There's no place like home ...

We're at the end of the program with just two more days in Paris before everyone heads back to the U.S. on Friday. Today we had a special cultural visit with Apollonia Poilâne, owner of Poilâne Bakery where Andrew worked last week. She gave us a tour of the "fournil" or "bake house" as she has translated it into English. While Andrew has first-hand knowledge of the baking process and the history of the boulangerie, Linnie, Sophie and Mack were all thoroughly impressed with what they learned. She shared some fun factoids with us about having bread flown to Harvard when she was a student, and how her one loaf per week that was delivered grew to her personal loaf every week plus five loaves every other week for her friends to enjoy! After our visit with Apollonia, none of us had eaten so we went to a café next door (Matteo et Paolo, an old favorite of Andrew's!) and had a great lunch. While we were eating, our conversation veered toward talking about what magnificent cooks everyone's mother is. Then they each tried to "one up" the other with savory delights and specialties that each mother makes. In fact, there was even mention of a "panini" competition between two moms!! (After hearing the menus, I'm happy to be a judge anytime!) At this moment I realized that no matter how amazing a cultural experience is, there's no place like home! This is the time when they begin to reflect about who they are as individuals, where they are from and what that means - all an important part of the cultural immersion and learning experience. We have a lot to do between now and Friday - piano bar at the Hôtel de Banville tonight, breakfast and visit at Notre Dame in the morning, Versailles in the afternoon and a family dinner at my friend Nathalie Lambert's. They are putting their project together, each haven chosen an aspect of the trip that they have found interesting and doing a compare/contrast of France and the U.S. I know they are going to be happy to get back home to see their families, pets and to be in their own rooms. Don't be surprised if they are a bit exhausted after a productive, enriching and truly awesome trip!

Work!

So Friday was everyone's last day of work and I realized I hadn't really put anything up about what I've been doing, working for Christian Gatard. The company is Gatard et Associes, (Gatard and Associates) and is an international marketing company which contracts itself to anyone interested. The key word there was international, meaning that a lot of their customers are native english speakers. They have one man, a french-american named Alexi, working for a good chunk of every work day, translating all sorts of things for them. What shocked me was that his English was completely flawless, not even the slightest accent. One of the things that a marketing company has to do in order to properly assess a product or store is to get customer input. They do this by hiring people, known to be customers and selected as such so that there is no bias, and have them sit in a closed room for focus sessions. The closed room sessions are coordinated by one of the Gatard employees who asks them a series of questions, trying to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a product. Now you might ask, "well that's only a few people, not necessarily a general consensus. How do they know their information is accurate?" and there is a simple solution. Mass interogations take place, in the case of an unnamed (I am under a strict confidentiality agreement) restaurant, Gatard associate members stood outside, interviewing both customers and non-customers, trying to figure out a company's flaws. In this particular case, over 180 people were questioned. The information was then turned into an incredible comprehensible powerpoint, which myself, Christian and one of his aides then proceeded to present to the company in their Paris office. It was absolutely thrilling for me. I was in the real thing for the first time. People were actually providing for themselves here, and I had a hand in it. In this particular case, after about an hour long presentation, the company was very pleased with the report and assumedly went on to use that information to better their profits. Again, I appolgize on the vagueness of the report, but I have to stay very Tom Clancy on this one. (Plus it makes me feel sooooo cool)
In my case, I did mostly a lot of translations and translation checking for Gatard. At one point, I was translating 98 page powerpoints from French to English, mostly with terms I had never heard of. While it was slightly repetetive, it was also very rewarding. I could really know that what I was doing was useful to someone. It wasn't just taking a quiz, or turning in some homework, it mattered and I really liked that.

Work was great, even if there was a wee strike (See previous post) to interrupt the fun.
-Mack Feldman

L’Hôtel de Banville: An Overview

On my first day at the Hôtel de Banville, I walked in the automatic doors, past the grand piano, and up to the reception desk. The receptionist who was on duty at the time, Romain, asked me if he could help me. I asked for Marianne Moreau, the owner of the hotel; he said she wasn’t in. I told him I was here for an internship, and he reminded me that I would be working with Géraldine Bouchet, the sales manager for the hotel. Géraldine then came upstairs to meet me, and brought me to the basement area of the hotel where there are several administrative offices. I learned that Géraldine is in charge of making contracts with outside companies to have their employees stay at the hotel. The first two days, I helped Géraldine write letters to clients that had previously stayed at the hotel. The most rewarding part was translating the letter, which was in French, into English for British clients. I addressed all the envelopes and we sent them off to companies all over Europe.

