Elk Grove Village, Ill. — After just a month on the job at Met2Plastic LLC, Marion Martin was settling in nicely.
Martin, 23, had already been to a White Sox baseball game, eaten a hot dog and learned her way around Chicagoland.
"I love it. It's a big city. Very different from where I come from," Martin said, which happens to be a harbor town in western France.
Martin is pursuing a master's degree at the CESI Graduate School of Engineering in Saint-Nazaire, France. But this summer, she's working at Met2Plastic in Elk Grove Village.
Met2Plastic, an injection molder that specializes in aerospace and medical work, has a French connection: The company was sold in 2016 to French plastics and composites processor Dedienne Multiplasturgy Group.
Martin has an important job. She's helping the company achieve ISO 14001, an environmental management standard. She has previous experience with the standard from an internship at Dedienne Multiplasturgy. Her language skills also help, because she's translating some of the necessary documentation from French into English.
Her favorite thing about the job: the people.
"It's very friendly here. It's very positive," Martin said. She also enjoys Chicago.
"I think in the U.S., you can do everything you want. Everything is available." Take food, for example. "There are burgers and pizza. But I can also find Mexican food, Thai food, Chinese food. You have everything here. But I do love hot dogs. I tried one at my first baseball game."
There's one thing she doesn't like: navigating Chicago traffic.
"In France, I lived like a five-minute walk from everything. Here, I need a one-hour drive to get here," Martin said. She commutes to the office from the University of Illinois at Chicago campus, where she's staying this summer.
