I love Le Cordon Bleu

I can't believe that I have only been here three days. It feels like at least a week. I still do not have Internet access (except when I visit a Starbucks or get lucky stealing some Internet connection from somewhere while sitting in one particular corner of the bar downstairs...and it's never a strong or reliable connection then.) or a French phone, but believe me I'm working on it. 

Therefore, my posts will be being posted post-hoc, hopefully only a day late (in this case three) after I have had time to write them then found a strong enough Internet source to post them. I *should* have Internet in my apartment on September 19th. Pray to the wireless gods or Korean Jesus for me. 

Anyways, this is the story of Le Cordon Bleu orientation. 

CAVEAT: I AM NOT ALLOWED TO POST TOO MANY DETAILS OR PICTURES FROM THE SCHOOL OR CLASS. IT IS ILLEGAL. MY APOLOGIES

I arrived to the school about 20 mins early at 9:10am on Monday morning, was greeted by two ladies on staff and taken to a classroom with other people already waiting. I was and still am eager to make friends so I sat down next to a young, tall/thin blonde woman in the middle of the second row. She looked like she spoke English and this placed me in the front and middle and behind two other woman who were having a conversation in English that I could join in on later. English *is and remains to be absolutely key to my overall ability to function.

The blonde did speak English! Her name is Christin, she is 29 years old, from Hamburg, Germany, lives in Paris with her fiancé and his daughter (which is how she learned all of her French), and has dreams of opening her own restaurant one day. She is adorable and my first friend at Le Cordon Bleu.

I also met Angelica from Costa Rica, Maria from Chile, Magic (I might be wrong on that) from Thailand, Angela from Costa Rica, and Camille (?) from Mexico.

The academic director of the school Mr. Julia, led orientation in French with Ben, an English-man with a very dry sense of humor translating. Let's just say that Ben does not translate exactly word for word, but I'm not complaining. We went over rules and expectations and our schedules and everything you would expect to hear during an orientation including the piece about what can be published to the Internet. Other interesting rules:

-If you are late, you can not enter the classroom and get a zero
-You can not enter a classroom without the chef's permission
-You will be excused from class if your phone rings and get a zero for the day
-You can not go to the practical course (where you create the food) if you miss the demonstration course
-you can not wash your own dishes, but you must wash your own knives
-I Have to wear a hair net under my chef's hat

After the rules, we were given out uniforms (mine fits except for the hat which was too small...of course... and when I get Internet and blogger let's me upload pictures, I will show you me in my uniform!), the MOST BEAUTIFUL knife set- I'm not kidding, it's an $1100 knife set, two LCB (Le cordon Bleu) cookbooks, and our school lockers. 

We next went on a tour around the school seeing the various kitchens and offices. On my tour, I met Alex, a Finnish student who was hilarious and his roommate/friend (also Finnish) named I think Arthur, but the Finnish way. Anyways, they were hilarious, but Grand-diploma (pastry and cuisine while I am just cuisine) students, so i am not with them for 90% of my classes.

After the tour, I met three other American girls (also all grand diploma students unfortunately). One girl is from chicago, another from Michigan, and the third is from Oklahoma City. I can't remember anyone's name....BUT when I made my joke about cuddling with my knife set, THEY ALL LAUGHED because they were thinking the same too. Chicago is going to pet hers. Seriously, these people get me and I think they would also appreciate my obsession with butchers, which never fails to earn me weird looks from my friends when I mention it. (love y'all.)

Anyways, I left the school on cloud nine, ready to go in two days when my classes would start. It only took two hours for me to be brought back down to earth, but that is for the next post. 
Loves