Category Archives: My classes

Welcome to Summer Batch!

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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 !

Les Roches – The importance of living in an International environment

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Time is going by so quickly and according to the changing weather around Bluche most of us think that the summer is literally over.  It’s good though, the change of a season means that things have to follow a cycle as well and we have to move on, continuing with new experiences and more challenges, trying to get the most out of every day that goes by.

In the last few weeks I have had the chance to talk with people from so many countries, some countries of which I had heard a lot about before and also a few that were quite unfamiliar to me. It has been a very international experience in these past weeks and it is only getting better.

classmates enjoying the view from the balcony

Within the tourism and the hospitality industry you start to quickly understand the fact that nowadays we are actually citizens of the world. Working in hospitality is indeed a conjunction of activities involving guests and people from everywhere abroad. There are so many interesting cultures of which you can always learn something new and in one way or another the international ambiance here at the school prepares you on a higher level to face the industry while working. It may help you to face or solve a situation with a guest or a particular client sometime or confront work pressures with people from other countries.

At the school and during activities outside the school especially during meals and through classmates, you learn a bit about each different culture. It could be the special cuisine they might have, interesting and touristic places in their home countries, weather differences, salutations and greetings in their languages, they share stories with you about other places where they have been and so on.

Here I attach some recent pictures of my classmates while celebrating the birthday of one of our classmates from Thailand, of course eating at a Thai restaurant in Montana, we learned for sure a lot about Thai food, the ingredients they use and main dishes in Thailand!

In some of the classes, we are also learning about beverages and service. This class is called Food Production and Service Operations; it is definitely one of my favourite classes with Mr. La Sala where we have started learning about the basics of the production of beverages.

We started this time with different types of appetizers, short drinks, long drinks, cocktails and so on. Attached is a picture of us during this class where we learn right away how to make, mix and serve these types of beverages and the attitude of bartenders and waiters while they are serving.

It is really nice to be able to make them and not only see how to make them. We really learn right away the origin of different liquors, how they should be mixed and how all types of drinks should be served and decorated.

Getting around Les Roches and meeting new people !

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These past few days have been really wonderful.  Finally, I was able to meet my classmates from PGD 1! We did the check in as PGD students last week and we felt very welcomed by the school staff and the PGD2 students (PGD second semester students). They had prepared several documents that came in handy for everyone with useful information. They were open to our questions and doubts and really put interest into telling us more about the way of life in Les Roches.

I think we all enjoyed the first days during the introduction week getting to know each other in our class and making new friends. As the time goes by, I think I am getting to know more and more people from the school and from so many countries. There is a cultural diversity which is quite noticeable as you walk in campus and the best thing is that everyone seems to be getting along very well in spite of the difference in languages and cultures.

There is something important that I need to highlight about the programs in Les Roches, and I would not have been able to value this if I had not heard other students’ outlook on their schedule during the first days. My sister for example, she is in HO1 (first year) and in the beginning she was a bit confused because of the new environment and the mix of the practical and theoretical lessons, and honestly I couldn’t understand much either. But I finally realized that the practical hours either in service or stewarding that students in HO1 have to complete (which by the way for some of the students might seem too exhausting in the beginning), have been designed so that students can easily get the real meaning of team work. During these shifts, the students can get to know their classmates better since they have to cooperate with them all the time.  The fact that the students can live these real situations right away is outstanding; it helps us to see ourselves involved in this industry in the future so we can understand the operations in these areas.

I really like my class in PGD1 and I think we are getting along pretty well. The learning experience of being in such an international environment has to deal a lot with socializing too, and the PGD2 students welcomed all of the new PGD1s during the weekend with a welcome party at the local bar, Le Pub, in Montana. We really felt welcomed by them and the time they used to even prepare a video for us, it was very nice, check it out:

I am attaching a few pictures of some of the PGD2 welcoming us, the facilities around Les Roches, the pool is nice and the views from the mountains are really cool, there is another picture of inside the funicular that goes from Sierre to Montana and stops in Bluche. And my friend from Egypt asked me to write more about Egyptians in the school but I think we have to have a little chat so I know what to write! Anyways I am posting this other picture so he knows I will write about it too eventually ;-)

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