Author Archives: Pamela Calvas

IP Event: Dinner with a Murderer

Posted on by
Reply

During the past weeks, we (the students of PGD II) have been working so hard in order to put together an event that meets the standards of our school, Les Roches.

This IP EVENT (Integrated Project) is our most important project where we have to put into practice all of our knowledge regarding Events Management from PGD I and PGD II courses and turn it into a practical event. For this event, we invite students and faculty of the school to come to a dinner held in one of the school facilities on a Saturday night. The theme of the event is decided after the presentations of all groups of PGD II, who work throughout the first part of the semester to win the opportunity to lead and manage this kind of event. In our semester, Autumn 2011, the winning theme was “Dinner with a Murderer”. It was an interesting, new and challenging idea that was proposed by a group of PGD students and we all have been working very hard in order to accomplish and be successful in the organization of a theme based event like this where everything in the evening has to be appropriate and match the name of the event.

We have been divided into groups and we will all be working on the pre-event organization and during the event. Some are assigned to kitchen and started already to cook a trial experience of how the evening will be like. Others started with the service meetings to rehearse all of the techniques for a 5 course meal to provide the best service possible. Students have also started rehearsing the preparation of drinks. The decoration, marketing, and sales have been assigned to other students, as is my case, and I have started to organize the entertainment for that evening. It has been fun to organize acting sketches with my classmates. The idea of this theme is for guests to be entertained by finding out who committed a crime in the restaurant! In this case, who killed the chef!

Video of the rehearsal of the acting 

YouTube Preview Image

The clues are given by actors following a script written according to the food that is being served, the dances performed and all of the acting happening throughout the dinner. It is an interesting project, as it’s not only a simple dinner! A lot more effort is required to entertain our guests… I wanted to share with you some of the rehearsals in Market Place (the most popular restaurant at the school where students eat) that is usually the place where these events take place each year. It has been a lot of hard work, but also fun, to act and dance to a song that corresponded to the theme.

In the acting, I was performing the role of a waitress that was there during the “murder of the chef” and who becomes also a suspect along with other waiters and waitresses. I also prepared the choreography for the song Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson which met the theme and the acting and I did it with the collaboration of other students from the school. Thanks to all of you who helped in the preparation of this event. In my next blog, I will share with you some pictures of this wonderful evening that will certainly turn out to be a success!
Video of the rehearsal of the dance:

YouTube Preview Image

 

Back from midterm break!!!

Posted on by
1

The time has passed so fast and unfortunately I have not been able to keep up with my blogs as usual, the school really has kept us quite busy with assignments and midterm exams! I will compensate with some important information, fun stories and events at Les Roches that I have been collecting in the last few weeks for those of you who are interested in the student life at the school.

Midterm break really was a breath of fresh air allowing us to continue with school assignments and lessons. As I have stated before, the teaching system at Les Roches evaluates the performance of students in several ways and some projects require you to put all your effort and integrate the knowledge you have of all subjects. Examples of these are the so-called IP projects.

But what is IP? It stands for Integrated Project and although it is not a very popular term among first year students it is all you will hear among people from third year (H03) and postgraduate students (like me) just before the midterm break! After it has been submitted, there are only a few exams or projects left et voila! The ambiance at the school changes as everyone gets ready to leave for midterm break! Bellow just some random pictures of some of my friends after those long study hours at school haha!

Now, passing to a more interesting topic, I wanted to talk about internships. As we all know, here at Les Roches, internships should be done after the completion of a course.

Depending on the program that you are following, the school encourages you to get work experience in hospitality related establishments in order for you to apply all the techniques learned at the school into real work situations according to a specific hospitality area that draws your interest the most.

Within any hospitality related establishment there are endless opportunities for students from our school to participate, learn and get professional and life experiences which in the near future might be highly valued by an employer. Besides, you never know what abilities you are capable of and some new talents might surface as you progress in your internship.

The options are endless for you to find your new location in the world; from a 5 star hotel in a cosmopolitan city in Europe, to an exotic beach resort in Southeast Asia or even a ski resort in the mountains of Switzerland, there really are no limits as long as you keep an eye on immigration regulations and more specifically into the requirements that recruiters are looking for. You have to get informed about where you are going and a new blog post will be informing you more about it next week.

