about me

Name: Katie Kelfer
Year at Tech: 4th
Major: Biomedical Engineering
Minor: French
Hometown: Roswell, GA
Places visited: Munich, Germany; London, UK; Barcelona, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands

about the LBAT

The French LBAT (Language in Business and Technology) is a 6 week language intensive program which allows you to receive 9 hours of upper level French credit. For me, a BME with a French minor, this allowed me to finish my minor while still graduating in 4 years. The program is based in Paris, specifically in the neighborhood of Marais, which is in the 4th arrondissement, or district. The location was incredible; the Seine and Notre Dame were within 5 or 10 minutes walking, and anything you may need is located on Rue de Rivoli, right outside our door. Our courses focused on vocabulary utilized in business as well as French business customs and were taught by Drs. Gall and Cotille-Foley. We also went on many field trips to famous French sites such as Versailles, the Louvre, and Musée d'Orsay, as well as going to see a play by Ionesco in the Latin Quarter and visiting the largest wholesale food market in the world, Rungis.

weekends and favorite moments

As I haven't spent time in Europe before, I wanted to travel every weekend to take advantage of the opportunity that I had. We spent our first weekend in Munich, which was a city I loved because of its laidback attitude and beautiful architecture. We also spent all day Saturday at the Deutsches Museum, which is the largest science and technology museum in the world! They have one of the Wright Brothers' original planes, which my travel buddy, Farah, loved, as she is an aerospace engineer.

Our second weekend was spent in London, my second favorite city (behind Paris!), and the trip was made even better by the fact that I ran into some of my Oxford friends there. We were able to visit most of the London sites in the short three days we had there: the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and more.

Our next city was Barcelona, which had its fair share of beautiful sites. We spent some time at the beach, and also went to see Gaudi's legacies, including Sagrada Familia and Park Guell as well as the Cathedral of Barcelona. The food was also incredible; I had paella with the freshest seafood I think I've ever tasted!

Our final trip was to the Netherlands to experience Amsterdam. I wasn't expecting much, but I feel the city has earned a bit of a bad reputation from the drug and sex industries. I found it beautiful and clean, and the canals were truly stunning. It also has an amazing art museum, Rijks, as well as the Van Gogh Museum. We did a bike tour to move around the city like locals, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

And those were just the weekends abroad! Paris had so much to offer us as well. We visited the Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Sacré-Coeur Basilica, the Centre Pompidou, and Notre Dame; we climbed the Eiffel Tower and descended into the catacombs; we marveled at the opulence of Versailles and the Chateau de Chantilly. Overall, I couldn't have asked for a more amazing trip to Europe, and I'm so thankful to the Fleet Scholarship for making it possible!