Day 4

We did not have cooking labs today, instead we had 3 hours of research and discussion time for our entremets project, 2 hours of French, and then we finally moved in to our bungalows.

The entremets research time was a surprising amount of fun. We sat around and discussed flavor combinations, structural issues, and personal dessert preferences with other aspiring pastry chefs who have all been professionally trained. You get great ideas and run down a rabbit trail with a malt themed entremets, then joke about making a ham bacon entremets (or one with marshmallow fluff which the French find particularly repugnant) and all while refining your own desires. I know there are cut-thought awful chefs out there, but was nice to simply talk like like-minded people.

French was fine. I’ve had enough languages that I can read along at a basic level and get the idea, and my pronunciation isn’t bad. However, I have absolutely no idea what people are saying when they are talking. I rarely recognize a word-all of the sounds run together and I just say, “I don’t understand” in French. I like learning languages though, so it’s fun.

We moved into the “bungalows” or apartments we will be living in until we leave. It is so nice to finally have two rooms and a kitchen and an ounce more personal space. Stephanie and I still share a bedroom, but she has a desk in the bedroom and I have a bookshelf with all of my stuff in the living room. We are living out of an IKEA catalog: everything is stark, black, sliver and orange. However, it is much more comfortable than living in a tiny hotel room.

This town in absolutely beautiful. I think I find it so mesmerizing because I have never lived anywhere with hills. Oklahoma is flat, Indiana and Illinois are flat, and Denver is flat and then abruptly upward. But here, undulating hills melt into a purple cloud on the horizon. Every morning I swing open our shutters and the light is different on the hills, and just a few more leaves hint of fall. Tile roofs, stucco farmhouses, beautiful gardens and steeples in the distance make every morning appear more like a vivid novel than my life. Apparently fall is generally cold, gray and rainy here, all our chefs are saying this is unnaturally beautiful. I never want the weather to change, but I know fall is coming.