School Days

I know, I know... Last week I was a bit of a Debbie Downer with "Paris stinks" this and "I hate Paris" that (although, for the record, I never actually said that I hated Paris - just that I didn't like living here).

Paris still does stink, literally, but in a strange way I hardly notice it anymore.  Instead I can now better appreciate the aromas wafting from the boulangeries (bakeries) that keep me perpetually supplied with baguettes, or the rotisseries that sit outside so many boucheries (butcher shops), just daring you not to buy a hot, juicy chicken.  Even I purchased one and I don't normally like chicken (unless it's cut into small, batter-covered strips that are deep fried).

Shopping has also become easier.  Hardly a day goes by that I'm not popping into at least one store to grab an item, and I've quickly learned the value of carrying a tote or grocery bags with me (because you never assume that the store will provide them).  Cafés and restaurants are still intimidating, but I mark this issue up as a bonus because I save a great deal of money by not frequenting them.

Sunday I was able to attend my first church service just on the outskirts of Paris in Saint Denis.  My spirits felt lifted after not only being in the fellowship of other believers, but also having conversations in my native tongue with other American expats.  Any foreigner alone in a country that doesn't speak his or her language can probably attest to the often overwhelming loneliness that comes when one doesn't have "real" face-to-face conversations for days or weeks at a time.

The service was conducted entirely in French but I found myself understanding the sermon almost completely thanks to a preacher with an American accent (it was also at this point when I realized the reason that one can take four years of college French and still be unable to communicate in France). The congregants were as diverse as Paris itself, a rare treat for someone from a country where churches have a natural tendency to be monochromatic, and they were as friendly as they were diverse, another welcome surprise.

The real turning point in my attitude, though - the whole point of this blog - didn't occur until the start of my classes at Le Cordon Bleu.

Monday

My apprehension was high as I made my way to the school, worried that I would get lost or be hit by a car or have the wrong time or date in my head even though I had checked the map route and orientation email announcement approximately 487 times.

Despite my fears, I reached the school ten minutes early and joined the line leading outside the door as we waited to be given an identity badge, folder, number, locker key, and directions to the orientation room.  This group contained only the Basic Cuisine and Grande Diplome students (Basic Patisserie's orientation was later in the week).  As the French and English translators spoke, four things initially struck me:

• Everyone looked really young.  I wasn't the oldest but definitely in the top five, or possibly even the top two, in a room full of of about fifty people.  Maybe the bullies would start referring to me as "Grams."

• There were several Asians, mostly from China - maybe 50% of a class of around 50 students.  I'm not sure that Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok or Tokyo would have as many.  The rest of the class contained a mixture of such nationalities as Brazilians, Russians, Africans, and Americans, but surprisingly few French and only one British.

• The school has a lot of rules, and they are very serious about the enforcement.  For example, there are to be no watches or jewelry (except wedding bands), no makeup, hair pulled back, clean and pressed uniforms with properly hemmed trousers, safety shoes, no excused tardiness or absences even for illness, no phones or photos in class except at specified times, and no leaving class without permission.  On the positive side, it appeared that I wouldn't be fixing my hair or face for nine months (except Sundays).

• Only nine of us in the room were working towards the Grande Diplome (the Basic, Intermediate, and Superior certificates in both cuisine and pastry), which suddenly made sense.  A quick perusal of the Basic schedule hammered home the insanity of it.  Classes are in three-hour blocks starting at 8:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 3:30 PM, and 6:30 PM from Monday to Saturday, with each day's schedule being different.  While week one started fairly easily with only 24 hours of classes (all in cuisine until Saturday), the ensuing weeks often show nine to twelve hours of classes in one day with the heaviest week having a total of 42 hours of classes.

