luckily, it’s easy to go around the island by bus or boats. I have been in some cruises here too and I truly enjoy them. But during this month I haven’t visited many places because it’s so hot here that even the idea of walking around the cities makes me sweat. So basically, I just spend my days off at the beach. Luckily, the water is still quite cold so it’s perfect for swimming and cooling down on a hot day.
It was a little bit of a shock for me when I started working here. I noticed that companies are not so organized here and they have serious communication issues. First it seemed like no one knew who was really in charge and people gave different orders and tasks for me. Some days in the office were really quiet and I had only a few tasks but then there were days when they gave me too many tasks to do and it was in no way possible for me to do all of them on time.
Also, Greeks have a really bad temper, it took time for me to get used to the fact that if things didn’t go how they wanted, they got angry and started yelling at each other. Here it’s normal to show emotions and express them however you like but in Finland people are shy and mostly keep their feelings to themselves. That’s why it was quite shocking at first that people are so open and emotional here but I have gotten used to it by now and started to be more open myself.
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