Pictures!

So things are slowing down, as I thought they would! Well, "slowing down" in the sense that it's not much exciting. No trips to security areas, no buses leaving me stranded in stinky towns, so on so forth. The only newsworthy thing is that I had my first in-kitchen assessment on Monday, and I passed all of the dishes!

Granted, they weren't *that* involved, but we had time limits and such. Every item had to be served 15-30 minutes since the last one was, but you could start with the first dish whenever you wanted. We had 4.5 hours to do the whole thing (weigh up, cook, clean, etc.), and the dishes were the following in this order:
1. Rice Pilaf (not very involved)
2. Bookmaker Sandwich (fried steak and egg sandwich, kind of involved because you had to do everything as quickly as possible to keep the sandwich warm)
3. Pumpkin Soup (not too involved, set it to simmer and ignore it for a while!)
4. Macaroni and Cheese (the most time-consuming thing, because making the bechamel/cheese sauce from scratch takes a bit of time)

It was more stressful than difficult, really.

SO.

Other than that, not much exciting has been going on. Just day-to-day living, nothing new *yet*, may have one or two things on the horizon though. They're not exciting, it's not like I'm announcing I'm running from the police or anything, just may be volunteering and there's a slight chance of another job coming into the picture.

So anyways, these pictures are backwards from the order I was hoping to show them, because I uploaded them in the wrong order, but that's ok!

First, the restaurant on campus (Scholar's Restaurant) where we'll be doing lunch and dinner services later in the semester:


The production kitchen, which is where we'll make the food for the restaurant:


The training kitchen, where we do everything else:


The entrance to the building where I spend most of my time on campus!

The entrance to campus, with registration in that little building in front and the ESL building looming over it - also where the international office is:

The gym across the street from campus, where I spent a bit of time! The little shack in front is a bus stop, which is for the bus going to Hastings.

Hm, I was hoping you'd be able to see the EIT logo a bit better, but this is from the driveway to the student villas - right across from EIT (you can see the top of the ESL building). That driveway on the left is the driveway for the gym - everything is nice and close!

Our villa's common room! From left to right we have Benny (I think), Peter, Effie (in the pink blanket), and Mike. Effie and Mike are villamates, the other two live in other villas!

I was trying to find an angle where the tree wasn't in the way, when I realized that wasn't possible. Seeing the villa from the other side is also boring, so I'm sorry about the tree in the middle of the picture! Basically, it's just a U shape when looking at it from above - my room is on the left wing (in the picture), but it's not either of the blue doors you can see in this picture, it's on the outside of the U.

So there are some pictures!

Hopefully there will be more exciting happenings soon, and I'll start posting some food pictures as well! Pictures are almost always more exciting than text.

The Long Lunch!

Hello again, cats and kittens!

And chaps and chapesses, who can probably understand more of this than the felines.

Hopefully.

So, I got an adaptor for my camera and was all glad I could finally post pictures! And then I turned my camera on and saw that there were no exciting pictures to post. I have one picture of the villa but it is obscured by a tree and all of the other new pictures are of scenery.

So, let's talk about that long lunch, featured on that previous post where the picture was cut in half. Thanks, blogspot.

We got there around 10:45/11 and were split into our groups (I'm in group B!). We were essentially around to help with the plating of the food - much like my work at the Old Church, most of the food was mostly prepared beforehand and just finished off right before service since it was on such a large scale.

So we got to put out meals for 400ish people! Or I'm assuming it was that many, splitting the number of attendees in half because there were two kitchens (group A was in the other one). Our kitchen was actually in a tent outside, where there was some drizzling going on. Not in the tent, of course, that's why the tent was there! It was a bit rainy though, hence the moving of the venue from near the water to a stadium in town.

I did a lot of bread slicing at first, then putting the bread on the appropriate plates, and from that point on I was really the garnish guy. In the bad picture in the last post, he caught me trying to put a piece of mint between a spiced plum and a tiny tower of sorbet.

Mint leaves are hard to place!

I also got to put rosemary sprigs on the main course.

The job sounds very simple, and, well, it is, but when you have to do it 400 times in a matter of minutes it gets a bit more problematic!

