The Saucier's Apprentice

So, this past week I began my long anticipated apprenticeship. It's been a whirlwind of French and baking detail - with lots of ups and downs already. There are some things in my life which I am not sure that I will ever be able to quite capture to words, and this may be one of them. I spend eight hours standing, watching, working, trying desperately to understand everything which is being told to me. At the end of the day I am tired, tired, tired. My hands are dry and sore. My mind is whirling from the French. My knees and back aches. My belly, however, is full of bread of my own hands. So much to say, maybe by breaking things down into bullets I can make more sense of all of this. Yes, bullet points:

- Best interaction overheard by coworkers:
Scene: The baking table is placed so that passersby can watch us form bread loaves from the street through a large window, but that window also allows us to look out on the intersection in front of us. Many funny things happen out there, but one day two egregiously skinny women walk out of Starbucks across the street.
Baker 1: Look! The anorexics! (everything in French has an article in front of it, but this made the statement sound even more bizarre)
Baker 2: Oooooo.... (disapprovingly)
Baker 1: They are so skinny. It is not healthy.
Baker 2: They are too skinny.
Baker 1: They do not eat much bread.
Baker 2: They do not eat bread. Bad for the boulangerie, the anorexics.

- I will refrain from making comments about my own bakery, but make a general statement that health code in Europe and America have little-to-no overlap. In fact, though I spoke to someone at the ag fair last week who insisted that there is a health code, I am yet to have seen any evidence of it in restaurants, bakeries, and shops. Probably my favorite example of the troubles here occurred while I was buying some chicken last week. I went to the neighborhood butcher and asked for a chicken breast. He picked it up with his bare hands, put it in a plastic bag, then took my money, and gave me change, all in one fell swoop, no sink it sight. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone thinks it's strange I spend my time cleaning things when I am waiting for another task.

- Baker 1, who I have been working with for most of the time, had been admonishing me for doing lots of things wrong (think overly precise ways of folding dough or how to properly stretch the gluten skin on a firm ball of dough), so I have been working hard to try to imitate everything he does. Though I have done these things before, he does them differently, Frenchly. Being young, he has clearly never worked with someone who doesn't speak perfect French before and gets real frustrated when his poor instructions aren't followed exactly. When working with Baker 2, he shows me the way he does things, which is different from Baker 1. Going back with Baker 1, he tells me what I am doing is wrong, though it is what Baker 2, his superior, has told me. When I point this out, both shrug. Baker 1 continues to admonish me for doing what Baker 2 does and fails to do the things he himself had admonished me for having done.

- Another beloved interaction:
Baker 3: What is the American's name?
Baker 2: Nathan.
Baker 3: He does not speak French.
Baker 2: He speaks some French.
Baker 3: He does not speak French. He is American.
Me: I speak some French.
Baker 3: He does not speak French. (Goes on to talk about me in French as if I were not five feet away and and understanding him.)

- It's good eating, working in a bakery. I have made it a goal to try eating everything we make - which as it turns out is quite a few breads and pastries. Day by day I am making it through, but along with my quest to eat in other bakeries in my time off I am quite full of bread all of the time. Luckily there are so many good things to put on bread in this city and I have a limitless appreciation and stomach for baked goods.

- Forming loaves of bread all day, I have quickly remembered what doing repetitive tasks is like. I am whisked back to my time at Deep Springs; dreaming about times gone by and making up conversations which will never take place in my head. Neither good nor bad, but makes me wonder if I ever want to pursue a career which involves doing the same thing hundreds of times a day.

- This is my first job where I have a uniform (cute little hat, apron, white polo shirt, and checked blue pants (my internet still is failing to allow me to upload pictures)) and my first where I am standing all the time. I sorta dig the uniform (though because there is no mirror at work, I haven't seen myself in it...) but not the standing. The lack of chairs combined with the low counters has been giving me a bit of an ache in the back. All of the workers find it quite amusing I am a giant.

- Because I am the only native English speaker around, when a tourist comes in (the bakery is apparently in Fodors and some Japanese guidebook) and wants something complicated, I get to play the role of vendor. So far I have gotten to help navigate a needy American woman around the things with meat in them and helped a Japanese woman find a heavy bread. Being a translator makes me feel smarty smart.

(I am not actually a saucier's apprentice, I am a baker's apprentice, but I thought maybe if you read that with an English accent it would read like Sorcerer's Apprentice, so it would be a clever pun. Did it work? Yeah. That works. I think)