But as the administrators continued walking through the rules, the realization gradually washed over me of what was finally happening - the culmination of twelve months of planning and praying and saving, of highs and lows, of tough good-byes and life upheavals.  A stupid smile crept onto my face in a completely un-French manner, but I gave up trying to suppress it once the speakers began to pull out our "gifts" - white jackets, blue checkered trousers, neckerchiefs, hats, aprons, and towels, all emblazoned with the royal blue "Le Cordon Bleu" logo, instructional and recipe books for cuisine and pastry, a mesh bag (the only item allowed in class) holding storage containers, a digital kitchen scale, bowls, and a nail brush, and the pièce de résistance...

... A giant bag of Wüsthof knives and other kitchen utensils - six panels full!  I already knew about most of the other items from reading the school handbook, but this bag filled with well over $1000 of, although not the best in the world, certainly some of the finest kitchen items that I had ever owned was almost too much to comprehend.  For a moment I thought that maybe they were just loaner bags - something that we would return at the end of our schooling - but when they encouraged us to label the items with our names it was all I could do not to cheer.

After orientation we were ushered into the Jardin d'Hiver (Winter Garden), the "social" area of the school consisting of several small tables and chairs and a large refrigerator for storing our lunches or leftovers from class.  Divided by the numbers we were given upon entering the school, we received our uniforms and instructions to try on our jackets, trousers, and hats in the locker rooms.

The locker room is, like everything in Paris, extremely cramped and, for lack of a better term, a nightmare.  Lockers are stacked two high and are about one-foot wide by two-feet high by one-foot deep with the aisles between the lockers facing each other being only about 18 inches wide.  My locker is number five, right next to the room's door which opens directly to the Winter Garden - no hallway or curtain or any sort of buffer zone - and with 99 women's lockers, the door opens quite frequently.  Because we are allowed to wear our uniforms only inside the school, changing inside the locker room is mandatory.

Having survived my first experience in the locker room (everything fit but the hat... because my head is huge), I rejoined my group for a quick tour of the rest of the school where we were introduced to the demonstration and practical classrooms, loaded with more information, and ushered into the registration office to complete some paperwork.

By 1:00 PM we were finished for the day.  The wiser students among us left everything in their lockers except the cookbooks and uniform trousers (they all needed hemming), but I decided to take everything home.  I wanted to take out all of the uniform and investigate the contents of the bags personally, particularly the Wüsthof bag.  The walk to my current studio is about 17 minutes (just under a mile), which doesn't sound too bad... unless you're carrying approximately 50 pounds of items.  About five minutes into the walk I started to feel a nice, sharp pain through my neck and shoulder muscles and knew that I was in for a world of regret.

Spilling out the contents of my burden when I stumbled through the door, though, made the whole ordeal worth it.  Like a child tearing through her birthday presents, I emptied every panel of the knife bag, gasping in wonder at each little item as I spread them out before me, conscientiously grouping them by their panel sections and order before carefully replacing them back into their slots.  Well, not too carefully - one finger quickly learned just how sharp a serrated knife can be.

I spent the rest of the evening hemming both pairs of trousers with hem tape, pressing the whole uniform, and trying it on again before going to bed (yes, I did change into my pajamas first).

Tuesday

Class didn't begin until 12:30 so I slept in and made it to school with plenty of time to spare.  Although it was only a class on hygiene, we were from that point forward required to wear our uniforms to every class.  In demonstration classes only the jacket, trousers, neckerchief, and shoes are required.

Another student quickly showed me how to tie my neckerchief, but as we stood by the door waiting to be admitted into the classroom, one of the school administrators came to look at our uniforms.  She approved of my trouser hem but upon seeing my neckerchief exclaimed, "What is that? That looks horrible - like a boy scout!"  I quickly removed it and stuffed it in my pocket, making a mental note to find an instructional video online that evening.

Most of the hygiene class was spent discussing microbes and types of food poisoning before moving on to dress code requirements.  Slight tension arose when a student began to question the necessity of removing her nose ring, but the instructor killed the debate quickly with a reply of, "It's just a rule."  The old lady in me inwardly rolled her eyes at the young whippersnapper who was already challenging authority on only our second day and I admittedly felt smug at the instructor's response.

