Just finished up my work for the day, it was a long day. My school work day started at 6:45 am with a visit to the food stock/storeroom for my Product Knowledge home work. Then it was off to Food Safety class then to Gastronomy class both last 2 hours. Unfortunately I am in class from 9:15 to 1:30 with no break to get lunch. After class I spent the afternoon working on home work until dinner then back to my room for more home work. I will visit the stock room again each morning this week as it’s a great way to see all the food products that are available to the kitchens here and what is available to a chef in today’s market. Tomorrow after my visit to the stock room I have Math class then a meeting with two other students about our gastronomy project then Product Knowledge class until 1:30. After that I have time to do home work or go to the gym before my 4:00 writing class. Until next time.

Ok things are starting to get serious here at the Culinary. This is what I have to look forward to for the next 9 weeks the first 6 weeks is class work Food Safety, Math, Product Knowledge, Gastronomy and Writing for 15 weeks then its 3 weeks of fish and meat fabrication (learning how to butcher a whole fish and large pieces of meat down to the portion size you would get served in a restaurant) after that I get to go into the kitchen and make stocks and sauces for 3 weeks. I have spent all evening printing out class assignments, class syllabus, and power point slide presentations used in class as well as assorted other paper work related to all my classes. I have been meeting lots of interesting people and visiting with some old friends here at the Culinary and am ready to get done to some serious work.

The dorm room is pretty nice, lots of room for 2 people some of the rooms have 3 people in the same space and that gets crowded. Our room is on the top floor of the 3 story dorm so it’s pretty quite so far and the floor has mostly rooms with girls living in them there are only 3 or 4 rooms with guys. Went to Bed, Bath and Beyond today to get a couple things we needed for the room and although the drive is not so bad the hike to the car in the student parking lots is about ½ mile if you parked in the back of the lot like I was. Not so bad going out but coming back and carrying all the stuff it was a long walk. One good thing is with living on campus in the dorm with a room on the third floor is I have been doing a great deal of walking up and down the stairs and all around campus. With any luck that will help me get into a little better shape. Well I need to run as I have some homework to get finished before I go to sleep.

Well the big day finally arrived and I have moved into my dorm room and I am working on getting settled in. My roommate Michael is the same age as me and he is from Waco Texas. Yesterday and today we have orientation stuff and the first day of class is tomorrow. It has been a hectic couple of days with moving in and setting up all my stuff in the room as well as yesterday we had to complete an online alcohol education course for freshmen and it took about 3 hours and did not really apply to a 54 year old student. Michael and I thought it was a waste of time but if we did not do it and pass the test we would get 2 demerits and we did not want that. Well I need to run time for breakfast and then off to the first event of the day.