The Final Days

              We are in the last day of classes. Presentations for management class are interesting. It was great to see how everyone picked very different things to export to the European Union.  We chose to export Victoria's Secret to Italy. I was really happy with our final project. Another group of girls chose to do Downey's wrinkle release to France. I liked how they took their personal experience, and applied it to the projects. Some of the other products Exported are RedBox, Chipotle, Car-may a high precision pump, Coach and many more. All in all it has been a great experience. 

         While working and Learning in France i have learned a lot about the processes we go through vs. what a french student. When our teachers were listening to us they found that we all are very optimistic. They stated that a French student would have listed ALL of the possible problems. It is interesting to me that we all have the same basic learning structures, yet our culture is still very present within our education systems. I am sad that it has all gone by so fast. I can't believe that i have already been here for an entire month. I leave to go back home in 3 days. Tonight we are going to get dinner in the Notre Dame area also called Saint Michel. We found an amazing Crepe  shop. After that we plan on watching the light show at the Eiffel Tower. Some of our UNC group leaves early tomorrow morning so we are enjoying are last night as a group. See you all soon back in the U.S.

XOXO, Chelsea

Last week of classes

           The last week has jumped up on me. The time in Paris has gone by so fast. I am extremely happy i got the opportunity to come over seas and take class. I have met a lot of people and learned to not be as ethnocentric when evaluating my surroundings. on Tuesday we went to a museum that housed Claude Monet's Paintings. One of his paintings is the reason the Impressionism movement was named. The painting that represents this was not valued until more recent years. It was found rolled up and being shipped to a buyer. They have now restored it and put it in to a giant gold frame. One of the things i find peculiar is the fact that many of the museums here they move around the order and presentations of the artwork. Each time we go out teacher Claude looks for the painting where it used to be and almost every time it has been moved to a new mall.
            Wednesday we had our last marketing class. We were divided into groups of 4 and assigned a case. I was in a group with Rachael Prouhet, Brittani Knott, and Lis Beard. We did are article on 4 car companies and their attempts at international marketing. Each group has a different company or set of companies. I was fun to see the different ways to present between the Florida students, German, Turkmenistan and us. The students from UNC, tended to use a PowerPoint that was very concise and fewer bullet points. The German seemed like he wanted to give a full background on the company, beyond what was included in the article assigned.
         The last piece of our week here at school is focused on our management class. We are finishing up our last project and adding on finishing details for exporting into the European union. We are in teams of two. I choose Rachael to be my partner because i knew she was a good worker and the project it worth a lot of our grade. We were originally going to do the company Melt. The company is not currently strong enough financially ready for going international. We switched companies and now are working on exporting Victoria's Secret to Rome, Italy.
XOXO, Chelsea

P.S. I am sad the adventure is coming to an end here in the next couple of days, Paris has been an amazing experience!

New Friends

             We had a long weekend, so we took advantage of it. On Sunday we hiked up a hill to a church. From the top of the hill you can see over the city. There are fountains, grass and trees, which is a nice break from the city. The church is called Basilique du Sacre Coeur de Montmartre. We got to walk around the inside it was beautiful. The church reminded me of a small-scale simplified version of Notre Dame. After you can pay 5 Euros to go to the top where there is a small balcony. It was 300 stairs spiraled all the way up. Once we were up there the view was breath taking. The next day Rachael and I went to the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way to the top. I think I took a million pictures. Being able to look out over the entire city was amazing!  It was one of my favorite things I have done here. One thing we still have to do is see the light show at nighttime.  The day before we went a man jumped off of the first level of the tower to a half pipe below on roller blades.

            On the second week we met a exchange student from London. We decided to meet up as a group and all go to dinner. We went to a French restaurant in Bastille, which is the place to go; Bastille that is. Some of the kids got a duck thigh, which was very tender and quite good. Another dish was chicken in coco milk and crumbles. After that we walked around the city. There was a big protest, which was kind of crazy, and there were tons of people all sleeping on the sidewalk and walking around asking for money. It was a fun night. There ended up being 1 person from the U.K., 1 from Canada, 2 from Spain and 2 from America. We got talking about perceptions of one another and it was interesting to hear everyone’s point of view.

XOXO, Chelsea 

Customs & New Things

This weekend I got to explore Paris some more you don’t realize how big it truly is until you have realized you have been here almost 3 weeks and you still have endless possibilities of things to go do and see.

            On Friday we went to the museee-orsay. It was a neat museum although there was a construction going on so there were not as many exhibit areas. The next day Rachael and I went out to a French dinner place where people line up down the street to sit down and eat. Although it is a very large restaurant in comparison to the others we have visited. We had a good meal there we had a cucumber and tomato salad, chicken and frites, followed by a pastry filled with ice cream and topped with warm hot chocolate. We were halfway through our meal and 2 boys were seated next at our table. We were confused about what was going on at first. The boys ended up knowing English and explained it is part of the ambiance. They told us about French food customs. In different regions they eat different things. Some of the items we though were strange was the frogs legs, horse, and calves head.

            After that they showed us a university that is very well known, they called it Paris’s MIT. Talking with them was very interesting and a great way to learn about some of their customs. They were telling us about their school system they are in. It is like a middle ground between high school and a university. They have half civilians and half military students. The purpose of this school is to study up hard on all the subjects so that they can get into some of the harder universities in Paris.