We were done with hygiene class by 2:00 PM, so I quickly changed and contacted an apartment owner whom I was scheduled to meet at 4:00 to see if she could meet me earlier.  The apartment was only a three-minute walk from the school, and because she lived in the same building she was able to let me in right away.

This studio was the smallest one yet that I had looked at - 14 m² (150 ft²).  The proximity to the school was a plus, as was the low price.  As usual, though, the pictures did the studio way more justice than it deserved.  The current tenant was staying in it until the end of June, but no effort had been made even to tidy it.  I climbed up on the mezzanine bed ladder, almost slipping to my death twice, and noticed that the distance between the mattress and the ceiling was about one foot.  The bathroom was a sink piled on top of a toilet with a tiny shower crammed in a corner with the shower curtain bar propped up to one side.  I already knew that it had no washer, and I could deal with the mini fridge that at least had a freezer box.

Being on the ground floor did bother me a bit - one window opened directly onto the street and open windows are frequently a necessity in the summer - but the other window looked out over a quiet courtyard.  It still couldn't be safely left open at night or while I was away, and keeping the shutters closed for privacy made it feel a bit like a tomb, but Paris summer evenings are usually mild.

The owner, Ghislaine, and I had some confused contractual talk before I told her that I thought I'd take it but that I'd email her when I got home (I understand written French much better than spoken).  By the time that I got back to my current studio an uneasy resolve had settled over me, but I was tired of looking and ready to be finished with it.

Let me back up a bit.  A week earlier I had fallen in love with a much nicer studio.  Everything was clean, the furniture and decor looked fresh and modern, the bathroom was comparatively huge with space all around the sink and toilet, and it had a large shower-tub, not some 2x2 stall that left the bathroom soaked after each shower or nearly drowned you if you turned around.

It was larger than any other studio that I had seen at 30 m², it had a full-sized refrigerator/freezer and a washer/dryer, and most importantly, two large glass doors opened onto a quiet and private 25 m² terrace filled with potted bamboo, olive trees, herbs, flowers, and a lovely large table and chair set.  Everything was also included in the price - taxes, utilities bills, and the internet.

The owner, Iphigénie, spoke English well but lived in Belgium so her mother, Emma, who spoke no English, was showing me around. She began to talk patiently about the finer contract details but the words that I understood the most were about the price.  It was listed on the website, but for some reason I thought that it was lower - it wasn't even in the range that I had set for myself.  I had at one point, though, raised the price on my search filter a little to see what other options came up.  I left Emma with an "I'll think about it," but the next day when I went online to look at it again it was gone.  Instead of feeling relief that it had already been rented and I didn't have to make the decision myself, I felt a little sad.  Nonetheless I decided to go back to my lower price range.

But on Sunday Iphigénie wrote to ask me if I had made a decision on the apartment because her mother was "keen" on me and thought that I would be a good tenant.  If I wasn't interested she would repost the listing on the website.  My heart leapt a little - the apartment was still available, reserved just for me!  And not all French people hated me!  By then, though, I had my appointment to see the other studio and I was resolved to stay in the lower price range, so I wrote back to tell her as much.

Returning to my studio Tuesday night, I wrote an email to Ghislaine to get some clarification on the terms of the contract.  Her reply was helpful enough but I started to feel almost a sense of animosity from her. She then stated that she needed to know my decision that night because she had to decide which tenant would get the apartment.  Perhaps it was pride, but that statement rubbed me the wrong way so I hesitated to respond.  Shortly afterwards Iphigénie wrote me to say that she would lower the price on the studio if I really wanted it, but she would need to know by morning.

