Thanksgiving

Three months have passed since my flight from Paris touched down in Chicago. Since that time, life in the USA has been an adventure of a different flavor, though no less exciting.

The highlight for me has been the time I've been spending with everyone I missed so much while I was in France. A week in Michigan with Mom, Dad, Grandma and Javier in August; weekend trips throughout the fall to explore and visit friends in Savannah, Raleigh, Atlanta, Charlottesville, to camp in North Carolina, and to relax in Charlotte with our family and "second families" that live here.



Of course, in between, MBA life has resumed as well. We're a couple weeks away from wrapping up the first semester of Year 2, and in spite of the pressure of final projects, I'm not forgetting that the flexibility and opportunities to just soak up learning that come with student life are a great gift that has an expiration date just six months out! As the President of the Moore Association for Graduate Women, I've also had the chance to work with some amazing leaders in our school to organize events that have ranged from community service activities to sponsoring a panel discussion on "the role of influence in women's careers."

Writing this on Thanksgiving of course prompts me to count all of the blessings this year has brought. As my dear friend Dan Taylor says, a rough day in my world still qualifies as paradise by most definitions! My goal is to continue deserving this abundance by contributing in the best ways I can to the people and communities around me, and to transform whatever challenges come along so that they can be fodder for making things even better.

With that in mind, today also kicks off the holiday season. A whirlwind tour of friends and family awaits in Chicago, Michigan, Charlotte and a cruise in the Caribbean, which I am so excited about! In just over a month, we will be ushering in 2009 - a year that undoubtedly holds its own joys and challenges. Project number 1 will be finding an opportunity to put my energy and skills to work in Charlotte (any ideas here are welcome!). I'm also looking forward to being closer to our families here, meeting new friends and settling in to this community.

a la prochaine

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

In six small days, I'll be leavin' on a jet plane, and bidding 'au revoir' to the country that has been my home for the last eight months.

As I write this, I'm sitting at an outdoor table at Place de la Victoire. Although it's been as quiet as Sunday for days, the crowds out tonight make me think that the population hasn't completely left Clermont for the August 'vacances,' but they are starting their free days by sleeping-in in the mornings and going out to dinner at night!

As for me, I'm sipping a glass of Sancerre, enjoying the perfect weather and energy in this place. When the sun goes down, they're going to be showing a Charlie Chaplin movie on the big screen they've set up in the square here, which I'll slip over and watch before heading home to go say good night to my last Tuesday in France.

The last few weeks have made for a pleasant, drawn out farewell to France. I've spent a handful of days with Isabelle and her husband, Bruno, talking and barbequing at their country home, 40 minutes away. They are wonderful people, and my life is definitely the richer for having shared this time with them!

I also made it to the top of the dormant volcano, Puy de Dome, that is the major landmark of this area. Melissa, one of my fellow IMBAers welcomed me to Marseille two weeks ago, and this coming weekend, before jetting out of CDG on Monday, I'll romp around Paris one more time.

What's more, I feel really good about my internship experience. I can now say with confidence that I can conduct business in French. My project will hopefully serve as a model for how to manage information within the entire personnel department for the company. And, I have a much better idea of what makes such a huge enterprise tick.

More than anything, though, all of this time away has made me appreciate home. An older woman overheard Melissa and I speaking English in Marseille, and she stopped to "practice" with us - everything she had to say related to someone she cared about and their ties to the US. What was striking was how crucial our relationships are for giving meaning to everything else in our lives. For me, those relationships at home - my friends, my parents, my family, Javier - are shining in technicolor as I count down the days until we're together again!

So, France, a la prochaine! This girl is heading home...

Summer in France

My summer vacation has fit neatly into the last several weekends. Emily brought the sun with her - almost literally, after weeks of rain, the clouds disappeared as her train came into Clermont. As I continued to make progress on my internship by week-day, Emily explored more of France. Weekends, we met up first in Paris, then Dijon (joined by Evelyn too!), and finally Avignon.

While Paris has been one of my city loves for years now, this was the first time I've had the chance to visit Dijon and its surrounding bicycle-friendly Burgundy vineyards or Avignon and taste first-hand the famous Provencal cooking and Cotes du Rhone wines. Thanks to a cooking class at our hotel, Emily and I even had the chance to help make one of the meals!

With the travel time and budget runing low, I'm now looking ahead to the last few weeks of this nearly eight month adventure. Making sure I can spend time with the friends I've made in Auvergne, and experience anything I may have missed from this beautiful region are top priorities as I complete my project at Michelin and prepare to head home.

I must admit that getting to see my parents, Barb and Javier in August has a huge appeal. When you add to that that I will soon be able to catch up with all of my classmates and hear about their adventures, not to mention that I'll be within a couple time zones of my best friends and in a place where stores are open on Sundays - I know I'll appreciate home more than ever once I'm back. Yet, this has been a beautiful life and so, I am doing my best to savor every last drop of it.