Either way, after the service we got to go out into the lunch area. Apparently we did a good enough job, because everyone was clapping and thanking us! We had some more pictures taken, then we got to eat some of the extra food, we helped pack up, and we were done!

Speaking of done, it's 8:55 PM! The library is closing!

More tomorrow!

My ear!

Guys!

(And girls!)

I'm in the newspaper!

It only took three or four weeks, but I'm not sure if I can keep up this pace since I'm not sure I'll be able to be in another newspaper in another three or four weeks.

Also, apparently I haven't figured out how to scan things so that you can actually read them. Oops. They've also replaced the edition on their website, so you can't look at it there. Boo.

Here's what it says!

"A cook's tour: Mark van der Lee, 23, of Washington DC, wanted to atten a culinary school and visit New Zealand, so [he] has combined both by enrolling at EIT. On Sunday he was one of more than 20 EIT culinary students just three weeks into their training who were helping out at the long lunch."

And the actual article says:

"Bad weather makes the party, they say - and so it was for Sunday's C J Pask Great Long Lunch in Napier. For only the second time in 11 years, rain forced the event to relocate from the Marine Parade gardens, this time to the Rodney Green Centennial Events Centre at McLean Park. It didn't dampen the mood of the 808 guests who enjoyed three sumptuous courses by Arnault Vallee of Orton Catering. The event showcases Hawke's Bay produce and attracts diners from around the world. This year there were guests from Las Vegas and Sweden."

And the caption of the photo that doesn't have me in it (no, none of those are me):

"Queens: Long lunchers Ronda Edwards (floral dress) and Ally Gordon (silver dress) have their photo taken with the 'royal' guests - also known as Gary, Steve and Muzz."

Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet Gary, Steve or Muzz.

Just wanted to put an end to the cliffhanger regarding me in the newspaper! I still owe you all a lot of updates, and now that I have more of a routine going, there will be at least two in the next two days. Stay tuned, if you want!

If not, that's fine too!

Odds and Ends

Ok, so this was originally going to be more linear storytelling about how things were when I got here in Napier - I got to EIT about a week before things kicked off for the culinary program, because I wanted a bit of time to settle in. So, what happened in this first week, you ask?

Well, if you didn't ask, I just asked for you.

I went to a lot of grocery stores. Or, I made a lot of trips to the same three or four grocery stores.

Judging by my entries in this handy little book, though, I really didn't buy much of anything useful in all of those grocery store trips...there was a lot of muesli going on in the first two weeks. Haven't touched the stuff since.

Reading through this thing is pretty boring, actually, and so instead of that I've decided to just skip to the few more interesting topics/start talking about NZ in general.

So, I'm living in Villa 7! There are five other folks in the villa/apartment/house/whatever:
Nick (~30, also a culinary student, originally from Serbia but has been living in NZ for a while)
Mike (~19, studying something to do with computer hardware, a kiwi *I think*)
Effie (~20, second-year nursing student, from Gisborne which is NE of Napier)
Alysha (~19, second-year nursing student, from Auckland? Maybe Gisborne?)
Stephanie (~18, first-year nursing student, from Matamata, between Auckland and Napier)

So I'm not the oldest, which is nice!

The program I'm in is about 36 or so students - I don't know the exact number because they started with 38, but some people didn't show up and some people joined without originally being around, so I'm not sure where it's at now. High 30s, though. Our class has been split into two groups, named Group A and Group B. Not very exciting names, I know, but the reason is that the training kitchen only fits about 18 people and, well, not all of us would fit in one. We have three "chef tutors": Grant, Mark, and Rob, and they each take turns teaching the groups.

We have class three days a week, Monday through Wednesday. My first thought, upon hearing this, was something along the lines of "that's great!" Now, though, I kind of wish it were all week because I came here to learn, and with class only three days a week, it feels a bit like we're moving rather slowly.

Of course, a month or two from now when we get on to more complicated things I'll probably be wishing it were moving slower.

