Reason to celebrate

So I've made it through the first two weeks of culinary school despite the fact that it's kicking my ass.  I've been seriously surprised at how exhausted I am at the end of each day.  One day I just came home and slept for a few hours.  But it's all good.  We had our first notebook check yesterday and Chef was apparently blown away by the fact that I included pictures with my notes.  Everyone is always taking pics in class, so I thought everyone would do it, but apparently I was the only one.  Here are some of them:

Our first benchmark test: knife skills. I feel like
this looks better than my actual skills at the moment.

We have very nice, very sharp knives and despite a couple of close calls the first week, I managed to make it to Day 9 before I actually drew blood and had to bust open the first aid kit.  Band-aids are covered with finger cots, which are these rubber things you roll onto your finger like a condom (like so) but ours are blue.  Kind of hilarious, but we can't have band-aids coming off and getting into the food.

And now for the celebration part!