When I got to work, the pastry chef was in the office, but then he left. The simple explanation was that he was sick. Fine. But then, around ten, the chef made everyone in the restaurant gather in the dining room. She announced, “Tomas is sick. He has been diagnosed with la gale. He got it from his girlfriend in Brittany, and he has been contagious for a while. It is very unlikely that we contracted anything from him because of limited physical contact, but if you have any symptoms, let me know and we’ll all get treated.”

“What is la gale?” I asked one of the servers.

“Oh, it’s a sickness where you get red blotches and you itch.”

Chicken pox. “I had that when I was young, I can’t get it again,” I said, relieved.

“No,” she said. “This is an old sickness. More serious.”

Small pox? “But I think we get a vaccination against this in the US.”

“No,” one of the chefs says. “People don’t get it anymore. Like the plague, so there are no vaccines.”

Hmmm. Needless to say, for all the interns, the afternoon held a ruthless, top-to-bottom bleach cleaning of every part of the kitchen to rid it of the gale/smallpox/plague. Before leaving in the evening, I saw the server in the office, using the computer. “Hey, do me a favor and look up a translation for me,” I say. She does, and says she can’t pronounce the word on the screen.

Cholera.

Cholera?!

No way.

I look up cholera when I get home, and the symptoms are NOT itching. It is MUCH more unpleasant than that. It seems a little impossible that a restaurant would be so blasé about cholera, so I do another search on la gale. No worries. It is also translated as scabies. Uglier word, much more pleasant health problem. Whew. And I really do doubt that anyone else will come down with it. Plus, I would have been really pissed off if I would have died from this crappy internship.

Today was little slices of heaven, which makes going to work tomorrow all the more hellish. I wish I didn’t hate my stage SO much…four weeks to go.


I ventured through the Salon du Chocolat today. It was so magnificent, despite Jazz Fest-esque crowds. First of all, nothing tickles my fancy quite like chocolate, and I did plenty of tasting and buying. And, having done the tiny bit of pastry that I did, I had all the more appreciation for the artisanal chocolates. Then there was a display of sugar sculptures: holy crap. They were so beautiful; I couldn’t even imagine the time and patience that went into some of them, let alone artistic talent. At school, we didn’t even scratch the surface of what can be done with sugar. Wow. The one in the picture was my favorite, and I am clearly not a photographer. It looked so much cooler in person. It was fun to go there and to see how much I really did learn about pastry. It is a fine art, even though this Salon interpreted "art of chocolate" as to include M&Ms. Whatever.

So with my sugar buzz, I then dashed off to the Palais Garnier to see some chamber music, two Berlioz pieces that were mostly forgettable and a very playful and emotional interpretation of Mozart’s String Quintet No. 5 in D major. What a way to end a very uneventful weekend. I’m gearing up and enjoying what Paris has to offer- I can only continue to take advantage for a few more weeks.

To the one whom this concerns:

iTunes has now released free podcasts of This American Life. I truly psyched about this, because now I can listen at my leisure, without the added stress of an impending dinner at your dad’s looming over-head. I also thought that this would be a great way to pass my metro time, although I was (and still am) very self-conscious because the content makes me smile and/or laugh out loud. Still, I’m no crazier than most Parisians on public transportation, and at least I haven’t set any buses aflame in the last two weeks. But I digress.

Yesterday on my way home from work, I listened to the first podcast. The theme of this episode was recordings made for other people, and part one was my newest favorite TAL story ever. It topped the one where he taped 24 hours in the Chicago diner AND the one about the girl who only ate chicken. It was about a voicemail message that a guy’s mother had left for him when he was in college, and how the message got forwarded around campus. It was such a well-crafted story and it was so something that could have happened at Midd. It was hilarious, and I know so many people who would love it, especially you.

I miss you.

Damn you.

There has been a seismic shift in my sleep pattern. When I was working in the US, I was an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of gal. I was most often in bed and sound asleep before 11pm seven days a week. Paris has done something to me. Even when I work at 9 the next day, I am hard pressed to get to sleep before 2 am.

This weekend was extreme. On Friday, I broke the ice cream maker at work under the moronic tutelage of the 19 year-old pastry chef (has anyone else out there ever set ice cream on fire? Because I have). I needed a night out. Dinner with Jen and Jeremy, and then head out to Fernando’s birthday celebration, not minding at all that I have no idea who Fernando is. We go to a divy pool hall and drink giraffes of beer. At 2:30, we carry the celebration to Fernando’s tiny flat, pushing 15 Americans, Mexicans, and Brits (all current or former LCB students) into 22 square meters. A 5:30 am walk home with Jen and Jeremy leaves me in tears of laughter over nothing, proving that one can get high off of second-hand smoke of any kind.

Saturday, both Jen and Jeremy promise never to go out again, but I am not hung over. I meet up with Jamie, Iceni, and Brian in St. Germain for post-service cocktails and stage chatter. We have too many. We move around the corner to another, cheaper pub at the insistence of Iceni’s fling for the night. As Brian and I are accompanying Jamie home once the seedy pub boots us out with to-go cups at 5am, I get a call from a new friend in the 5th, asking me to go to a late night after party. As I ride the metro home the next morning at 7:30, I wonder what I will do with this newfound self when I go home…

I have been charting my time in Paris by the trees. When I first arrived and was all unsure and depressed about all that I had lost, it didn’t help my mood that the first glimpse of the world above ground at the escalator exit to the Boucicaut metro was bare branches against the dull gray sky. I was thrilled this spring when all of a sudden the sky was blocked out by tiny, shiny leaves. All summer, the shade was the only escape from the heat (and even then it didn’t do much). So perhaps you can share in my dismay: today as I was walking past the elementary school by my house, keeping my focus on the ground, and a handful of dry, brown leaves fell and blew towards my shoes. Almost a full circle…

In other news, about a month ago, I sliced through my fingernail while cutting shallots. The nail was still there, just with a crescent-shaped cut in it. As the cut neared the tip of my nail bed, I became nervous, and last weekend I began to anticipate the inevitable. Today, the cut part fell off, and to my surprise, it didn’t hurt. The skin underneath also seems to have anticipated this and is healed. It’s pretty freaky and cool at the same time. Definitely my best kitchen injury to date.

