Orientation at 9h30 today, a 3-hour break midday, and then class from 15h30 to 21h. Straight freakin' through. My brunoise (2mm dice, for crying' out loud) was "parfait" but, well, julienne, yeah... And did you know celery gets PEELED? I'm understanding 'most everything in French but the English translation is great for hearing things twice — in fact I think even in English I would need it, as they talk clearly but content-fully. Demonstrations are translated but in practical the chef only speaks French... actually since there are a couple who speak English but no French, and I'm one of the few who speak both usably well (usually it's Japanese/Chinese + English or French + Spanish) I got called on to translate a couple of times. They were pretty desperate.

The other students are fairly nice — though there's a critical mass of them who are native Spanish speakers (Cuba, Brasil, Mexico City, Portugal [yes, I know, but mutually comprehensible blah blah blah], Madrid) that they often chat in Spanish, but not to the point of exclusivity. We help each other out when we've forgotten details from the morning's ceaseless patter, and there's a teeny bits of time for joking around. Got home at 21h45 (still daylight!) but totally wiped from the whirlwind.

The knives are definitely razors; one guy cut himself 5 times. They give you little finger condoms for cuts and at his rate he might as well have been wearing a glove :). But he finished quickly and well. We get graded on 5-point scales per component, just quick marks in the chef's book of which you aren't voluntarily informed and which you can't quite see unless you peek.