Small Treasures

So, six weeks without a post might imply that my life has been a whirlwind of excitement, too great to pause and record in a blog!

Or, it may just mean that my internet went down for three weeks, and that France Telecom could use a little work on its customer service...

I will simply lay out the facts and let you judge which of the above explanations is the primary reason for my tardiness in updates!

The newness of heading to the large Michelin complex at "Site des Carmes" has now nestled into what is a familiar routine. I head out of my little studio around 8 in the morning, and mutter the new spanish phrases I'm learning thanks to the audio lessons on my ipod as I walk past fragrant pastry-shops and bakeries, over the tram line, down some stairs and up to my office on the 4th floor of my building.

Once inside, my days have evolved from the initial weeks of collecting expatriate and then international mobility coordinator stories, to now identifying the themes and designing an internal communication platform that will attempt to improve some of the challenges that were often repeated in my interviews.

As of this morning, we had the opening page of the new intranet site fully functional - and seven full weeks are left to finish developing the whole platform! At times its overwhelming, and a little lonely, to make sense of the loads of incomplete information that I have. When the pieces start falling together, however, the work becomes quite exciting

Outside of this 8:30-5:30 world, there have been many small treasures that have enriched my days. Earlier, before the rains came, Evelyn (who's one of three other IMBA students still in Clermont) and I took to hiking in the hills around Clermont on the weekends.

Then, France somehow managed so slip back into about a month of winter, with cold, rainy days for weeks and weeks. Fortunately, a surprise opportunity to stay in a beautiful chateau/monastary outside of Paris for an International Mobility conference was able to bring some light into this time - and gourmet meals cooked up in Evelyn's kitchen, concerts and a medival festival tended to warm up the rest of that stretch.

The internet did go down for three weeks too, which led to some interesting afternoons catching up on emails and Skyping with my parents and Javier from the McDonald's wifi zone, which is always a hub of Clermont's finest characters...

What lies ahead? Summer, it seems! While it's not a "true" summer break, the heat has come rolling in, and right behind it, my friend Emily arrived to spend part of her European tour in my corner of the continent. And she's getting me out - Paris last weekend, Dijon and Avignon the next two - it really is beginning to feel like a true European summer adventure!

Michelin Vous Souhaite la Bienvenue

Having the chance to share six weeks with Javier here in Europe was a dream-come-true. Travelling around France, Italy and Greece has been an incredible way to kick off 2008.





My decision to dedicate two years of my life to obtaining an international MBA definitely took into account that I might have the chance to put that kind of icing on my "cake." But the "cake" itself had to be made of different ingredients: the mastery of my second language, the opportunity to put it to use in a professional setting, a deeper understanding of business in general and international business in particular, and the time to reflect about the next steps in my career.





So, now, we plunge into the cake.





Javier's flight to the States left two hours before I was scheduled to show up for my first day of work at Michelin here in Clermont.





Since that morning, my focus has shifted from calderas and sunsets to my new project with the "Mobility" team: How can Michelin improve the support and communication it provides for its expatriates?





Almost two weeks in, I'm already learning a great deal:





1. The structures for thinking that I learned at The Strategic Coach will always be an invaluable starting point for making sense of and organizing processes into experiences that work.





2. An entrepreneurial spirt is very useful inside of larger organizations - I was given a vauge idea of what questions the leadership team was looking to answer, and then it was entirely up to me to find best ways to answer those questions and develop a valuable "deliverable." I had expected that in hierarchical bureaucracies low-men on the totem pole (such as myself for now) would be given much more direction to execute other peoples' plans. It's been a pleasant surprise to be given this much autonomy.





3. I can conduct business in French! (Even if personal connections feel like they're still easier to establish quickly in English)





4. The best part of working, for me, is interacting with other people. When I graduate, it will be important that I find a position that has me away from my computer, in front of or on the phone with other people at least 60% of the time.

You say adio, I say yasoo!

With classes truly finished, we bid "au revoir" to our professors and classmates at a dinner in Clermont to mark the end of our first year of classes in the IMBA program.

Early the next morning, the real vacation began!

Javier and I took the train up to Paris again, where we stayed in Montmartre (literally in the shadow of Sacre Coeur!) and trapsed around the parks and museums of this beautiful city - in between delicious international dinners of Spanish and Indonesian food.

From there, we took off for Greece - on a budget that meant about 12 hours on the way there and 24 to get all the way home to Clermont at the end! But, it was well well worth it.

