Did you know, the word "orient" meaning "to find one's position in relation to new and strange surroundings" came from the fact that sailors used to navigate by first fixing their position on the Orient, or the east? I think I read that from "Life of Pi." So I had my first day of pastry school: the much-needed orientation.
As I walked the 10 minutes it takes to get to school, I had hesitations. Are the students going to be overly competitve? Or worse, are the instructors going to, at any chance given to them, tear apart my work? Apparently, this shouldn't be a worry though, since my dear friend Charitha didn't let me forget that "you paid your way into the program...they won't do that." Sorry Sballard, the essay you wrote to get me into p-school apparently doesn't hold that much weight.
Upon entering the orientation room, I was struck by two thoughts. First, staring me in the face was a tray of assorted pastries. It somehow calmed me to realize that however difficult school could be, in the end, it was really all about producing something that would not only cause happiness to me, but to those around me. Providing happiness to others--my first indication that pastry is quite different from astrophysics.
On that same note, my second thought was shock at the girl-guy ratio. A total 180 from the standard 90% boys, 10% girls that exists in physics classes. Here, I walked into a room full of girls with a handful of boys dispersed throughout. To be honest, it was a little worrisome. I haven't dealt with girls in an academic setting in so long. I really hope they're not as brutal here as they are when it comes to boys :-).
All in all, orientation was awesome. We were talked at about rules, and got a tour of the facility. Best rule...."you must take home what you make." Don't think that will be a hard one to follow! The fatty has spoken.
So of course...a day cannot go by without Vaishali jaurment-ing massively. (I'm sure you can figure out what it means by now.) So we received a course manual with lists of pastries we're going to learn to make. I quickly started reading through them excitedly. "Fruit tart, chantilly cream, hazelnut and chocolate cake, fudge...." and "....Marzipan Easter Chicken." Heart skips a beat. Whoa whoa...pastry school? I have to cook meat? In my sudden panic, I read through the recipe. "Cut through the leg and tear across..." As I attempted to calm myself, I turned the page only to read "Marzipan Easter Bunny." Oh...right. Marzipan is a dough made from sugar used to make edible figures. So...I guess I really don't have to cook chicken. But really, I didn't know the chicken was regarded as an integral part of the Easter Family. I thought that was limited to the bunny and the eggs. Who wants to see a sugar figurine of a chicken anyway!? I mean...I get the cute bunny and all. Well...Day 1...moral dilemma averted!
Oh and...did I mention, I saw Kevin Spacey at a cafe on my way home?
6 comments:
worthless about the chicken! mmmm chicken and marzipan. i hope thats not what youre feeding me when you get back.
and no, shes not talking about bread!
I don't think that was really a jaurment ... it would have been a jaurment if you raised your hand to the teacher and said, 'Umm ... excuse me ... but I'm vegetarian, and I signed up for this course thinking I wouldn't have to cook meat, so I'm frankly shocked to see chicken on your list of dishes.' And the whole class, including the teacher would be staring at you in complete silence for an interminable 2 seconds before she explained the marzipan chicken to you.
So -- you weren't so bad :-)
And I worked so hard on that essay too!! For nothing??
I'm glad the chicken situation turned out okay- I was feeling really worried for you for a while while I was reading this.
HAHA, I would've probably freaked out and talked to the teacher and really jaurmented. Yay, I'm glad orientation went well!
I love Rachana's use of the word Jaurment in the past tense ... just the way we'd do it ... she really IS family :-)
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