One of my daily prayers not only since I arrived in Paris but also for many months prior was that I would find the right apartment.  I wasn't sure how I would know what "right" was, though. Were my expectations too high?  Was my price range right? Would I just know it when I saw it?  At the moment that I got her email, though, "right" seemed suddenly very clear.  Yes, the price of this studio would be 30% more than the other one.  Yes, it was farther away (only a ten-minute walk, though).  But my spreadsheets told me that I could still afford it.  It might mean that I make a few more cuts here and there or that I don't have as much of a nest egg when I return home, but then again, about a year ago I quit planning my life around nest eggs.  It was almost as if the studio had chosen me.

I wrote Iphigénie back and said that I'd take it and wrote Ghislaine back and told her that it would be much easier for her to choose a tenant now that I was out of the race.  That night I went to bed feeling as if a huge burden had been lifted off of my shoulders.  I hadn't simply found an apartment; I found an apartment that I really loved.

Wednesday

The only class of the day didn't begin until 6:30 PM, and it was the one to which I looked forward the most - the first demonstration class and our first time with a chef.  I arrived early and added a fork and spoon to my jacket sleeve pocket for tasting along with a pen for notes.  Our notebooks contained a list of ingredients for the recipe, but we were responsible to write down the steps for putting everything together, and we would use only that paper in the practical class.

Doors to the classroom don't open usually until about five minutes before start, so the tiny hallway was soon filled with about 30 students, all jockeying for a position by the door so that they could get front-row seats when it opened.

In an odd way this experience has started to feel like an episode of Survivor minus the overacting.  We aren't in a competition as far as I know, yet I wonder...  Are we evaluated relative to each other?  Perhaps if a chef notices a student asking good questions or answering his questions quickly it affects the grade?  Students will shout out answers over other students, and I have to believe that some of their questions are simply fabricated for attention - rhetorical questions by students who have either worked in kitchens before or who have studied ahead of time.  I may need to form an alliance.

Chef Varca, a pleasant man with a dry sense of humor (unless you're talking in class) spent the beginning of our session discussing different cuts of vegetables.  I kind of already knew about julienne (thin sticks), but other than that I understood "coarse" and "fine," which weren't even in the list.  Bâtonnet (sticks), brunoise (cubes), ciseler (finely minced), and mirepoix (big chunks?) are just a few of the cuts, but uniformity is key in all chopping for even cooking and sometimes for presentation.  They're REALLY big on uniformity.  My method of "just chop it up without hurting myself" isn't going to fly.

Chef's chopping samples

Chef was making potage cultivateur, a garden vegetable soup with bacon.  I use the term "bacon" very liberally because there are at least three foods that the French don't seem to understand: cottage cheese, barbecue, and bacon (at least these are the three basic food groups over which I get the most outraged).  I've tried frying cuts of pork belly from the charcuterie but it ends up tasting like pork chops.  Gross.

Nonetheless, chef added pork belly cut into lardons (cubes) that tasted like ham but that were referred to as bacon into the mix.  A few more chops here, some sweating of vegetables there, lots of boiling and simmering, and voilà - we had our soup.  My notes were disorganized - he would jump from the soup to more of a theory lesson and back to the soup - and often as I was looking down to write I would miss a cutting demonstration entirely because he moves quite quickly.  After we sampled the final product the class clambered to the front to snap photos of the dish and ask questions.

The potage with toasted baguettes and gruyere cheese

I rolled back into my studio around 9:30 PM that evening feeling a bit exhausted despite my lack of any actual work while the "kids" in the class, apparently overloaded with vegetable cut information, spent the evening doing tequila shots at one of their apartments.

Thursday

Thursday was the first two-class day of the week.  Our practical class in which we were to make the soup from the demonstration started at 12:30. Incidentally, it was the first full-uniform class as well, requiring the addition of our hairnets, hats, aprons, and towels.  Only the nine Grand Diplome students were in this class, half of them with a hangover, and our chef was not Chef Varca, but rather a tall Asian who taught the whole class in broken English because our translator didn't show up.

In this class we were each given the set of ingredients, a cutting board, and a metal tray.  In the tray we laid out the knives and any other utensils from our bag that we would need before storing the bag in a cubby hole.  Every student had a designated stove and oven and free access to such things as pots, pans, bowls, and ladles.  Sticking our class notes to the oven hoods with magnets, we began three hours of madness.