Géraldine had made a schedule for me for the week; I would work with her for most of the week, but also experience other areas of the hotel. One day I worked in the kitchen helping with breakfast with Aicha, another day I did laundry and inventory of the rooms with Ruzica, and on my last day I was at reception with Romain and Emmanuelle.

No matter what I was doing in the hotel, whether it was introducing myself to American clients or learning how to use the industrial iron for tablecloths, I was constantly interacting with native French speakers. Even though I only worked there for a week, my immersion in the French language helped my understanding and speaking immensely. I found myself thinking more about what I was saying than conjugating verbs in my head.

I will post more descriptions of my experience at the hotel later today, as well as two interviews with employees of the hotel. Currently there are some problems with uploading videos to the blog.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Here we are, the last day of the internships! It's been a great week with so much going on for each of the students. I've been impressed with their focus, motivation, good humour, flexibility and adaptability. They've each had some challenges to overcome in their respective internships, and I've been struck by how willing they've been to adapt and find a solution to their particular issue. I've encouraged them each to look for a way to make their situation better for them because this is how the real world works! Honing these life skills - problem solving, taking risks, analytical thinking, creative thinking - are at the heart of the GCIP program. I can see that they've each been grown and been empowered while they've been here both from their hands-on work experience and their cultural immersion. Their language skills have all improved tremendously and that in itself has increased their confidence. They have a much better sense of the city and feel comfortable going to and from work on their own - I can truly say that they are becoming "city-savvy"! Next week they'll have plenty of time to really explore the city on their own terms, as citizens of Paris, and broaden their horizons beyond their internship routes. I'm looking forward to seeing what they choose to discover and their reports back to me and the blog.

In the spirit of flexibility and adaptability, last night, before beginning the blogging party I had planned for the evening, they were researching a concert that Mack had seen a poster for during our "grève" outing yesterday afternoon. In the process, at 7:35, they saw that Jack Johnson had a concert starting at 8:00 not far from our apartment. In almost perfect unison, they all said "Let's go!" After our discussion about safety, ground rules, etc., off they went, out the door in 5 minutes! They called when they got there to say they had no problem getting tickets. They had a fantastic time and quite honestly, I regret that I didn't tag along with them!

Today I'll be headed to the Hôtel de Banville to take some photos of Sophie at work. She'll be at the reception area, front and center! Now that the strike is over, I'll also go to Mack's office and get some photos of him in action, too. Stay tuned for some blogging from each of them regarding their experiences at their respective internships!

La Grève (The Strike)

Today was an interesting day, if not the most productive for Gatard & Associés. A strike closed down parts of the metro which is apparently an entirely acceptable excuse to not show up for work all day. I arrived, my metro line being unaffected, at around 9:45 AM, and found a near empty office. Most of the day in the office was spent surfing the net for some french news articles, trying to brush up on my reading skills. Madame de Horsey later called me for a quick lunch break when we ended up going to visit the strike that was preventing me from being a productive member of the community. With our riot shields and tear-gas at ready, we plunged into the mob violence that.....oh wait, no nevermind, it turns out it was a lot more like a concert than a strike.


The sky was filled with baloons at La Republique, with strikers filling the streets as far as the eyes could see. Members of several groups were abounding and we even managed to get an interview...entirely in french and somewhat inaudible. Hope you parents brushed up on your french and super auditory skills recently.


The conversation went roughly along the lines of me asking essentially what the strike was about, with the man doing his best to slowly and simply explain it to me. Overall, the most I was able to get out of it was a better understanding of the factional nature of french labor unions, or in other words, that he really hated half the people there. It would seem that his labor union, The Fairtrade Labelling Organizations (FLO) was quite at arms with the main organization on scene, Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). While the reasoning was lost in translation somewhere, it's safe to assume that France is facing a similar problem as the American Federation of Labor and Knights of Labor over a century ago when the debate over having a union of skilled or unskilled workers was the big political issue.

The main issue in France right now is a debate over whether or not to raise the legal retirement age from 60 to 62 years of age. This movement comes at a time in France's history where it has a drastically higher aged population than it does young people, causing it to expect a shortage in the work force in the next few years.

