What a Week!

Well, that sure was on crazy week to start classes!

On Sunday, a federal election was called! Yay! I love elections, I have to say. I love watching the results pour in and I love the debates that happen throughout. Especially the nonsensical ones that I have with people! I'm too lazy to change my layout into a blue one, so we'll stick with my diary layout...but hey, the Conservatives have lots of secrets in a diary of their own, so I guess it's appropriate enough! Go Conservatives! I'm not going to get into a political rant right now...but it'll come, just wait. I haven't had a chance to read any platforms yet, so I'd be talking out my rear if I said anything right now.

Monday we started our first class and we're already finished it! No need to go into detail as I ranted about it a couple posts back, but suffice it to say, I'm glad it's done. The test went well...I know I passed, it's just a matter of how well I passed. We had to get 75% to pass - I'm hoping I got at least 85%.

On Friday we finally got to see the kitchens! Very exciting! Our kitchen is huge, has lots of fun equipment, and a lot of flour. I think I'm going to have a blast! My one chef instructor gave us a short little rant about how the chocolate you get at the stores is basically just pure crap. And that what we'll be using is quality. Yay for quality! Anyway, once we get in there, I'll sneak my camera in and get some pictures for you of our kitchen. I have say, having been here as long as I have - I picked the right institution. I don't think I could have picked a better one. For example, a team from my school won the World Youth Culinary Championships last year and are headed to the Culinary Olympics very shortly. So, being top in the world is nice - it definitely increases the value of the certification I will get as well as makes me confident that I will get the best education possible.

Everything here is quality. The food we use is quality. The chef instructors are some of the best, most experienced chefs in the world. The equipment is top of the line - our dishwasher is worth $80,000 - it's the only one east of Montreal. The oven the culinary students use is worth about $28,000. They have high expectations for us, but in return, we get to train with the best of the best.

I don't think I've mentioned this, but every day we get a free meal. Well, I'm sure it was worked into our tuition, but they didn't mention anything about it until we got here! Right now it's lunch, but I think if you work the early shift they also do breakfast. And by a free meal, I mean that we're getting a gourmet lunch every day. So far we've had things like stuffed porkchops and ratatouille. (Yes, ratatouille! We were excited too.) For most of the things, in all honesty, we have no idea what they are. We sort of line up and go "well, that looks good, give me that" and point to what we want. They write the names of the stuff on a white board, but we don't know what it means. So, every day we get a main course (meat, starch, vegetable), our choice of soup or salad (remember...gourmet...this is no plain lettuce salad), dessert (right now made by the culinary students...clearly not as good as what we'll be making, haha), and a drink. Pretty darn good! On first glance it almost seems like the students are sort of working for free, but it's actually a great setup. This way we get to learn by experience, actually making the food, but we don't have to pay for it and we have somebody to eat it, so it doesn't go to waste. I consider the free lunch a perk after those two other things. But anyway, for anybody who was wondering...yes, I'm eating healthy. They plate the food for us and everything, so you don't even have the option of taking big servings, therefore, it's a healthy, well-rounded meal that we get. Overall - one sweet perk to culinary school.

I spent some time on Friday touring around Charlottetown some more. I'll start that series of posts soon. So far my plans for "series" are the Oddities of PEI, Residence Life, and A Tour of Prince Edward Island. Hopefully I can keep them relatively interesting. My plan is to write those posts when I'm in a blogging mood, save them, and then post them to fill in when I'm not in a blogging mood!

Today I went out and did a bit of applying for some jobs. I'm mostly just looking for something for the weekends so that I have something to do. And the cash would be nice too. So, here's hoping that something pans out. Then I went to a movie with a friend. Just FYI - the movie Traitor is good...not great, but good. Then I decided to stay up for the Riders game - started at 11pm my time. We lost. :( But BC did play a good game - so at least it was entertaining!

Plans for tomorrow are to do some wandering around Charlottetown in the more residential areas that I haven't seen yet. Of course, that will depend on the weather. If it rains, I'll stick inside. I cleaned during the Rider game, so tomorrow can just be a lazy, lazy day I suppose!

Anyway, I'll probably post again tomorrow, but I hadn't posted for a while, so I figured I had better write something! I'm sure you all didn't mind the break in reading though - I can go on and on sometimes. Like this time. :P

Have a good day all!