Intro: What's Going On In This Blog 2 - The Campus/My Routine

Hello and welcome to my second post in this blog!

I will now give the second half of my explanation of how this school works for a freshman, and provide you with all the basic information necessary to understand any of my future posts. Hopefully this will not be too boring or hard to understand, and will answer any questions.. I will provide information on Roth Hall, the restaurants and other buildings.

Let's talk about the campus.

This should help with getting an idea of where all the buildings are located. The huge main building is called Roth Hall. That's where almost all classes are, and is also where some restaurants, all offices and other facilities are. Here is a picture I took of Roth Hall from the plaza:

 

And here is a detailed map of where the rooms are:

That should help.

Also, there are many restaurants on campus. Students run the restaurants and people from across the world come to visit the school and eat in them. These restaurants are run by students who are near the end of their second year at the CIA. That means that the front of the house (dining room) and back of the house (kitchen) are full of students who are in class, not employees. These students will be in one restaurant per week. Here are the restaurants:

Caterina de' Medici

American Bounty Restaurant: American Regional Food
Escoffier Restaurant: French Cuisine
Ristorante Caterina de' Medici: Italian Cuisine
St. Andrew's Cafe: Farm-To-Table, A La Carte Cuisine
Apple Pie Bakery Café: Baked Goods and Café Cuisine
                                                                                                 

Also, there are several residence buildings on campus, and I feel as though mine is in prime placement. I'm on the second floor of Hudson Hall. As you can see by studying the first map, Hudson is across from Roth and next to the library. This way, in the depth of winter, I don't have to walk through as much snow to go to and from classes. Yay me.

Hudson Hall

 On to my schedule. 

This schedule will change in mid November, but until then I have an awesome schedule. I don't have any morning classes, the earliest thing is lunch, I always have a gap between lunch and my first class, I have only two classes a day, and I'm never home later than 8:30. This is not a normal B-Block schedule. Which reminds me, you probably don't understand how these blocks work. Freshman year has three semesters, and the whole year is split in blocks. A-Block is remedial Math and English, and most people test out of it. I started in B-Block with most of my class. C-Block is Meat and Seafood Fab., Skills I and something else. As the blocks progress, students have tougher and more interesting classes, such as going into production kitchens.

My day will either be case one or two. Here they are:

     - I'll wake up at 10:15 and get ready to go to Banquet for lunch in the Continuing Education Building at 11:15. I will leave around 12:15 and go back to my room. I'll head back out with my backpack at 1:15 for Gastronomy class at 1:45. I like to arrive early. Class will be over at about 3:45 and I will go straight upstairs to Roth Hall's 4th floor for Writing at 4:00. Those stairs hurt. When Writing is done, around 5:15, I'll head down the stairs and get dinner at K16 which opens at 5:00 if I'm very hungry or at another kitchen if I feel like waiting for them to open at 5:30. After that, I go home.

     - I'll wake up at 10:15 and get ready to go to Banquet for lunch in the Continuing Education Building at 11:15. I will leave around 12:15 and go back to my room. I'll head back out with my backpack at 3:30 for Math class in the McCann building behind the library at 4:00. When Math is over at about 5:20, I'll go straight to Roth Hall for dinner, usually at K16 but occasionally a different kitchen if I'm feeling adventurous. When I finish dinner, depending on how much time I have left, I'll walk down the hall to the AB Theater for Product Knowledge at 6:30. I like to be there by 6:00. When Product Knowledge is over at around 8:15, I go home.

So there are my schedules for weekdays. If it's a weekend or a day when I have no classes, the production kitchens will be closed. This means students with no meal plan upgrades have to find food somewhere. Students with meal plan upgrades go to Courtside Café in the Rec Center and get their meals there.

Some things I didn't mention:
- K16 has an amazing continental breakfast early in the morning which counts as a meal for your swipes, but you can go to the main dining hall (Farq. Hall) for free and eat the stuff set out there which is more than enough, including breads, juices and drinks, cereals, fruits and more.
- Product Knowledge class has food tastings every class, so that's extra food I eat every other day.
- Gastronomy class sometimes has food tasting, although it's usually gross things to supplement the lessons on acidity and umami.
- Students can eat in the big restaurants but they have to pay.

I hope this successfully depicts my routines here at the CIA. I try to take pictures of everything I eat, although I didn't get the idea for this blog until a week or so into school. I kept a list of all the things I ate and took some pictures, but not many. Now I take pictures of everything. I have quite a few days worth of blog posts to write, and they should be relatively short: what I ate, some pictures and maybe a comment or two. Once I get caught up with my posts, it should start to get better, more interesting and more uniform. I'm going to get started.

Until the next post,
Eat well, then eat more