Tag Archives: PGD

IP Event: Dinner with a Murderer

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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 

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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:

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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 !

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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