For now, I would like to share with you an interview with Johanne Fremmich, current H02 student at Les Roches who gladly agreed to give us feedback about her internship experience. We wanted to find out how involved she was with her role as a trainee at the Hotel Arts Barcelona and as you will see, the results are great and she loved her experience!

Wine Tasting Festival

Posted on by
2

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all having a great week and working hard in your projects/assignments either if you are a current student from Les Roches, part of the Alumni or even a prospective student reading this blog!!

On my side, I can tell you that I feel like time is definitely flying already and as deadlines are approaching I feel the need to work faster and harder. The Hospitality industry is known for this and it is in fact one of the reasons why I selected this field because it has helped me to become more organized and manage time better.

Having said that, I strongly agree that along with the learning, it is always important to have time to learn new things, attend workshops, presentations and see places where they show something new or important from a particular region.

Last Saturday, we had a great opportunity to go to the Sierre Wine Festival, which was a really nice experience for all of us who had never tried wine tasking before. The festival took place in Sierre, which is one of the closest cities to Bluche where Les Roches campus is located. Sierre has about 14,000 inhabitants and in the city you can do some shopping in the many stores, or find restaurants and banks. When you are a student in Bluche, you go there often.

Every year, Sierre becomes the host of the Wine Festival which is really popular in the Valaisan area; for many people foreign and local, it becomes really interesting as several wine makers come to this festival with their products, people attending can pay a small fee for the wine tasting and you receive a wine glass which becomes your tool to try several sorts of wines made by the different grapes produced in the area.  The producers from vineyards from the region are happy to explain to you where they are located and if there is any specialty in their wine. It was really interesting!

Check out how it was in the following video where I have posted a few pictures of this day!

Meeting Les Roches’ Alumni

Posted on by
Reply

So, it is time for an update! The weather has been quite good the last couple of weeks and many activities have been happening lately at the school, I was thinking that this time I would try to summarize a little of what has been going on in the student life, on and off campus.

First of all I would like to mention the successful Alumni meeting that took place last Sunday, on the 20th of August. During this meeting, students from Les Roches were able to interact with the Les Roches Alumni in a Grand Reunion with Les Roches graduates from years 1990 to 1995. These Alumni meetings have been arranged previously but this was the first time only graduates from these years gathered and came to the campus to interact with us. This was a great opportunity for all of us who wanted to find out more about how the opportunities of having studied in Les Roches helped them to enter the real world of hospitality.

Mr. Nicholas Allen, a Les Roches graduate from 1992, and a group of Les Roches Alumni came up with this great idea, along with the help provided by the Les Roches Alumni representatives and the CDIP office (the Career Development and Industry Placement).

We all had a wonderful time accompanied by nice food and soft drinks by the school pool on this Sunday afternoon. Getting acquainted with former students who are now managers of hotels, directors of restaurants, clubs, cruise companies and high representatives of numerous hospitality related companies is really outstanding.

I have to say that it was great to get advice from them, answers to questions that we as students have and just listen to their life experiences in different companies. It was indeed a great opportunity to make contacts for our future career and on behalf of all the students who attended this session, it was a real pleasure to share this with you all and below I have a few pics to share with you!

Brazilian former graduates 1990 – 1995 thanks for the click!!

I also wanted to post a few pics about some activities that some courses like HO2 students (Hotel Operations II) have lately performed. Thanks to Johanne Fremmich for the pics of her and her classmates during the internship fair that they prepared in order for everyone to know more about the hotel they worked in, the activities and the tasks that they performed during their period of internship.  This was really a source of information for a lot of students who are starting to apply for internships and training programs. Great work guys!!!

 

Welcome to Summer Batch!

Posted on by
Reply

Hello everyone!  It has been a while since I last posted blogs and I have really missed it!

After finishing an internship in Geneva, I am returning to Les Roches in order to complete the Postgraduate Program in Hospitality (PGD II). I am positive this semester is going to be amazing for everyone and I really hope the blogs I will write will help current and prospective students to know more about the school and its activities.