I cried at work today.

Let’s just follow that up with the fact that I despise girls who cry in inappropriate places like work or the bank. It really pisses me off. I have cried at work exactly twice before, and one of those times was along with all the other faculty at St. Paul’s during the last day of school 2005, so it doesn’t count.

It wasn’t a good day. I was on pastry and everything was fine, until Jean-Pierre (I know, how much more French can you get), the sous-chef, basically made a fool out of me during the lunch service saying that if I had my way, everyone upstairs would get their desserts tomorrow. Then Dewey left at 2:30. Two more dessert orders came in, and as I was starting them, the chef swept over and did them for me for no reason. I guess there is a reason: she has no confidence in me whatsoever.

I had a productive afternoon of prep-work. Just before I was to leave, Medi, the first-course kid, and David, the swing chef who does everything asked me to take this cream mixture, put it in a pastry bag, and fill the amuse bouche glasses. There were many glasses with a dollop of salmon mousse in them and some that were empty. I held up a glass that had salmon mousse in it and asked Medi how high up the glass I should go. He said ¾ the way up, like usual. I was all over this task.

I filled all the salmon mousse glasses, but ran out before I got to the empty ones. I turned to Medi, and before I could ask him what to do, he looked at the glasses and me with such a look of horror and disbelief I thought perhaps I had somehow left a body part in one of them. “David,” he said, horrified, “look what she did.”

It turns out that I was supposed to put a small dollop of cream, like a tablespoon, in the bottom of each empty glass. I had to salvage the cream and then throw out all the salmon mousse, wash the glasses, and refill them with cream. No one yelled or anything, it was just the way the looked at me, like I was literally the stupidest person to ever walk the planet. Like it was a miracle I had figured out how to walk and breathe at the same time. So, as I was washing the glasses, my eyes welled up and my nose ran, but not one tear came down my cheeks, nor were there sniffles or sobs. But it still was crying.

The only thing that is good about crying at this work is that it is all guys. There was no other girl like me there to get all righteous and pissy because I was humiliating her gender and perpetuating a stereotype. The boys all felt really bad, and were all apologetic and just kept saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.” They fell all over themselves trying to make everything okay.

Except they can’t make it okay, because they can’t erase the fact that I cried at work.

Working in a boys club is becoming increasingly infuriating. Tonight, the new pastry guy asked if I needed help scooping sorbet with an ice cream scooper. How is it possible that I give off such an enormous impression of incompetence? I can scoop ice cream just as well as I can eat it, thank you.

But despite dealing with everyone treating me like a total idiot, I left work tonight feeling light and happy. It was a beautiful, balmy fall evening, and everyone was out in the streets, As I walked down a quiet, narrow street in St. Germain, I was followed by an older American couple who were obviously enjoying their vacation. Before I hit the end of the street, the woman could no longer contain herself and exploded, "What a beautiful place to live!"

It is.

Okay, scratch that last post. All is not lost.

Tonight I went back in for service and was handed loads of prep work. I then felt as though they thought that I sucked as much as I felt that I did. However, as soon as the prep was done, they handed me the fall menu and asked me to translate it for them. Now, that I can do. Go to the website next week and click on the English link- hopefully they’ll use my words! So after that little triumph, I went back to the cold side and helped throw out desserts and entrées. It went so much better, and Dewey totally laid off and let me do my business without being a little baby dickhead. It was awesome! I got my first glance of how much energy there is in the kitchen and how much fun it is once you get in the rhythm. I think I may be hooked, and maybe this wasn’t such a bad plan after all…

Plus, you gotta love the eye candy in my kitchen.

So instead of going to school to drop off my stage contract (WAY overdue) or going to the bank to cash my embarrassingly pathetic paycheck, I have decided to post. Life just needs me to post right now.

Have we clarified what the HELL I am doing here? If we have, someone clue me in, because I feel pretty lost.

I stayed for my first service last night. It was me and Dewey, the 17 year-old high school apprentice who has now logged in a total of twelve days to my twenty-five (but who's counting?). I call him Dewey, although that's not his name. I don't do this out of any sort of "to protect the innocent" blog protection, I do this because he is the spitting image of Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle. And we're talking first-season Dewey. I hate this kid. He's pompous, arrogant, ignorant, and pushy. I know more than he does, but he won't listen to me and second-guesses everything I do, yet fucks up tons of stuff on his own and lets me take blame for his mistakes. Needless to say, of the 15 dessert orders we saw (very slow night), I got to touch three and completed zero on my own. He made me feel so lame, and I know that I am not. How can I be intimidated by this dork? I guess I feel deep down that I am not good enough in the kitchen and his attitude confirms all my fears.

I would like to burn him with a tarte tatin.

Will tonight be better? Could it possibly be any worse than feeling like I am more of a burden in the kitchen than a help?