I forgot many things from the demonstration at that point, but it didn't matter because this chef was telling us to do things differently than what Chef Varca had told us.  An onion, leek, carrot, potato, celery stick, and cabbage leaf sat in our "dirty vegetable" bowl, all waiting to be peeled, washed, placed in the clean vegetable bowl or water, and chopped in nice, uniform paysanne (thin squares or triangles) style before being blanched or sweated or simmered or all three in some order that went completely over my head.

I'm not exactly sure how I did that day because the class wasn't being evaluated, except that the chef informed me that if we were being evaluated I would get deductions on my organization and work station cleanliness (surprise!).  Then after surviving the onions, leeks, carrots, and celery, I chopped off a little corner of my finger while working on the cabbage.

The boy working across from me, noticing the blood and my "Owie, owie," dance and obviously having taken studious notes in Tuesday's hygiene class, shot on the faucet and yelled, "Cold water!" to me.  After a quick rinse of my finger, Chef patched it up with a bandage and rubber covering and I returned to my station to chop the potato, green beans, and  lardons, catching my rubber finger guard awkwardly and frequently in the knife blade.

Somehow in the end all of my ingredients were in the soup pot and simmering.  We cleaned our work stations and stowed away our knives. Chef didn't taste our soups unless we asked, and although I thought that mine wasn't too bad I wasn't in the mood to be critiqued, so I dumped it in my storage container and stuck it in the refrigerator before shedding my hat and hairnet and making my way to the cuisine theory class.  At least I had dinner prepared for the next three evenings.

Chef Varca was again our instructor, this time going over more safety tips and just about every type of kitchen utensil, pot, pan, and appliance in existence.  After the prior three hours in our practical class, I felt myself starting to fade into a coma by the second hour.  We finished about an hour early, though, so I headed to the studio toting an awkwardly large box of soup and stopped off at the boulangerie to grab a fresh baguette to go with my dinner.  And yes, my soup was just fine, thank you very much.

Friday

Any fears that I had about oversleeping and being late to the first 8:30 AM class were quelled when I woke up a half hour before my alarm went off.  Arriving at the school early, I chatted with the one student who I knew was older than me, a nurse from Texas whose husband was letting her take a three-month break to get the Basic Cuisine Certificate.  I'll have to ask her to join my alliance when the time comes.

Friday's lesson covered fish and veal stocks in addition to a lesson on how to filet a fish that would be served with some sauce made from the fish stock.  A moment of queasiness gripped me as Chef Varca removed the fish's scales and gills before popping out its eyes with a vegetable peeler and scissors, but it soon passed while I watched with wonder his deft movements during the filleting.  Stock made from fish carcasses sounded less than appetizing to me, but the surprisingly simple buttery sauce that he made from it looked quite lovely and tasted even better.

My school day was finished by noon and I was scheduled to meet Emma at the new studio at 2:00 PM to sign the papers.  Although she seemed very trustworthy, I was slightly concerned about the process.  French law is very strict with rental contracts, making them almost as detailed as American documents when one buys a home, and they must be written entirely in French to be valid.  It turned out that Iphigénie is an attorney, though, and wrote up quite a good document for her mother to give me.  True, I could have been signing away my first-born child and not realizing it, but then the joke would be on them, wouldn't it?

Emma gave me another little tour of the place which I hadn't seen since the first showing.  The fact that I had visited half a dozen deplorable studios between those two times made it seem all the nicer, and I fell in love all over again.  She handed me the keys, telling me that I could move in at any time even though my contract agreement didn't begin until July 1.  I left with a little spring in my step, taking in the bustling but quaint street on which it sat next to a little park with a large pavilion.

Saturday

My first patisserie classes of the week began at 12:30.  The anticipation of these classes was even greater than it was for the cuisine because baking was my first love.  We were to have two back-to-back demonstrations for a total of six class hours.