First of all, I would like to give a warm welcome to everyone, although by the time this is posted it will already be week 4 … New and returning students have been arriving to Les Roches for summer batch in the last couple of weeks and there have already been a few activities going on.

One of them of course was the Swiss National day that took place on the 1st of August when most students were already on campus. We had the pleasure of seeing the parades in Crans-Montana and afterwards an amazing show of fireworks that lasted around 15 minutes, which was awesome. You could really feel the happiness of Swiss people during this day, I have made a short video about it…

After my internship in Geneva, which I will talk about in my next post, I went back to Ecuador to visit my family and friends, it was a nice break from Europe but I was actually looking forward to coming back to Blûche. Each batch, either Winter or Summer batch, enjoys a special feeling when they come back after an internship period. In the first couple of weeks, it was a feeling of excitement to see everyone again, not only your classmates but also the returning students from last summer batch in different classes, teachers and everyone who helps out at Les Roches.

We all get to share a lot of stories regarding the previous internship and the places we have discovered. All this is real feedback that you get from your friends which is really important because you start building up different criteria concerning future job or internship opportunities that might help you to find the right path in the field of Hospitality which is so broad. I will share some advice and tips in regards to internships from my previous experience in Geneva.

Here a few pictures of new friends and people having already a good time at Les Roches!!  I am really happy to be back!

PGD 2 returning students welcoming PGD 1 new class! In Atlas, a little pub in Bluche where you can meet everyone!

 

Making friends with my new classmates…. So happy to be back !

Events at Les Roches

Posted on by
Reply

Integrated Project by Postgraduate Diploma students  IP EVENT, Come Fly with Me

All of the programs at Les Roches train their students to build and improve their skills in different areas of the hospitality industry. In order to get their diploma, the postgraduate students (PGD2) from Les Roches have to design an event in which they apply all of the techniques and knowledge that they learned in their first part of the program as students of PGD 1.

This is a very challenging activity that requires their entire disposition to work in groups so that they can present an exceptional idea for this event. The one that they presented this semester was based on the theme “Cities of the world”.  It was an outstanding performance of their cooking skills, service skills and also organizing, presentation and entertaining abilities.

The evening had a great ambiance, live music, great food and beverage, and amazing entertainers in general. It had the support of the PGDs 1 and also students from the school and staff in general.

Projects such as these really enhance the student’s talents to step out from the classrooms and put them into practice to show it to the school.  Following the meal there is a compiled video with pictures and a short clip of this marvelous night.  Congratulations to all of the PGD2 who did an amazing job!

PGD2 STUDENTS , contratulations to all of you!!

Besides the trekking activities, excursions and the visits to wineries that the school organizes, there are also different trips around Switzerland. We recently had the chance to take a fantastic trip to the GRUYERE area, famous for the delicious cheese of the same name and the beauty of the region.

During this trip, students were able to visit a chocolate factory which is always a great attraction for all those who love chocolate and want to try a bit of some of the best Swiss products.

It’s very interesting to get to see these places because they are part of the Swiss culture and part of the learning experience that every student here at Les Roches should experience.

Check out the pictures of the area, these charming towns made the trip very significant for those who want to feel and see the country side of Switzerland.

Cultural Night

Posted on by
3

The Cultural Night in Les Roches is one of the most important events of the semester. All of the students become part of this night by participating in the preparations, attending the shows and running the stands areas in the main building. During this night, visitors, alumni and staff get to experience an amazing international ambiance that is created by the efforts of all of the students in all the programs.

During this night, we have two parts. First, there is the show where students perform typical or traditional dances from their home countries. The school encourages the students to make this show the best they can and to rehearse before the final presentation.

This time, we had students from China, Korea, Thailand, Mexico, India and many more who performed for everyone and showed their dancing and entertainment talents.

In the following link I have compiled some of the best bits of the dancing shown of Cultural night:   http://animoto.com/play/gIHHav4swFykaJCFh3F5vg

Sports Activity and Lausanne Marathon

Posted on by
Reply

Besides the general academic activities in Les Roches, we also have the Sports and Activities Department which is always inviting and encouraging students to attend to basketball or volleyball games, badminton, tennis, trekking, Yoga lessons, or any other seasonal sports and activities. During these past months, a lot of these activities have taken place and any student can become a member of these sport teams. In the winter time, other activities such as skiing and snowboarding are encouraged by this department as they are a must-try while studying at Les Roches!

