After a week of delicious meals and a full belly, it was finally Tuesday and time for my orientation at ICC. I was nervous to say the least. Meeting a school full of new people and starting a new program that I have limited knowledge in, not to mention knives and blistering ovens would be involved, can be very daunting. But after my four hour orientation, I was reassured that this is exactly where I should be.

We were told to meet at school at 8:30am on Thursday, ready to get our final few items and dress in our chef’s coats for the first time. I kind of expected it, but my pants were too long, my coat too baggy, and I had no clue how to tie my neckerchief. But I threw it all on anyways and made it upstairs to the Level 1 kitchen. There, myself and 13 other classmates waited for our chef instructor to arrive and begin. Our chef instructor turns out to be a badass woman chef who has worked at some of the top restaurants in the city. I cannot wait to learn from her and hopefully be half as cool as she is one day.

The first class was especially exciting because as we approached our work stations, we noticed our brand new knife kits waiting for us. It was Christmas a month early! The rest of the class we took a tour of the kitchen, learned the proper French names for all of our equipment, and began to learn knife skills. By the end of the class, we even started cooking, learning to make pearl onions A L’etuvee and green beans A L’anglaise. By the end of class my dogs were barking and I had a growing blister on my finger from my hand clenching the chef’s knife too tight, but honestly, I couldn’t be happier to be in the city and learning to cook classic French techniques at ICC.