Aside from the nine Grand Diplome students, a whole new group of people filled the room.  Because the first hour of class was somewhat a repeat of the cuisine orientation, I began counting heads for entertainment.  The Chinese population won out at 70% and I identified another American student older than me, or at least she had two children who were already out of the home.  Maybe she can join my alliance as well.

Chef Terrien stood in for our usual pastry chef who moonlights as a DJ and who was preparing for the Fêtes de la Musique, the annual music festival in France on the first day of each summer.  The demonstrations felt deceptively simple compared to the cuisine classes, and I felt a tinge of excitement when I knew the answers to most of the questions that students were asking.  One look at the glossary of terms that we would need to know by exam time dampened my confidence, though.

The first demonstration class centered around bases that used water and various stages of cooked sugar, and in under two hours the chef had whipped up fondant, coffee extract, raw almond paste, praliné, and apricot glaze.  The aroma in the room was divine.

From top to bottom: Praliné, fondant, apricot glaze, and almond paste

After a quick ten-minute break, we moved on to the second demonstration where we focused on five different shortbread recipes, an essential element to French cuisine for such things as macarons and petits fours (small round cookies).  Each recipe varied only slightly, but the magic happened in the way that the chef rolled and shaped and designed each treat.  Our assignment for the first practical class would be the diamant, a simple white shortbread cookie rolled in granulated sugar.

Multiple uses for shortbread

When the class was dismissed and given the go-ahead to take photos and sample the goods, ravenous students nearly trampled each other to grab the little cookies whose smell had been taunting us for hours.  I sampled three (they're tiny - don't judge) and refrained from hoarding more for later when I remembered that we would each be making approximately 20 servings in a few days.  With 20 practical patisserie classes in the next three months just for the basic certificate, hoarding desserts will grow old very quickly.

On my walk home that evening I noticed several musicians setting up stands along the way for the music festival.  After the last six hours, though, my focus was primarily on getting home and eating the rest of my soup with a baguette that I grabbed on the way.

Around 8:00 PM as I was feeling fat and comfortable and talking about my day on Facebook, Gretchen, an American originally from Greenville who now lives in Paris, jumped on my page and like some sort of music siren convinced me that I needed to meet her for the festival.  Although hesitant at first (once the PJ's are on the day is officially over), it ended up being a great evening.  We chose to meet at Les Invalides and explore the 7th and 8th arrondissements, some of the swankier and more beautiful areas in Paris.

View from the Pont Royal at sunset

Many of the musicians were in a more techno/strobe-light mood, but after enough wandering we happened upon a few classically French musicians - the "La Vie en Rose" types with berets and accordions - and found ourselves in the midst of a sort of singspiration.

It was then that Paris started to grow on me, or I at least felt the slightest bit of connection to it inside.  For one thing, I can't fathom anywhere in the States where masses of people would stand in the streets singing sweet little traditional tunes, even if they were about guillotines removing heads.  My dad's side of the family loves to sing - it's some of my best memories from every family gathering that I can remember - and fewer things make me happier.

But more than the singing, I finally experienced the warmth that exists among the Parisians, something that you miss out on when your only interaction is through French "customer service" (or the lack thereof).  As we joined the crowd, a smiling Frenchman held out his songbook for us to see, pointing to the song and explaining words from it, and another woman reached back and handed us a songbook.  Nobody was embarrassed by how they sounded and nobody made fun of anyone's singing.  They were just like one big, happy family on a beautiful summer evening.

We found a little restaurant to stop in for some dessert.  Gretchen has mastered restaurants and already connected with the server before, so I was able to order a delicious tarte fraise (strawberry tart) and café with complete ease.  We had a perfectly good dining experience before I headed home to my slightly scarier neighborhood where the techno beats down the road continued long into the night.  Sleep came easily, though, with the thought that although we may have our differences, Paris and I are going to get along just fine.