Orientation

"Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon, or not at all." -Harriett Van Horn

Yesterday I spent a long day in New York City for my orientation at the French Culinary Institute and a short meeting about an internship with a restaurant marketing company. I headed into New York around 9 in the morning for an 11 o'clock meeting with the owner of a restaurant marketing company where I might be interning...if I'm not too exhausted from commuting and cooking all day everyday! After our meeting, I walked around SoHo for a while...grabbed some lunch and went into a few stores in the area, trying to kill time until 2:30 when orientation started.

Around 2 I sat down in a Starbucks across the street from the FCI because after walking around in a new pair of shoes, my feet were about ready to fall off, not to mention the massive blisters developing on my heels and pinky toes. Ouch. I sat down to read until it was time to head over, but my mind was all over the place and there were some serious butterflies in my stomach so absorbing my book proved to be difficult. I was sure what I was so nervous about...it wasn't like we were cooking or anything, but I guess it was just realizing that this is it, I'm really doing this and there's no turning back now!

After checking my watch every 30 seconds it was finally 2:27, so I put my book away and headed across the street where I took a deep breath in front of the building and walked inside to see three other people with nervous grins on their face waiting in the reception area. We all walked up to the second floor where we were met by several tables with papers for us to sign, nametags, student IDs, etc. and then we got our textbooks for Level 1:


The main textbook for Level 1 is about 2.5 inches thick! For class everyday, we have to read the next day's lesson in the book and copy down notes and any recipes onto 3x5 index cards that we are supposed to put in our pockets and bring to class. Most of the orientation was pretty basic...safety, locker rooms, grading, rules, uniforms, and what shoes to wear. We also learned about all the different volunteer opportunities we will have, the supper, forager and wine club events that are held every month and the chef demonstrations that take place in the theater a few times a month. The volunteer opportunities range from helping renowned chefs who come in from out of town to prepare a meal at the James Beard House to helping prep meals for God's Love We Deliver, which delivers meals for those who can't provide meals for themselves and their families. There are so many other opportunities outside of what we learn in class to further our culinary knowledge, and I'm very excited to try some of them!

We won't get our uniforms, knife kits and other kitchen tools until Friday on our first day of class, but I have an extra uniform set from the class I took at the FCI several years ago. Here's a picture of my chef's jacket (with my name on it!):


And the super sexy shoes I get to wear everyday (don't be jealous):


I'll post a picture in a few days of me with the full outfit on...chef's pants and all, don't worry. After sitting through several talks from student affairs and career services people, we were finally able to get up and have some awkward conversations with our future classmates during a little wine and hors d'oeurves reception. During a little introduction earlier at orientation, I learned that there were quite a few students in the class of 25 who were from other countries like the Phillipines, Turkey and Canada, but then there were plenty of others from Chicago, Maryland, Queens, Staten Island, New Jersey, Manhattan and only one other from Connecticut.

I didn't get to meet everyone that will be in my class during the reception, but I talked to a few other girls who had just graduated from college and a few other classmates who were looking to change careers. I also talked to a student who is in the 4th level of the career course and he told us a little bit about what to expect. He told us about what he was doing at his level...making lunch for the 200 people who work and eat lunch at the institute everyday and doing most of the prepwork for the Level 5 and 6 students who cook in the restaurant, L'Ecole. He told us even though we're strangers to each other now, we'll get to know our classmates better than anyone else since we will be spending so much time together in the kitchen. After the reception, I grabbed dinner at Balthazar with a friend and headed home to nurse my blisters the size of small tumors.

Now I'm even more excited for Friday...when the real fun starts in the kitchen!