Another big event in France is of course the world cup. France, in a heart breaking loss to South Africa, was knocked out of the tournament just two days ago. The new thing? Italy! Many Parisiens are finding themselves routing for Italy in the upcoming matches. Italy today suffered quite the upset after Yukoslavia took the match 3-2. Within a 3 minute period, after Italy was down 2-0, they came back 2-2, giving up a last minute, game winning goal.

It was quite the scene today, but also a great deal of fun.

Mack Feldman

Photoshoot @ Poilâne

Yet another day has almost gone by. I was working at Poilâne again today, but this time I was working more in their "PR" section. (I quote PR because they never buy ad space or ask for an article to be written. All of the articles written about Poilâne were asked to Poilâne by the magazines and the rest of their advertisement is word of mouth.)

In the morning, I was reading through the history of Poilâne. They have archives that date back for a very long time, but ready in the office are archives that date back to 1995. While reading through these, I found out some very interesting facts. I will not bore you with many of them, but a fun one is that Robert DeNiro and Tom Cruise adore Poilâne bread; according to many of the articles, Robert DeNiro has Poilâne bread shipped to him weekly. Frank Sinatra used to have their bread shipped to him wherever he was daily. One other fun fact is that Lionel Poilâne sculpted a chandelier along with other bread furniture for his friend, Dali. ( A photo of the furniture may be found here http://www.bonjourparis.com/story/gourmet-buzz/)

Once I got over my shock from these articles, I went out and got lunch at La Grande Epicerie. I ate lunch in a nearby park with Madame, and then I went back to work. Once there, it was time for a photoshoot...a photoshoot of bread. I went all around the store, I had everything at my disposal there. Everyone was very helpful and the photos (I haven't edited them) came out great. Someone in PR said they will most likely use my photos when magazines cannot send someone to take some for the articles (I'll even get a photo credit!). These were just some of the 123 photos taken. I also really liked this photo at the end, but it wouldn't upload in the rotated form....

Fleur Chérie

Today was my second day as an intern at Tg Communication. At 9am I arrived at the Musée d'Orangerie for a presentation by the agency. Many products from L'Occitane were being advertised, and several journalists were there to observe and learn about the new line called Fleur Chérie. The museum was decorated beautifully, displaying all of the perfumes, soaps, lotions, and make-up items right outside of the Monet gallery. I spoke with the founder of L'Occitane, Olivier Baussan, for a few minutes in between the presentations. Afterward, Madame and I went out to lunch. We saw a couple of bottles of water called St. George, so naturally we bought them before heading back to the Tg Communication office to do some translations. Around 6pm everybody gathered back at the apartment. Andrew and Sophie left to buy ingredients for dinner. When we were all enjoying our plates of pasta, we started a very interesting conversation about rap and classical music. Needless to say the topic brought up many different opinions from all 5 of us. After the meal Madame and Sophie ventured to Sophie's workplace, Hôtel de Banville, to listen to some jazz music. Overall the day went well for everyone.

From Poilâne to the Fête de la Musique

Ok, so today was the first day of work for each of us. I woke up at 6:30 so I could get to Poilâne by 8. As soon as I got there, I was brought to a really cool back room with a chandelier made out of bread. The walls were covered with paintings of miche (their sourdough loaf of bread) from Poilâne. These paintings were given by neighborhood artists as a meants to pay for their bread. I was then given a white Poilâne t-shirt and led down some slippery stairs to the fournil (the oven and surrounding room). I was wearing jeans with the t-shirt...big mistake; the master boulanger wears linen shorts and a t-shirt. It was 90 degrees in there and very humid. I was hot, but I got over it. At first, the room was very quiet, but then the pastry chefs came in the room; they were a lot more talkative, but everyone at Poilâne was nice. I made some cookies and some miche, along with a few other things. All throughout this time, I was offered croissants, cookies, bread, tarts...so many different things. You need to have some strong will power to not eat something there...I don't know how I did it.

Making the miche is a long process that involves making the dough, letting it rise, cutting the dough, weighing each loaf, shaping it, putting it in a basket to rise, carving the Poilâne P on it and letting it cook. (It's a lot harder than it sounds)

After work, I went out to lunch with Apollonia Poilâne. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met and she is very down to earth. We talked about SG, Paris, food (and an ice cream place that is supposedly better than Berthillon).

When I finally met up with everyone, we went to the apartment and had a delicious dinner. After that, we went out to see the music festival...it's bands all around Paris playing music with people dancing in the streets and on anything they could find; it was a blast. Despite our wishes, we needed to return back to the apartment to get some sleep for work the next day. P.S. The picture of the loaf of miche is the loaf I made myself!

