ical timezone discrepancy

I use Google Calendar to schedule appointments and then sync with ical. When my appointments appear in ical on the calendar, they are graphically positioned in the right time slot on the calendar itself, but if I open the appointment to look at it, the times indicated are instead listed as GMT+00:00 hours, even though I am in the Eastern Time Zone. For example, if the meeting is scheduled for 04:00-04:30pm, it shows up as 08:00-08:30pm when I open the appointment. Is there something I have to adjust so that the actual meeting time listed is in my correct time zone? I have set my SO preferences to the Eastern Time Zone, so I do not understand the discrepancy.