The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Flinn Kathleen

Author:Flinn, Kathleen [Flinn, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw, epub
Tags: Europe, Flinn, Cordon bleu (School: Paris, Cooking, Methods, Kathleen - Knowledge and learning, Travel, Cookery - Study and teaching - France, French, France, Personal Memoirs, General, France), Biography & Autobiography, Regional & Ethnic, Women
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-11-12T04:44:09.703000+00:00

It turns out that you can sign up for Le Cordon Bleu online in a process that appears dangerously simple. Prerequisites are few. After hanging up with Mike, I go online and take a look. “Je regarde, tout simplement,” I think, I’m just looking.

To earn a diploma from Le Cordon Bleu, a student must successfully complete three parts of what it calls its “classic cycle”: Basic, Intermediate, and Superior Cuisine. A student can study cuisine, pâtisserie, or both at the same time. The cost for Basic Cuisine was €6,750, or $8,842 with the unfavorable exchange rate. For the full cuisine diploma, the tuition was more than $26,500.

I got up and walked around my flat, shaking my hands as I do at these times when I long for a cigarette even though I’ve never been a smoker. I looked out the window at the busy London street below, where people—employed people—were scurrying home from work. How much would it cost to live in Paris? What if things didn’t work out with Mike? What if I didn’t get another job? I had never been unemployed. What if . . .

It won’t hurt for me to just read through the application, I thought.

Did I have a high school diploma? Yes. Did I have a college diploma? Yes. Could I tell them about my work experience and attach a résumé? No problem.

Then I came to the five-hundred-word “Statement of Motivation,” the key component of the application. Why did I want to study at Le Cordon Bleu? Ugh. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. I sat back and looked at the screen.

It started with my sister, but an obituary clenched it.

Eight years my senior, Sandy got her Francophile tendencies from I don’t know where, living as we did on a ten-acre farm in semirural Michigan. By the time I was four, the rose-colored walls of the bedroom we shared were thoroughly plastered with posters and photos of Paris. I literally dreamed about it—a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower was often the last thing I saw before falling asleep. After reigning for two years as president of her high school French club, she mailed away for an application to the Sorbonne in Paris. The heavy packet arrived par avion the day after our father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

It was twenty-five years before my sister could bring herself to visit Paris for the first time.

When I was thirteen years old, my father died. I found myself alone with my mother, and it was hard. I was in a new school in a new state, with no friends. We’d recently escaped the Michigan winters, hoping the milder climate of southwest Florida would benefit Dad’s fragile health. My mother was beyond devastated. Married for twenty-six years, my parents were always in love, the kind of couple who still got dressed up and went out on Saturday-night dates even after they had five kids. I was the youngest, a daddy’s girl. I had worshipped him. For both of us, grief was exhausting.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.