1st day at school - and HELP: Skype me!

Today was the first day at school. I arrived at 9.00 am, a bit early. Got registered, received all the paperwork and immediately had to fill in many forms. Then the people from Le Cordon Bleu were introduced;Everything was in French and translated into English.
It was supposed to be a powerpoint presentation, but as ususal it didn't work out well with the beamer....

The Basic Cuisine group consists of only 17 people this year. On the other hand, the Basic Pastry group is 34 people. Basic Cuisine is split in two groups.
We have people from mainly the USA, then a few from Spain, Singapore, Japan, Venezuela, Brasil, UK, New Zealand and I am the only one from the Netherands. And no German speaking people! The pastry group has quite a lot of people from Asia. Not sure if that's got to do something with their 'sweet taste' or typcal Asian presentation style (status).

After all the paperwork and introductions were finished, we had to register again and got our uniforms, plastic containers (to take the prepared food home) and a HUGE Wusthof knife set. All to take home after the course. Nice!

Then we got quite a shock - the schedule for the next 5 weeks.... It's basically everyday from 8.30 - 18.00 hrs. Sometimes half a morning off, but that's it. Even on Saturdays there is a program. And that's for the 5 full weeks...

We got the afternoon off and started our first demonstration at 15.30. We had to dress-up in our uniforms. Sorry, no pics (yet) !
This session was all about knives, pots and pans, general kitchen equipment and finally a demonstration about a recipe - soup...
Chef showed us how to cut perfect triangles (i'll explain later), brunoise, julienne and other ways of chopping up vegetables. We also learned how to make the perfect croutons.
To cut a long demo-session short - the soup was delicious !

Soup: Lardon meat, carrots,potatoes,cabbage,peas,daikon, haricots verts. On top a nice crouton with finely chopped gruyere cheese. Not too bad to finish the day.

After school, a few bottles of beer and quickly out for dinner. Oh my, will I sleep 2nite !
see you all tomorrow 'on the blog'.

Update 22.45pm. I just got the first 'person to Skype me. Unfortunately, I think, it was a nice piece of porn.... (And Jayne is still here in Paris)
So, please Skype me or I will keep receiving this crap !