Dis-Orientation

It's Official-I am the oldest one

Orientation day! It was a weird feeling to leave my apartment in the dark and hit the street alone headed to an unfamiliar neighborhood that has no luxury shopping but I was brave and projected confidence and assumed my persona of a world-weary commuter on the way to work. I arrived early and got a coffee from the little cafe in LCB and took a look around. At all the young people. Well, we all knew it was coming. Everyone at LCB is A LOT younger than me. Some are just out of high school! I am totally the grandma of the group! But everyone was very nice and all spoke English. I made friends with the other girls/women and eyeballed the men—most of whom were in their 20s as well. It is too early to tell how this is all going to shake out relationship-wise but I am hoping to meet lots of interesting people.

After some explanations in French and English and a tour of the facilities we finally got to the pièce de résistance—the uniform! It is so French and cool and makes me feel like I can cook anything! I am probably going to wear it around the house just to impress myself whenever I walk by a mirror.

I also received my knives (which weigh about 30 pounds) and a recipe book and lots of other swag. Good news is I have a locker at LCB and all that stuff is going to live there because I am not schlepping it back and forth on the Metro every day. Plus not even sure bringing knives on the Metro is legal! Though with the amount of homeless people lurking around the bowels of the metro it might be a good idea to be armed. I am very excited about this next day—can’t wait to see what we are going to cook for our first foray into French cooking. My money is on something simple-like how to cook eggs low and slow but maybe it will be something much bigger like a soufflé or maybe we will have to chop and dice a million vegetables into perfect little squares. Truly living the dream!

The only damper on the day is that for the time being they are making us wear masks. Ugh. I loathe wearing a mask and I am not sure how we are going to taste, or for that matter, smell anything if we are wearing masks. Hope that rule goes away in a little while. The explanation is because so many have traveled from so many countries to be there that God knows what illnesses they might be carrying- but I for one am willing to take my chances. The cross-section of nationalities is enormous though, no doubt about it. There are people from South America, Europe, Asia, Australia—everywhere you can think of.

Here it is—Le Cordon Bleu my home away from home!