Author: Allyson Fea

I seriously thought our tour of the Mercedes Benz plant was awesome! It was so cool to see how the cars were made step by step. We started in their customer area where people buy cars and sellers make deals. It was beautiful, filled with fancy cars and nice furniture (hoping I’ll buy a car there some day ahahha). I thought that was a very good selling technique because the luxury of the building makes you feel like you are really important and doing big things. We watched a short video about the company and the way they make the cars, and then we headed to the plant where they engineer the bodies of the cars. I did not realize that it was all done by machine, and it was incredible to see the robots working at such fast speeds to assemble the metal parts. There were also a lot of interesting safety precautions to prevent anyone from getting injured around the high tech robots. We even had to wear safety goggles throughout the entire factory.

From there we moved on to the actual assembly line. We walked on a catwalk above everything taking place, and it was so amazing. I loved seeing the workers putting things like windshields into the colorful cars. There were so many different models and colors being assembled. It was crazy to watch how everything worked so smoothly and to imagine someone driving the cars that were sitting unfinished in front of us. The tour was super informative and interesting, probably one of my favorite business tours we have been on.

The factory was well-run, safe, and great at advertising. We were not allowed to take any pictures, but it was an awesome tour and made me think of Mercedes in a whole new light.

AWESOME TOUR 10/10

I LOVE DOGS. So naturally the first thing I did upon arriving in France was learn how to ask to pet a someone’s dog in French. This proved to be one of the best parts of this trip for me. I would tell you how to say it, but I can’t spell it, so you’ll have to check it out for your own.

I have slowly been growing in confidence in my
French communication skills, so that has been fun. Every dog I see, I go up and ask its owner if I can pet it. This brings me great joy. What is even better is that it gives me a chance to try and speak with the locals a little bit and learn some more about the way French people live. For example, I found out that most dog-owners in Paris do not put their dogs on leashes. I also found out that the French people are actually pretty nice. Something I never thought before haha.

Anyways, thought I would share my story of how to immerse oneself in the culture; just ask to pet a dog! It has worked for me so far, and I have gotten to pet SO MANY cuties.

Signing off,

Ally

Bonjour! My assigned topic for the trip was the Eiffel tower (so obviously I was pretty excited.) I have actually already been to the Eiffel tower with my family on an incredible trip, but that was long ago, and it was so exciting to go back.

I have already seen the tower up close twice since I have been here. The first was the second night, when a few of us went into the park below the tower and walked a bit to get a good view of the flashing lights. Amazing. The second was when we WENT UP THE TOWER. Unfortunately, the day was pretty foggy, and we could not see much. It was also drizzling a little bit. However, it was still the best view of the city, and it was so fun to just be standing there looking up at it and knowing that you were on it. I played the song Paris in the Rain by Lauv while we were up there and it really set the mood haha. Anyways. Simply incredible.

A couple fun facts that I learned about the tower: It was built by Gustav Eiffel and paid for by his family, it weighs 1100 tons, and Gustav himself used to live in an apartment on top of it. Crazy. Anyways, such a beautiful structure and an incredible experience. The best part was sharing it with my beautiful friends who were seeing it for the first time. I guess you could say Eiffel in love with the tower 😉

Signing off, Ally.