Seminar at work

On Thursday we had a seminar day at work. I work in a company, which is owned by a Danish company. Once a year we have a seminar day, in which some chiefs from Denmark come to Finland to tell us how things are going and talk about their plans for us. This time we had two visitors from Denmark, I had met the man before but the woman was new to me. Both of them had presentations in English. The Danish accent is usually quite simple to understand after getting used to it, so I didn't have so much difficulties this time, although the subjects of the presentations were hard. I should be better in knowing economic vocabulary in English because of my work, but I still have difficulties with them. During the latest year I have started to understand more and more.

The Danish woman who was talking about figures and last years profits. I noticed, that she wasn't so used to presenting in English, because she seemed to be really nervous and forgot to talk to the audience. She was too often staring at the screen behind her, which made her voice not hearing so well.

After the seminar, we had an evening event with dinner. I was really tired after sleeping only four hours the night before, so I hoped that after very tiring seminar, I could sit down with some colleagues and relax. Luck wasn't on my side, because I got seated across the table to the Danish woman. And next to us were people, who don't really speak English too well. Naturally then, I needed to keep company to the foreign guest. I'm really not so good in small talk, but I just had to force myself to start the conversation. Luckily I could find out some topics to discuss about with the person, and actually she was really nice. Even though talking in English during the dinner took quite much effort, I felt really happy afterwards, that I handled the situation so well. I also got good feedback from my boss about that. I found out, that I can manage these situations, which is really good. It looks like I will have a trip to Denmark coming in the future, so then I might need to do something similar again.


Independent studies so far: 17/51

Field trip group so far: 11/20