I have a cold. It bites. Oh it bites so hard. It’s like in the 80’s outside and I have an annoying blasted snot nosed cold. It makes me grumpy. It makes me irritated and irritating. And, unfortunately, it leads me to a rant.

I say it leads me to a rant because I really do like the people here…I really do! But there is one glaring problem.

They are kids.

Seriously…kids.

I am the oldest student I know of here. And the youngest student I’ve met so far turned 17 only 2 weeks ago (I’m 31 for reference). Next oldest I know is 25.

And these kids…they want to party. They want to party like MAD.

Now of course when I went to college the first time…I did too. Hell, I partied HARD at times (too hard *cough*). But I really don’t want to right now. Sure…I wanna go out and have fun. I want to hang out and drink beers. But…get this…the school arranged for a free taxi-bus-thingie to take students up to the “bigger” village every Friday and Saturday night…which brings them home at 4 am.

4 am.

Every Friday and Saturday night.

Arranged by the school.

The “fast food” restaurant…from 8:30-10:30…every night…gives you a free beer with any food order.

A free beer…from the school.

The kid turned 17 two weeks ago.

Thankfully I’ve made some good friends already…some guys from my classes, my neighbor…and they aren’t the wild and crazy type.

However…

If one more person asks me if “dude, did you get wasted last night? Wanna get wasted tonight?” I’m going to stick my finger in his or her eye.

So folks…I apologize for my weak posting recently. I’m sick. I don’t want to party right now.

And…even thought I just ranted about this…someone very famous said…

The kids are alright.

But I can’t wait to interview them when I am running my resturant ;)

This is not at all like your typical university…in oh so many ways. But one way that makes it radically different is the layout of the campus.

In essence…there is no campus.

Bluche is a tiny village with roughly 35 buildings. Some are private residences, some are restaurants, there is one hotel and one tiny closet sized store, the rest are owned by the school.

The main building has all the classrooms, the “main” school restaurants, a bar, library, computer facilities, offices, and even dorm rooms.

Then there are a bunch of other buildings spread out with various student accomidations. One is dorms with a gym on the bottom floor. Another has a bar and restaurant (neither owned by the school). Another has a “fast food” restaurant with a club of sorts…TV, pool, etc. Some are just dorms and nothing else.

Mine is 3 stories tall…the ground floor is a restaurant (which isn’t open…don’t know if it will), and a copy place (think Kinkos but microscopic). The 2nd floor has about 8ish rooms all along the same side sharing one giant common balcony. Then there are about 6 rooms above. It’s one of the smaller buildings on campus…and is pretty old. In fact…want to see it?

My room has a sink! I actually LOVE it. I can blast back and forth from the shower and take my time washing, shaving, and all that good stuff. Plus it gives me another window to open to that amazing fresh air…woot!

Note the American flag covering up shelves of stuff. I figured I really ought to hang it up.

This is the door. It is an extremely boring picture. I have weak camera skillz at times. Doh!

This is the wall opposite the door…and leads out to the balcony. On the left is my bed, on the right is my desk, and next to my desk is a MASSIVE heater that seriously scares me. Winter will be a shock…eep.

This is just outside my balcony to the right. It was POURING rain that day with MONSTOROUS thunder echoing up and down the valley walls. I absolutely loved it.

My tiny…small…yet comfortable…bed. See that button on the wall below the light? For some odd reason the Swiss like to put their plugs at chest height…yet don’t put any sort of shelf for which to place the plugged in items.

This concludes our first (and very cheap) campus tour. We have gifts available in the main lobby, and the restaurant is open until 9.

Thank you and please come again.

School here is a bit more complex than it is in the US. Hell, it’s more complex (it seems) than anywhere else in the world. Even the older students are perplexed by some things. Something tells me we aren’t in Kansas anymore Toto!

The school is broken up into 4 sections (mainly).

The first section consists of 6 semesters, or 3 years…and is called Hotel Operations. Completing those 6 semesters will get you the Swiss equivalent of an AA, as well as an American one…among a couple other awards/merits/etc.

