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| International Business School Hotel and Tourism Management |  |
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Examples
of International internships
Discovering
China 
In
the framework of their studies at Institut Vatel, Mélanie Salas and Emilie
Boteau carried out their training-period for the first time ever in China
from December 1999 to April 2000.For 4 months the two young girls occupied the position of Assistant Manager in the "Garden Hotel" in Canton : A four star establishment which has over 1100 rooms and 2300 employees.
Welcomed particulary warmly and perfectly well integrated, Emilie and Mélanie were able to get a grasp of all the services and work in the 8 Garden Hotel restaurents one after the other, the 2 Brasseries, housekeeping and reception : which was particularly delicate since all the papers were in chinese !
For Emilie and Mélanie : "above all, this was an experience concerning life which enabled us to discover another culture which we had to fit into.We learnt a lot about the town, the food and the language. as well as numerous chinese rituals of courtesy."But what suprised them the most : "The number of meetings and the lack of versatility. In China each employee has a well-defined job and because of his culture, he doesn't try to find out about anything else. "They remain, however, unanimous concerning the richness of this training-period : "A unique adventure which we advise everybody to try."
To
the tune of a Samba
A
former Vatel student who has become the manager of a brazilian restaurant
"The Boteco 66" which is in Rio de Janeiro the chef of which is none other
than Claude Trois Gros (the son of the roannais restaurant owner), requested
some trainees from Vatel. This request was satisfied by Anne-Laure and
Vincent who went there to do their last training-period at the end of
their studies.For six months Anne-Laure was head of the restaurant and head of personnel, whilst Vincent was responsible for the storekeeping for the Boteco 66 which could do as many as 250 covers a day. The chef's traditional french cuisine mixed with foreign ingredients is in fact, really succesful in Rio.
For both the students, their stay was really positive : "It was an unforgettable experience. On a professional level we did jobs which neither of us knew anything about before and we learnt Portuguese which we now speak fluently, which is a definite asset for our profession. However what struck us most were the people we met : we arrived in a country we didn't know, not speaking the language and we thought it would be very hard to fit in and in fact it was really easy."
There was however, one thing which really astonished them :" At the present time, there is no school in Brazil which trains students in the different hospitality and catering careers. The staff are therefore unskilled on the whole, not very versatile and above all much more numerous than in France. At the same time, working conditions are very different. For example, nobody can take any holidays until''they have worked for one year and they only have the right to one day off a week!It is a country where numerous initiatives concerning training remain to be taken.Back in France Anne-Laure and Vincent's only thoughts are to set off again, perhaps Portugal first then Latin America which they have fallen permanently in love with.