It's chilly in Paris, but that's not stopping us in the least!

It's day 5 now and all is going well. We've had a pretty hectic schedule and long days of exploration, so today I let everyone sleep in, especially since they'll be getting up early for their "stages" that begin bright and early tomorrow morning! While they slept, I snuck out and explored our new "quartier" which is close to Montmartre. I had a large bowl of café au lait on the rue des Abbesses, a charming street at the foot of Montmartre. We were going to explore the area together, but ended up having brunch with Francesco Mennillo and his family, then watched Italy vs. New Zealand together. Needless to say, we were all disappointed that Italy didn't have a definitive win!

We've had lots of cultural excursions and exploring of the city. Andrew, Mack, Sophie & Linnie have all been eager to discover new places. I can see that they are really getting their bearings about them and are getting to know the city. Andrew has been a great guide for them and has taken them off to do some exploring of their own. They are all excited about beginning their internships tomorrow. Tonight we discussed what they could do to make the most of their internships - they all agreed that they need to be fully engaged, take risks with the language and ask questions. I suggested that they pay attention to expressions they hear and ask about them and also write them down. I've noticed a couple of expressions myself that have crept into the language in the past two year. I explained the expressions to them tonight - "prochainement" (coming soon) and "à l'étage" (upstairs) - two expressions that I keep coming across. They had each noticed those expressions, too, either in billboard advertising (Apple Store, ouverture prochainement) or Linnie even had a sales clerk use "à l'étage" with her. They've already been showing that they aren't afraid to take risks when they talk and I think they've all had several moments of pride when they've completed a conversation in French! As their teacher, I love seeing these moments and the ensuing excitement and confidence!

What a great group of students to be with! I'm looking forward to their week at work and know they'll each do a fantastic job! They've been brainstorming about their project and have decided to collaborate. More about that as the details emerge once they begin work - they've got some interesting ideas that will show a common thread in all their internships. While they're at work, I'll spend my time stopping by the internships to take photos, so stay tuned to see each of them in action!

Sacre Coeur...Stop my Coeur

Ok, so today was quite the interesting day filled with exploration and cold water. We started out by waking up and showering (there was no hot water, so it was a jump start to our day); then we packed and moved to our new apartment. It is so much better than the last. The other apartment on Cherche Midi was a tiny two floor loft; this one has a half bath and a quite nice luxury bathroom with three bedrooms, amazing views, a kitchen and a living room. On top of that, we have Spiderman protecting us. It's awesome here!

After the move, we met Madame's friend at BHV which is like a Target and Nordstroms combined. Everyone did some shopping there. We went out for lunch after near Place de Vosges; while we were there, we went to Victor Hugo's apartment.

Madame let us go exploring after our visit to Victor Hugo's. At first, we were going to walk all around Paris, but it started raining; we used the metro. Sophie, Mack, Linnie and I found our way back to the new apartment and then settled in a bit and we caught up with people back home. Once we caught back up with Madame, we went to this delicious Italian restaurant where we got this amazing pizza. We were supposed to meet up with the Italians from yesterday, but it didn't work out; we went out for coffee near our apartment instead.

As a conclusion to the night, we came back to the apartment and played some cards while reflecting on our day.

Photos from the Day

Église de la Madeleine

Along the Seine

Mack and Madame in the garden at the Musée Rodin

Exploring the City

Today was a day of exploration. This morning we woke up around 8am and began our day as usual, eating croissants with Nutella and jam. Delicious as always. After breakfast the metro took us to an entirely new area of Paris, where we visited the offices that we will be working at next week. I met Brigitte, an incredibly kind woman who will help guide me through my internship at TG Communications. Although I am a bit nervous about my first few days speaking French in the office, I could not be more excited for this experience. Seeing the area where I will be working and knowing how nice the people are is very comforting. I start at 9am on Monday. After visiting the other internship locations we all headed to the Musée Rodin, home of the famous sculpture Le Penseur. It was very interesting to see all of the statues within the beautiful gardens. We ate lunch at a café, and afterward we returned to the apartment to take naps before gathering for a cup of coffee at Les Deux Magots. Later Sophie, Andrew, and I walked to La Seine to take some pictures near the Louvre. We met up with Mack later on and then ventured back to the apartment to change before dinner. We went to a great restaurant with an Italian student, Francesco, who will be a new junior at St. George's next year. He was with his father and a friend, and we all had a great time talking and laughing over the fantastic meal. The food was great, especially the dessert that I ordered, profiteroles au chocolat (vanilla ice cream in pastries covered in hot chocolate sauce). Mmm delicious! After the meal, our new Italian friends walked us back to our apartment to retire for the night. Tomorrow we will move to a different apartment closer to the internship offices. Overall today was great, and I cannot wait to experience more of Paris within the next few weeks.