The first of the Hotel Operations courses is HOI aka “Service”.
The HOI students work as servers, hosts, bussers, etc…for all the school run restaurants on campus (more on that later). Half their work load is Academic (ie class time) and half is Practical (ie working in the restaurant time).

After completing your semester at Les Roches doing that you have a semester in which you do an internship of sorts….they call it a…ugh, I can’t spell it. Stah-je. Stage. Sorta. Anyway the school helps set it up for you and at the end you write up a report of what you did.

The 2nd year is HOII….cooking.
It’s the same deal as before…1/2 classes 1/2 working. And again afterwords you do your internship.

The 3rd year is HOIII…management. This is where I come in.
This year there is no “practical” work (for the most part). It is all pretty much classroom time with projects, homework, all that typical school jazz. And again…once you finish…you do an internship, write up a report, and boom….you’ve got your AA.

The couple tricky bits about all this…
-You actually “graduate” after you finish your school bit of HOIII…but you don’t get your actual degree until you finish your internship
-The first 2 weeks of school is spent setting everything up…meeting after meeting after meeting as there are an INSANE amount of rules here…rules beyond what you could possible imagine. It is VERY complex. Anyway…the students still need to be fed during that time and since the new students don’t know how to cook or serve yet…the HOIII students do it. So today I was a Steward (busser/dishwasher). Tomorrow I’m a Chef. The next day I’m a Server. Thankfully that is the only time I’ll have to do that stuff. I’ve done it plenty enough before here so there is no need to do it again :)

Beyond the HOI-III stuff is the BA program (with an emphasis on Marketing/Finance or Management) which is 2 straight semesters and a Masters program which is another 2 semesters.

There are 114 HOIII students, and 10 of us are “Direct Entry” ie our prior education and work experience counted as credit towards HOI and HOII.

And now a bit on the rules…
We have uniforms and are expected to be in uniform for every single academic/practical function. Everyone has an Academic uniform…blue blazer with a crest, white dress shirt (tie for guys), grey slacks (skirts for women), black shoes. It must be “properly worn” when wearing it…no loose tie, no jacket over the shoulder, no wrinkled shirts.

The service students have a service uniform…similar but black slacks/skirt and grey vest with a bow tie. Same rules apply.

And cooking students have chef garb…chef coat, hat, scarf, pants, shoes.

Now…when wearing those uniforms…you must be clean shaven. You cannot have colored hair. Only women can wear earings, and they must be “simple”. You can wear one ring, one watch, and one pin on your shirt. Men cannot have long hair. Your nails must be trimmed and neat.

The BA/MA students must wear business suits.

Oddly enough…as an HOIII student I can grow facial hair. Strange.

It gets more strict folks….

In order to eat lunch/dinner at a school restaurant you must be in the Academic uniform…no exceptions. You actually have to make reservations a minimum of 2 days in advance. Miss your reservation, or show up without one….and you are in trouble. Come in with your phone, or a bag, or school books…trouble.

You are allowed to have 6 bottles of beer or 2 bottles of wine in your room. No hard liquor. But two “dorms” here cannot have any liquor in the rooms.

We will have a drug test next week…and they will randomly test us through the semester. If you’ve taken illegal drugs…you are gone. Expelled.

Each one of those uniform/dining/etc infractions (excluding the drug one of course) results in points lost…not grade points, but something like demerits. Once you get X points taken off…you are kicked out of school. Lesser amounts results in loss of certain privlidges.

Now I realize this sounds amazingly hardcore and very serious. Well, it is. But at the same time it isn’t. The school is trying to accomplish 2 things here…they are trying to prepare students for work in an atmosphere that absolutely depends on appearance. You do not go spend several thousand dollars at a hotel with messy unkept employees who don’t understand how the place runs. Secondly…it is a weeding out process. Those students that cannot hack it with these rules are gone…plain and simple.

Personally…it ain’t no thang baby. Sure it is complex and sure I have to be on my toes…but it isn’t going to be dificult by any means. Personally…I kinda like it. I dig the structure. I dig the rules. To me…it’s sorta like having murder be against the law. Me, as in Neil Crawford, doesn’t need to be told murder is against the law and that I will be punished for killing someone. I simply am not the type to do it. Do you know what I mean?

