Day One

4:38… Not yet.

5:28. A little while longer.

And then, finally, the alarm went off at 6:15, and I jumped out of bed for my first day of school… The school of my dreams. The school for which I was awarded the James Beard Scholarship. First. Day. Today.

So excited was I, I kept taking photos (never mind the stares in the Métro) at every turn to make sure I documented my first day of school well enough. How could I not? I’ve waited for this for a long time, and I couldn’t belive I was on my way to Le Cordon Bleu.

I hopped on to the RER and then the Métro and finally reached Vaugirard in the 15th arrondisment at 8:45. I wasn’t supposed to be in class until 9:30 so I popped into a Carrefour and bought an apple for breakfast and then walked to 8 Rue Léon Delhomme.

After quickly checking my name off the list and being assigned a group number for the day, I was seated in the second row in the demo room for the orientation. Four hours of orientation included long winded speeches from the school director and people from the administration on the rules, receiving our class schedule for the entire course, a tour around the school, admission verification, meeting a few of my new classmates, and best of all: we got our cookbooks, uniforms and (even better) a Wüsthof knife kit. All this, while snacking on pain au chocolat, cheese and grapes.

Although we could leave all our things in the locker, I was excited to bring it back home and show my uniform and shiny new knives to Arjun. I got back home, chopped a few onions with my new knives for the heck of it (does anyone need me to chop their vegetables?) and read through my books.

It was a lovely day.

PS: My first day of school was on Monday, March 26th. I’d written most of it then, but finally got down to putting my photos together for this post after altering and hand-sewing my two chequered trousers for school.