We're soon to leave Grenoble and our emotions are an odd mixture. We're excited to see our families, sad to leave Grenoble but proud of our great experience here. We had our last week of work finished so we treated ourselves by celebrating with a night of fine french cuisine with the whole group and Orla! We ate and chatted about our time here and everything we've learned only to realize we had been the last left in the restaurant, time really does fly when you're having fun. Some of us wanted the Grenoble dream to live on so went for a night on the town ignoring our day of travel in the morning. I'd say making the most of our little time left! It was a great night for all and a lovely last goodbye to Grenoble and the group! I think we've all learned so much with this experience. For myself I feel so much more confident in acquiring a retail position at home because I did so well in an unfamiliar place without much french or experience to begin with. I'm so grateful that I have so many new skills for my future working career. I also didn't know 3 of the girls very well within our group as we were in different courses. It turned out we all clicked so well and had so much fun together. Making such good new friends was a real unexpected highlight of this trip. Another benefit of this trip was the self confidence. Coming to an entirely new and bigger city, travelling and embracing a new culture, becoming a team leader, living alone independently, making new friends and working in french retail. These are only some of the things from a very long list which all gave me confidence. This alone will be so important when we return to Ireland within our college life, personal life and working life. I think everything is what you make it. Yet another thing I have learnt. And with the help of Erasmus and our teachers we definitely has a fantastic Erasmus experience. I'm so grateful for it as I could never have guessed how much I would learn or do so much in just 3 weeks. I hope one day I will get the opportunity to go on Erasmus again. And I would implore any student to go as it is such a wonderful and rewarding opportunity.
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We're on our third and last week of working although it feels like we've been working and living here much more than just 3 weeks. We all know the ins and outs of our retail placement, the city and the culture. It's exciting to see our transition in our knowledge, confidence and personal growth within such a short time.
I and Sandra have come to learn so much about our Irish shop that we hardly need instruction undertaking all the daily tasks. This alone gives us so much confidence everyday to know we have been really successful in our integration to this retail environment. Talking to French customers, operating the till, stock sorting and working apart of a team were all daunting things on our first week of placement. But we quickly began to see them as fun exciting new skills. We always make sure to help one another in area's we each find difficult too. Sandra knows about stock counting and sorting so she often helps me when I'm not so sure of myself. I also help her a lot when communicating to our co workers as I am more confident in speaking French. It's real teamwork and that's not usually my strong point so I am very happy to now have better team building skills as well as a new friend also. The rest of the girls are finding this week just as smooth as ours. During the week we were reminded how much the French love striking and all the transport wasn't running for the whole day. Grenoble people rely heavily on trams so it was an extremely quiet day in the city. Our shops were empty so one of our co workers, I and Sandra visited Una in United Colors of Benetton. It's only a short walk to her shop and when we got there we were allowed to pick out any clothes we like to style and then model in a photoshoot altogether. It was a lot of fun as it was so fashion based and gave us an insight into retail advertising. It's been a great final week that we will be sad it's coming to an end. Second week of work has come and gone. I am working in a ladies clothing store called voodoo. My week started of with a new delivery to the store. My tasks in a new delivery is to make sure the invoice order is matching the amount of merchandise in each box. After this I had to open up all the merchandise place them on a hanger with the right size and place them in the stock room. I have learned so much about deliveries and how they work which will be very useful in the future for working in a retail store and its also so interesting to get to know how much work goes on behind in the stock room. The next day I was asked to help with stock rotation, this involves getting rid of old stock to prepare room for the new collection. I was asked to do a table display I got to pick the clothes I wanted to display and I picked only a few items folded them neatly on the table, and picked jewellery and shoes to display also. It was a great experience as I was in full control over the display and I could be as creative as l wanted. Later on in the day, we decided to change the window displays. We picked an eye catching outfit to draw customers attention, this is very important in a retail store. I was very lucky to be given the whole task to do the window display on my own. As I have done a window display as part of my course in Gti.
