Day 19

      Today started off with a little bit of a debbie downer… We were informed that due to the earthquake in Northern Italy the previous day, we have to remain in Florence during our last weekend here. Many of us had already scheduled day trips and were really disappointed to learn that we could not go. However, while trying to stay optimistic, we did find a cooking class for the weekend. So hopefully that will take away some of the pain. Italian class was again combined with the other class, due to that the other teacher was in a fender bender on the way to school. Good news though, she was not injured at all. Class ended early this morning, because the lead person from the emotional intelligence conference in Bologna a couple weeks back, came to speak to us and follow up on the conference. We only met with him for a brief period, before going to a pharmaceutical production company in Florence with him. The pharmaceutical company, Lilly, actually is based out of the US, but has branches all over the world. Our visit consisted of a tour of the production building and a small informal meeting with representatives from their human resource department on their personal experience with emotional intelligence. Surprisingly, I found the tour to be very interesting. Because I do not have a strong interest in pharmacy, I initially did not have much interest in seeing the production of drugs. However, after walking in and being able to the process first hand, I suddenly gained interest and became very engaged. I feel that having the opportunity to get an in depth look at other health professions will help me in the long run during my career. In contrast the, sitting in on the emotional intelligence meeting, which focused more on the business aspect, I feel was very beneficial. Today I saw two very different parts of one business and was able to see the amount of work and people it takes to make one thing run efficiently. It was a great introduction to the real world and the work field, which I am about to walk into. 

     In addition, dinner was really fun tonight. It was just Regina and I, the Swedish student staying with us, and our host mom. Towards the end of dinner we started talking about all these different types of foods and had fun try to translate them between Italian, English and Dutch (which the Swedish girl speaks). It was fun and interesting! 

Lilly Pharmaceuticals