Here is a set of some pictures I’ve taken. I know I really need to start writing some serious posts here…but it is really dificult to do. Everywhere I go around here, that has internet access, I end up having all kinds of people asking me what I am doing. Don’t get me wrong…I like people…but damn, I need to focus!

This is a view from the town of Bluche (where the “campus” is). I believe it is right off my balcony in fact.

This one was taken higher up the valley wall in the town of Montana.

This is again up in Montana. That isn’t snow…but there is a lot of snow in the surrounding distant hills…er…mountains.

This would be what you all would call “campus”. I’ll explain more later…but this is the main buidling for the school, and where all the classes are.

This is a view from my balcony. Pretty amazing huh? The crane is there building a Japanese restaurant (of all things).

I, of course, miss all my friends and family. That’s a given. But there are some other things…some small and some large…that have been on my mind a lot recently. Here they are in no particular order…

I miss…
-Having a conversation with someone without hearing “how you say in English? Ahhh…”
-Being able to jump into my car and just drive somewhere…preferably to 7-11 where I could easily pick up a huge variety of things that have English descriptions. I never thought that simple shopping could be so tremendously dificult when you can’t read.
-Having a huge variety of stores near by that sell all kinds of things. Around here, in the closest town, it’s a real crap shoot. I got my phone from the Post o
-Being able to communicate with my friends easily. This time difference is a killer.
-Being with peers. Yes, we are all students after the same goal…but everyone is much younger than I am. Some are very intelligent and mature, and some are painfully not.
-Being able to say “football” without prefacing it with “American”. Being able to say “soccer” without getting dirty looks.
-The ability to do laundry easily. I didn’t think this would be a problem…but add the complexity of some strange pay card (that is not as simple to use as you’d think) along with a German washing machine…it makes things annoying. The first time I tried to wash my clothes I put the soap in the slot for fabric softener…that did not work out well at all.
-To sort of mix with the other “misses”…being able to undertand the purpose of everything at a glance. Some things are just oddly complicated…even when they are something that appears to be rather simple. I’ll go on more about this later.

Having said all that…there are some things that are desperately missed…

Things I would punch someone in the face for…
-Beer. I don’t mean pilsner…or this light as water lager…but a REAL beer. Give me an IPA, a Pale Ale, a Stout or a Porter. Everyone is so excited about Corona. Bah! They don’t even put limes in it…just lemons.
-Ice. You’d figure in the land of snow that a cold soda in the summer would be a treat…but usually the bottle is only cool and they will give you a glass for your bottle…but rarely will it have ice. Who doesn’t like cold drinks?
-A cheeseburger. These people cannot make a cheeseburger to save their lives. The bread is thin and too hard, the burger is thin and almost sausage like, the cheese is white and totally lacks flavor, and they give you ketchup and mayo but no mustard. No onions. No pickles. A cheesesteak would be fantastic too…but they don’t even know what those are.
-Hot sauce/salsa. Their idea of salsa is a spoonful of blazing hot thai style chili sauce. Where is my pico de gallo? Where is my salsa verde? And guacamole…forget about it. Even their chicken wings have no power to ‘em. And not like I could even get ranch to cool ‘em down with.

Having ranted enough about bad things…here are some good ones…

Things I don’t miss at all…
-Commercialism. You just don’t see signs (at least, not that many) for “buy this!” around. No big billboards, no signs on busses or cars, no telemarketers. If you want to buy something…you go buy it. In some ways it seems they discourage consuming…but that could just be the American in me freaking out.
-Traffic. There is simply no traffic around here. None. Of course I am in a town…hell, a village of roughly 1000 people (including the entire school). But even in town there are no real crowds and definitely no traffic jams.
-Trash. This is one amazingly clean country. They keep it all very neat and clean…even the flowers have all the dead bits picked out to make them look pretty. However there are a ton of cigarette butts all over. This is a country…a continent…of smokers.

Soon…Students, School and a massive amount of pictures.