We said "Yasoo" to Santorini on Monday night. Fanes, who owned our hotel, met us at the airport and helped us map out some plans for our week ahead. (Note: definitely check out this hotel, Aroma Suites, if you ever get to Santorni! With only 8 guestrooms, Fanes is able to give each guest incredibly personal attention; the rooms are romantic, the views from the shared patios are amazing and the location is perfect. http://www.aromasuites.gr/)

We started off early on Tuesday morning with a trip to the black sand beaches, and from there, a steep hike up to the ancient Greek ruins that were hidden on the cliff far above us. By the time we got back to the beach, we were ready to eat, so we feasted on grilled octapus, baked eggplant, tomato fritters and stuffed mushrooms before heading back to explore Santorini's capital and our "home" for the week, Thira.

Wednesday took us on a sailboat to Santorini's volcano, hot springs, and other island, down to Oia (the Island's chic-est town, and in our opinion more polished, but much much less friendly than Thira!), and then back to Thira where we got our first of two spectacular sunsets.

Thursday was our last full day to fit everything in, so we started early on our three hour hike from Thira to Oia. The entire walk was along the top edge of the island, giving us endlessly changing, and all equally breathtaking views of the Caldera and the volcano.

A little history: some three thousand years ago, Santorini was a fairly large, volcanic island. When the volcano blew, it destroyed most of the island (and buried the Minoan civilization, which is fabled to be the true "Atlantis"). The outside edges of the island were left, and a steep cliff was formed, dividing the land from the crater in the center. The sloping far end of the island, as well as the cliff-tops were slowly re-populated, and now those cliff-top towns offer some of the most astonishingly beautiful scenery on this planet.

So, after our hike, we gratefully found the Gyros stand at the bus stop, and wolfed down our chicken and pork in pita pockets before taking the bus system to the far opposite end of the island. There, we climbed over red rocks to access the famed red-sand beaches hidden behind them. We did get in the water briefly, but in April, the water is still cold enough to knock your breath out, so we mostly just basked in the sun.

That night offered us another wonderful sunset, which we enjoyed while sipping a glass of wine on the patio of our hotel before heading out to dinner again.

Sadly, Friday came around, and it was time to say "adio". We still had most of the day to explore, so we hiked out to a more remote restaurant that came highly recommended by Fanes (and indeed was filled with nothing but locals! "Mario's" behind the airport, for anyone looking to visit Santorini - but if you do, definitely take a cab here; the hike wasn't our best idea...). We then strolled through Thira one last time, picked up a few final souvenirs, admired the Orthodox Easter flowers decorating the main church and headed to the airport.

While the trip home was long, it provided its own adventure - it is worth noting that Athens is a hopping airport, 24 hours a day; Lufthansa provides free coffee and newspapers in Munich; Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle is a crazy, modern structure with people movers that go up and down winding hills; and Uno is the best game for a train ride!

On the Go

Almost nine months of buckling down and studying - first in the Core back in Columbia and then in our language classes here in Clermont - has finally been tapering off. With my boulangerie project and final exam behind me (both turned out quite well!), April has been a month to explore France and enjoy the culture here before starting my internship with Michelin on the 28th.

Javier and I kicked off the month with a weekend in Paris. Highlights included picnicing in the garden behind the Museum of Natural History with wine, bread, cheese, olives, strawberries and a roasted chicken from my favorite market street, Rue Moufftard. :-) We also met a client of mine from Coach for dinnner, visited the Pompidou Center and met up with Philippe to sip "bold reds" at a huge independent wine-maker's salon!

Clermont is located in the Auvergne region, in the center of France, known as "the Massif Centrale." On our own and with the school, we've spent the last two weeks sampling the best that this area has to offer.

Marked by a chain of dormant volcanoes, this area is relatively difficult to access from other areas of the country. As a result, the famous art, cuisine and literature that France is so famous for are less prominent here. Instead, Auvergne offers attractions that are related to its unique volcanic landscape - healing spring waters in Vichy, beautiful scenery to hike through, delicious cheeses made from milk produced by cows that are fed on grass that has minerals that are specific to the volcanic soil, rustic, hearty meals like "truffade", a museum/theme park devoted to volcanoes, etc. etc. For the last few weeks, we've been drinking all of this in.

It's also been a chance to start saying some good-byes. So far, Kelly and I have secured internships in Clermont for the summer; the other 11 French-Trackers (as well as Javier) will be scattering to Paris, Marseille, Brussells, and the good ol' USA in just a few weeks. For our "intermediate" class, we had a Moroccoan dinner last week.

Making sure that our travel-style didn't get rusty before we head to Santorini, Javier and I decided to explore Lyon this past weekend, where we took in the bustle of the crowds, searched for "traboules" (hidden, covered passageways that the city's old silk-weavers used to use to keep their silks dry on rainy days) and enjoyed the (finally!) perfect weather.

Next on the list... Paris again and then Santorini... stay tuned!