It was my first time ever to create an actual window display in a store. It was a great opportunity and an experience and I truly enjoyed doing it. The weekend was a little quiet due to it being the Easter bank holiday so everywhere was closed the majority of the weekend however this didn't stop us finding new adventures and experiences. Some of the adrenaline junkies took a trip up to Lumbin village to go paragliding. They were scared but overcame it much easier than first thought and cited it as one of the best experiences of their life. Truly memorable. The rest went to Lyon for a visit of the old city and it was fantastic. The shopping, the music, museums and culture was a weekend treat indeed. That night we went out to experience the night life of Grenoble and ended up in "The London pub" there we met some other Irish and English living in Grenoble or some also on Erasmus. It was crazy, the Irish always seem to find one another. We conversed with them and found the best places to go and what to do. Orla Moore also arrived this weekend and we went out for dinner and caught up about life in Ireland and shared our fun experiences with her too. It was great to see a familiar face! The second week working in 'The Irish Counter' feels very comfortable as we have really settled in.
Working and learning can be a lot of fun as we have very nice work mates. On our break yesterday they even brought us on a guided tour of Grenoble. We will be sad to see our co worker who is also on placement leave this week too. Since St Patrick's week has come and gone there has been a big changeover in the shop with the window and indoor display. It's been exciting to see the new type of clothing stock come in, making new displays ourselves and pricing the new stock. It's a great learning experience as we have full control over the displays. The next day a huge delivery came. There's lots of work involved in the delivery and we all had separate roles in helping with it, It was interesting and insightful to see how the delivery of stock is undertaken and what happens with the stock room and its rotation. We have learned the location of all the stock and exactly how the stockroom works. I have learned so much about this process and am very grateful that our co workers allowed us into every part of the business. We're into the second week of placement with 7 days work under our belts. Things are going very well for everyone . I am working in Jules, a men's clothing store similar to Topman. Doing the fashion design course in GTI my interest lies in the creative and manufacturing side of the clothing so I was apprehensive about what I was going to gain from the retail side of the business. Thankfully I had been wrong to think that way , I have already felt the advantages to working from this aspect of the fashion industry. I was shown the different product presentation methods and the importance of a well structured floor plan and how it can affect the outcome of sales. My colleagues are teaching me phrases, not just to ask the customer ' are they okay' but to really engage with them to sell a particular item and to encourage them to look at more items. I am trying out my phrases daily and it has been a struggle to understand what customers are saying back to me a lot of the time which can be a little overwhelming but once you explain in French that you are on placement people are very accommodating and it usually leads to good conversations. I have been role playing conversations with my colleagues on a daily basis and with my phrases learnt off I am really delighted with the progress I have made within the week. I am learning on the shops computer system this week about sales targets ,orders , returns , setting up accounts and stock take..... all in French. This is all very new to me , its not something I have done in previous jobs or work experience and I am finding it all very interesting .....it should make for a good week ahead. I also met with Kadir our advisor out here in Grenoble. He needed me to role play as a sales assistant to his class. They had a scenario in which they were an English speaking customer and I was the retail assistant. We had a great day in the mountains listening to Irish songs and learning about one another's culture. After the first week of work placements, that all went really well, we decided to explore some more of Grenoble and see what it had to offer. Feeling a lot more confident in ourselves on Friday night we sat down and make a plan of what to do for the weekend. We decided to go to Annecy. We had heard wonderful things about this old glacial town in a valley and we were so excited to see it. The scenery and culture of Annecy exceeded our very high expectations and the weather was so beautiful too that it felt like a dream! We were sailing around in a pedlo on the crystal clear lake and found we needed a lot of team work to even leave the dock. It was a great team building and fun day out. On Sunday it was a little boring because nothing is open.. it's a cultural change that's hard to get used to! So we we had a nice chill day and got some of our coursework finished. In the evening we decided to visit the Bastille. It is a fortress upon a hill overlooking the city with vast views of the Alps around us. To get there you take a cable car. Sandra has a big fear of heights but she pushed herself (and with a little extra push from us) to take the plunge and ride on the “bubbles” . She did so well and overcame her fear. It was a great accomplishment and a real boost the group. The beautiful scenery was well worth the fear. We could see the whole city from up there and it was really