Yes! Anne can!

A few weeks ago there was an international week at InHolland. It actually came like a surprise because no one had seen it coming. But it was a pleasant surprise! It was a nice break from the normal lectures, with new fresh subjects. During the international week there were several guest lecturers giving lectures. There were lecturers from Egypt, Belgium, England, China, Australia, Poland, Finland and I think I'm still forgetting some other countries. Each of them gave several lectures through out the week.

At the beginning of the week there was a grand opening, with artists and music. There was also a possibility to participate in an interactive networking event. From the organization you got a card with a certain color and you had to find two other people with the same color to earn a free lunch. I thought that the event was really well organized and set up in a creative way.
Of course students need an incentive so that's why the free lunch was added.

Because I didn't had a lot of time that week I was only able to visit 5 guest lectures. The lectures I visited were about ecotourism, verbal and non verbal communication, marketing across cultures, a comment on global advertising and a lecture about the macro economy of China. I thought that the lectures about ecotourism and the macro economy of China were the most interesting for me. The content of the lectures of marketing across cultures and verbal and non verbal communicating was quite the same as the content of our own lectures. That's why they weren't as interesting as the other lectures. A comment on global advertising was also interesting but quite general.

The lecture about the macro economy of China was really interesting although economy is not my favorite subject. I thought it was especially interesting because the lecturer made use of a translator. A funny thing was that during the lecture you could see when he was about to tell a joke. First he started laughing than the translator. After her translation we finally got the joke. The lecture was also given from a Chinese perspective which is interesting because most of the time you only hear things about China from a western perspective.

The lecture about eco tourism was also really interesting because I would like to work in that field in the future. The lecturer told us a lot about researches she did concerning ecotourism in Australia. The lecture made things more clear to me, like that people will always harm the environment and that ecotourism is not the solution to save the environment but a way to find a balance between tourism and saving the environment.

Sheila Peake mentioned during the lecture that there is a lot of attention in Australia for ecotourism. It made me more enthusiastic to maybe study abroad at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. But when I visited the Study Bazaar and asked about it she said that they only exchange one student per year with Inholland. That’s a shame because that’s makes it a lot harder to get an exchange place. But it's still the first year, there is still a lot of time to look for places to study abroad.

Because of my work I didn't got the opportunity to visit more lectures. I would have loved to visit the other guest lectures as well but there will be a next year. The other students were generally also really enthusiastic about the guest lectures! (half of them because they could earn an ICA point with it and the other half because they really thought it was interesting). Generally I think that the whole international week was a success and I would love to see this event return next year, and maybe even longer?