I'm in group B, which means that I'm in the kitchen on Monday afternoons/evenings (2 until we're done, which has been past 7 on some days - group A is in on Monday mornings, 8-12:30ish but can run as late as 1-1:30, which cuts in to theory time), and both groups have theory from 12:30 to 1:30ish. Theory can be either working on food safety-type things or how to plan out what order to cook things or demonstrations for upcoming kitchen classes.

Tuesdays are theory/computer days, with the computer things being focused on making sure everyone is computer literate (well, that's what it's been so far, not sure what we'll do after that). Tuesdays run from 10-3 or so.

On Wednesdays, we're in the kitchens in the morning, have theory, and are done for the week.

All in all, it totals to about, what, about 17 hours per week? Depending on how long we're in the kitchen, of course. Either way, even though it's only three days it's still more class time than I had at Clark with four classes - I think it was 2 hours 40 minutes of class per week per class, so four of those would be 12 hours.

So Mark, what do you do in your ample amounts of free time?

(I asked the question for you again)

Well, I'm still working on that. I have the job at the Old Church, as I mentioned, but that's only Friday and Saturday nights for the near future (through April at least), so that's only another 10-14 hours. I still have Thursdays and Sundays and all day Friday and Saturday free, and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that time. I'll be calling up a couple of places about volunteering sometime in this upcoming week, and I've been toying with the idea of maybe looking for something that could provide more constant (and more) hours. Maybe.

I do like it at the Old Church, and I would rather not leave but I can't get another job to use up the last 6-10 hours per week that I'm allowed to work. This is mainly because I never know how long I'll be spending there every week anyways since my start time is fixed but my end time isn't.

We shall see!

So that's a bit of general information. There have been a few goings-on (I may be in a newspaper sometime soon! CLIFFHANGER), but I will save those for next time, when I will (hopefully) have pictures! My camera ran out of batteries and I never got an adaptor for the funky plugs here, so I need to get one of those this week as well.

Hopefully more tomorrow, although probably still no pictures.

I'm not very good at this!

So I broke my promise, I'm sorry! It's the middle of the week after the weekend in which I said I would get up-to-date. On the bright side, it's been less thrilling to read about for a little while (GUYS I DID LAUNDRY TODAY IT WAS PRETTY INTENSE. ALSO I WATCHED A BIT OF C4 2, NEW ZEALAND'S VERSION OF MTV THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS MUSIC MOST OF THE TIME. CRAAAZY!), but there have been some happenings that I feel like I should write about!

Unfortunately, it is getting late, so I'll just finally get through the arrival into Napier and then I swear I will work on it this weekend if not tomorrow.

So, where were we? By reading my last post before the string of filler, apparently I was at the bus stop in Rotorua, waiting for a bus to Napier. Well, there was a bus ride involved! It was probably the most gorgeous bus ride I've ever been on that wasn't meant to be a scenic tour - it was like the countryside couldn't decide what it wanted to be. It would be flat for a little bit, then suddenly there would be a gorge, then there would be a weird tiered hill (kind of like the Incan pyramid, but just a hill and not as distinctly tiered because the hills weren't man-made, I'm assuming), then just rolling hills for a bit, then another gorge, so on so forth. I took some pictures, but I left my camera at the villa (figures), so I'll put them in the next post!

So I arrived in Napier, and the bus driver was very nice and called me a taxi because it was Sunday and they don't really have buses going on on Sundays. It was a 15-or-so minute drive, during which the taxi driver was very nice and told me about what was where, and I arrived at the villas. I got all my stuff to my room and got to meet most of my new villa-mates (two hadn't moved in yet), Effie, Alysha, and Stephanie (yes, all girls - the two to come were guys, though, so it's much more balanced than it was in Australia, where I was the only guy with five other girls). I slowly got settled in and met a few more people, and after a ridiculous number of trips to the supermarket in one week (five or so), I had most of the basics.

At this point, because it seems like so long ago/there has been a lot of stuff going on since, I'm going to consult my handy-dandy little diary-type-book to make sure I don't miss anything!

I left it in my room as well, because updating this was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Hey, it's better than nothing though, right? At least in the blog I'm now where I am currently, blog me is no longer stuck in Rotorua after having been there for weeks!

More soon, with pictures!