beautiful. Some decided to walk down the mountain and some rode down on the ‘bubbles’ again. I would highly recommend on doing it to anyone it was so much fun and really cheap as well. Over all it has been a great first week and our french is getting better by the day, picking up new words and sayings as we go. So next week is going to be even better now that we know our way around, have them few extra french words, and are feeling more confident that we can do it! Paddy's day in Grenoble had arrived and the festivities were somewhat different to those in Ireland. As we got up to go to work, we were all slightly homesick as we were missing the great parades and celebrations back home. Those who were working in The Irish Counter had a very busy day! They were preparing for an Irish evening of music outside the shop. They learned lots about visual merchandising. Visual merchandising was very important for this shop on Paddy's Day as it had to draw a crowd from the festivities outside. They were swept off their feet for the shop's busiest day of the year! All the girls experienced different aspects of their clothing store. A new delivery had arrived into Voodoo and Clodagh's tasks included pricing, steaming and tagging the merchandise. Gillian was busy learning how to work the till and communicate with customers. It was very daunting at first but it soon just became muscle memory and she became confident with the customers, making sales and returns. There's never a dull moment in Una's shop. With the cafe´ shop integrated into the store she gets to learn how two business work. Laura was working with new computer systems, logging in new orders and updating the shop's logs. This gives her great insight to the paperwork of a business and how important it is. After just one weeks work, we all feel more confident working within a retail setting, speaking french and having a stronger knowledge of a business. For St Patrick's day we were excited to see and experience the cultural differences of this worldwide celebration. We of course headed for the Irish pubs when we were shocked to find a huge crowd of people celebrating our national holiday with us. It was a much more civilised occasion but just as much craic.
After a sleepless night filled with nerves and anxiety, the dreaded first day of work had arrived. On our tram ride in we discussed some of our fears and what we had expected to come out of our day. When we arrived to the city at 9:40 we had some time to waste before starting work. During this time we got talking to a bunch of university students who were still out drinking from the night before dressed in costume . As ridiculous as it may sound they gave us the names of Grenoble's top nightclubs and bars along with some well needed laughter. It was a huge relief having Grainne (our superviser) with us when we were getting introduced to our boss as it took a lot of pressure off us. One of my main worries was not being able to comminute with my fellow workers as I do not have a strong understanding of the french language but they were very patient and understanding throughout. I found having learnt one or two phrases such as 'sorry I don't speak much french' seemed to really help me get through the day. At our lunch break we all met up to discuss how we got on. There was a huge contrast between the fearful conversation we had on the tram in comparison to the conversation we were having at lunch. Everyone was feeling a lot more confident and relaxed. As our day came to a close we headed back to our apartments and had a bite to eat. We made a last minute decision to have a group meeting in Grainne's room to recap on our day. It was so nice hearing how much everyone had overcome and it was clear everyone felt a massive sense of achievement. To celebrate we popped open a bottle of champagne and called it a night .
Before starting our work placement we thankfully had a day to take in the city, the culture, layout and the exact locations of our work placements. We all found our way to them eventually with the art of map reading now under our belt. A Sunday in France differs greatly to an Irish Sunday. Grenoble seemed like a complete ghost town with barely any shops open or people about as they take their day of rest very seriously. However we didn't mind too much as it was a relaxing and calming way to get to know the city. Just in time for lunch we came out onto the beautiful river below a mountain where resturants were bustling amongst a car boot sale stretching the riverbank. So this is where everyone was! Picking up a bite to eat and a bargain too. It was so nice to have such a day of differing culture and we thought we could definitely get used to this. The next day meant starting work placements for Gillian and Laura. Whilst they were a little nervous to begin, that didn't last long and both settled into their work places swimmingly. Gillian learnt about the history of French clothing whilst Laura learnt all about the exciting ski products within her shop making sure to bag us a discount too! Communication was a key skill they needed to utilise as English is not commonly spoken here. But because the locals know little of our language and we know un petit peu of theirs we feel like we're in the same boat so we can definitely teach one another. For the rest of us, we basked in the sunshine and found inspiration all over the city. The fashion retail girls loved the eye catching visual merchandising and the fashion design girls found a fabric shop that would out do any in Ireland. These ideas and fabric will help us all in our classwork back home which is very exciting. |
Fashion 2016Una Quill Map of Grenoble |