A Day in the Life of Bonding Friends

Today was a very restful day filled with a lot of bonding between all of us. We started out at our apartment on Cherche Midi with some flaky croissants from Poilâne...and you can't forget the tub of Nutella. It was delicious. After that, Linnie, Mack and I went out on a small excursion in our quartier; we went and set up our cell phones, did some shopping, and went to the Pharmacy. On our excursion we familiarized ourselves with the quartier we are staying in as well as converse with the locals. Sophie still wasn't feeling well when we went back to the apartment, so we went out to lunch in hopes that with a little more rest, she would join us for the late afternoon trip to the Musee d'Orsay. We walked around in search of a good place to eat when we found a small cafe near St. Germain; our meals there were also awesome and we had a very personable server who stayed and talked with us whenever he brought over the bread, meals, water, etc.

When it was over, we had two hours until we had to meet Madame deHorsey at the Musee d'Orsay and we were so close to it already, we walked over and sat along the Seine for a while. We observed everyone...tourists, locals, everyone! We also found some trees that were turned into works of art (some might say). Names and designs were carved into them.


As a last minute thought before we met Madame, we ventured over to buy dessert at Angélina's, the famous Parisian tea salon, and then ate it in the Tulleries Garden. Today was fun and filled with Parisian beauty.
I think everyone enjoyed the relaxing before the internships start...I know I did.

On a side note, we also started to document the trip with photos and video.

June 17

Today was a better day in terms of rest. We got up fairly early and I put my best effort into making coffee. Great success. I had my first real, solo conversation with someone in French this morning, also a success, while buying a pay-as-you-go cell phone. I have to admit, it was pretty rewarding being able to bring all those hours of classroom study into perspective with one conversation. Soph wasn't feeling all that well so Andrew, Linnie and I went off to town. We got some lunch and did some videoing. Then we met Madame deHorsey and Sophie at the Musee d'Orsay where a very neat exhibit on "Crime et Chatiment" (Crime and Punishment) was being shown. All in all it was a day full of walking and rather exhausting.

Saint Germain des Près

It's Thursday and we are slowly getting over our jet lag! We've had two great days and are enjoying apartment #1 on rue du Cherche-midi in the 6th arrondissement. In fact, it's just a few doors down from Andrew's internship at Poilâne! The 6th arrondissement, also known as Saint Germain-des-Près, is a culturally and intellectually stimulating quartier. It's the home of many publishers and editors (no doubt due to its proximity to the neighboring Latin Quarter), as well as numerous galleries and the Musée d'Orsay. It's also known for its famous cafés - Les Deux Magots, La Brasserie Lipp, Le Café de Flore - that attracted the literary elite: Sartre, de Beauvoir, and expats Hemingway and Fitzgerald to name just a few. Needless to say, we are taking advantage of all that this wonderful quartier has to offer.

Bon Voyage to fellow SG faculty members who are out exploring the world :

Amy Dorrien-Traisci - Spain
Jeremy Goldstein - Senegal
Elizabeth Bickford - France
Kevin Held - England

GCIP-Paris 2010
June 15-July 2, 2010
Faculty Leader : Allison de Horsey
Student Participants : Andrew Colacchio '10 (student leader), Mack Feldman '11, Sophie Flynn '11, Linnie Gummo '11

Bonjour and welcome to the GCIP-Paris blog! On Tuesday June 15th, the Global Cultural Initiatives Program (GCIP) launches its first program in Paris! GCIP is a student-centered learning process placed in the context of international internships. The program promotes the growth of independent initiative, problem solving, collaboration and information sharing. In addition to their internship experience, students will complete cultural projects that can be incorporated into teaching and learning at St. George’s.

Welcome to our blog and stay tuned for daily entries by Andrew, Mack, Sophie, Linnie and Allison. Feel free to comment and if you are traveling, please send us some photos and share your travel highlights with us.