Toulouse, France January 2024

Toulouse is a city in France’s Southern Occitane region, it is bisected by the Garonne River and near the Spanish border.

It is known as “The Pink City”. This name comes from the abundance of terracotta bricks used in their buildings, which is something you notice as soon as you begin to wander through the stone alley ways of this ancient city!

This medieval, historical city is home to many museums and historical religious buildings, many of which we visited on our Erasmus trip. This project was undertaken by BFEI Beautician teaching staff Deirdre Kane, Carla O'Connor, Louise Sherlock, and Sue Wilkinson. Our goal was to visit with our hosts at  to "job shadow" - watching and learning the French approach.

We arrived on a sunny Sunday afternoon, after dropping our bags off at our hotel we began to explore this beautiful, vibrant city. We were greeted by a sea of Toulouse rugby supporters, unknown to us there was a big rugby match on that afternoon, so the city was buzzing and lively!!

Full of beautiful outdoor terraces to sit and soak in the atmosphere, we sat and watched the world go by!

In Toulouse you can walk from one end to the next, which allows you to see all the sights it has to offer while on foot, so we began to stroll around.

Day1

We had an early start. We needed to be at Lycée Hélène Boucher at 8am local time (7am Irish time), where we were greeted by the principal and a light breakfast of coffee, tea and “choclatine”.... To you and me these were pain au chocolat but to the Toulouse people these are “Choclatine ” and you do not mix it up.... we were told “in Paris they are called Pain au Chocolat, in Toulouse .... Choclatine!!!”

This was followed by a presentation by Madame Klausse on the differences between the French education system and ours and explaining how the beauty school is run.

We spent the morning in the college shadowing the French teachers in the beauty school. We saw how they do skin diagnosis, personalised skin care protocol, nail treatments and body slimming massage treatments.  It was very interesting to see how the French delivered their subjects.

We explored Toulouse for the evening taking in many of the famous historical sites such as

Couvent des Jacobins
Basillique Saint Sernin
Capitole

To name but a few ....

Day 2

Again, another early start.  We began on foot at 7am, watching the city come alive with local people rushing to their place of employment and local children running to school through the cobbled streets.

We definitely got our steps in!!!

The students showed us body treatments, lymphatic drainage treatments and galvanic facial treatments. It highlighted how advanced we are with our teaching and learning in BFEI and the standard of equipment we have available to us.

This was followed by the principal and four staff members bringing the four of us to a small, quaint French brasserie for a fabulous four course lunch, which we thoroughly enjoyed! Again, we spent a late afternoon/evening sightseeing where we even got to sample a beautiful cold glass of Champagne.... when in France!!!

Day 3

We managed to fit in a coffee and some last minute “ Choclatine” before heading off to the airport.

We returned with many ideas to enhance our way of teaching, feeling reassured about how well we deliver our modules and good ideas on sustainability within the beauty department that we plan to implement.

Our trip to Toulouse was a thoroughly enjoyable, informative trip full of walking, cathedrals, laughs, good food and great company!!

We would highly recommend an Erasmus trip for all!

A big thanks to our colleagues for planning this fantastic trip, and in particular to Leargas, our national funding agency for their support.