During the last month, students were encouraged to take part in the annual Marathon in Lausanne that took place this past weekend.  Here, not only the students but also faculty of Les Roches did a great performance representing Les Roches as well! The marathon was organized to give runners the best conditions. To make a path for the marathon, streets were closed to vehicles from the lakeside in Lausanne, through the green hillsides of the city, making it easy for runners to stay focused on the race. This annual event gathers participants from everywhere. It’s a race for everyone, from professionals to amateurs. Every runner matters and everyone gets a medal!

Congratulations to all of you who went there! Keep it up!


Here there is a compilation of some pictures from this day,  a special thanks to Janet Ling for providing these to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSsyU4vdNWM

Visit to a Vineyard and extra-curricular activities

Posted on by
1

The learning experience here at Les Roches is not limited to the academic or practical parts of our days on duty or attending classes. The school schedules frequent lectures for the students to attend, workshops and even field trips in which we learn about companies related to the hospitality industry. A few days ago we were able to attend a session given by a former student, Reza Ghazali who talked about “Career Planning”.

Mr. Ghazali is a great example of how far former students from Les Roches can go! Currently, he is the Office Managing Director for Korn/Ferry International in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. This executive recruitment agency is considered as one of the world’s premier providers of talent and management solutions with nearly 80 offices in 40 countries. Mr. Ghazali described some pitfalls to watch out for and how to plan our careers, which is always worth hearing about, especially in this industry when you have so many options and possibilities.

Our PGD class visited a winery, or vineyard, located close to Sion which is not far from Bluche!! We have a few wine producers and vineyard territories in the surroundings of Les Roches and it is indeed a quite nice area.

The Canton of Valais, where the school is found, is quite well recognized in Switzerland for the tasty wines that they produce; this time we visited the Giroud Winery where we were able to taste some of the wines produced there and gather lots of information about the production stages. Thank you Mr. la Sala for arranging this for our class, it was great fun! http://animoto.com/play/21Ss1Wjq7ABj4XWfo0l5OQ?utm_content=challenger

Last but not least, I have been taking a few pictures of the surroundings here at the school and you can clearly see the change from Summer to Fall and the upcoming Winter slowly approaching. It has even snowed once already! I will be posting a video about this too, hope you like this new application to see several pictures. http://animoto.com/play/1N2vj5cPNeTFKHVK39P9WQ

Midterm break, special weeks, workshops and activities…

Posted on by
2

In the middle of the semester we have our midterm break, 1 week off which most of us have used to relax, do some traveling or go back home to visit family and friends.

Many of my classmates and friends have taken advantage of this time to discover and explore some new areas in Europe.

Garda Lake

As I have mentioned before in older posts, living in Switzerland gives you easy access to most of the cities in Central Europe that can easily be reached by train.  There are a variety of convenient flights available to reach other cities further away in a matter of just a couple of hours.

I went to northern Italy with my family, there we visited Venice and Milan and stayed most of the time by the Garda Lake which was beautiful.

Milano

Milano

For the prospective students who read this post and want to get more information about traveling within and outside Switzerland it’s good to check the national train system website: www.sbb.ch which I highly recommend to become a member of.

Besides the regular academic schedules and the practical activities that the students need to perform, there are Special weeks in which the students have different schedules and have a chance to attend workshops and execute other tasks. My class had a chance to experience serving in a banqueting style setting and also attending a workshop on the same day.

Here I have got a video of us during a very interesting and fun workshop of Molecular food that is a new concept that many of us had never experienced before. In this video, our professor Chef in the “A la Carte Restaurant”, is giving a demonstration of Molecular desserts using compressed nitrogen to freeze or lower the temperature of these ingredients. As for the best part of molecular cuisine, check out how all of us are eager to taste this!

I hope everyone had a great midterm break! And by the way welcome to the new October batch for HO1s :-)