First: My mother and I were invited to
the Culinary to experience what they call "a preview weekend" and what I call "an-opportunity-to-convince-you-to-spend-your-life-savings-here weekend". Not that I objected... I had already decided to spend my life savings there and so it was just a weekend full of positive reinforcement.
THE BEGINNING
I neglected to record on memory card the real beginning to our adventure which would be the drive to Albuquerque at oh-dark-thirty. I don't remember it very clearly either and so I think that we should skip directly to our flight which, incidentally, was my very first commercial flight. This is what Cincinnati looks like from the air:
While we waited for our flight headed for NYC the news was talking an awful lot about how NY was flooding and how it was going to continue to rain for an indeterminable period of time. For that reason I took a picture of the sun right before we landed in NYC.
It's a good thing, too, since the sun didn't come out until the last day we were there. Which is why it is a really good thing that I brought these little beauties:
But I digress.
This picture represents our trip from the car rental place in Manhattan to Poughkeepsie.
I think that the only good descriptive word is harrowing. It wasn't too bad from just outside NYC to just outside Poughkeepsie but once we reached Poughkeepsie our directions failed us and we drove around aimlessly. We even asked for directions but after we followed them faithfully we found ourselves going the wrong way on a three-lane one-way road. Somehow we reached our hotel... that part is a little blurry too.
The first group activity was a presentation about the school and why students choose to go there. You know the kind: starting with soft music and a leisurely procession of pictures. Gradually the music gets louder and the pictures move faster...louder, faster, louder, faster, the mounting climax and then silence. And the school logo. We sat politely through it but really we were all thinking about the table in front of us which looked like this:
The resident cooking presenter took her place and, in the manner of a cooking show person, made creamy pumpkin risotto. It was pretty rad.
We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the (rainy) school grounds, looking around. Unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph inside the buildings or else I would have been able to show how truly ghetto the dorms are. The rest of the buildings were very nice, though, and here are some shots of the outside parts:
After our wanderings we went to lunch at one of the six school restaurants,
Escoffier, which was very good, though it was all heavy food which was not so good for the middle of the day. We went from there to a class called "The Physiology of Taste". Each place was set with eight unlabeled containers... it as a really fun class. Some of the mystery substances were kind of shady.
At that point we returned to the hotel. In just a couple hours we were going to eat again and since we both felt like we never wanted to eat again we slept some to prepare ourselves for the upcoming meal. A sacrifice but a necessary one.
We ate one of the most amazing meals I have ever had at
St. Andrew's Cafe and that was the point where I decided that it was worth the rain to go to that school (though I was assured many times by various people that it doesn't normally rain much). Hallelujah, amen. And here is a picture of that glorious restaurant:
That evening I started getting ready for small town life. My mother was reading a book and so I entertained myself.
The next day we spent at
Millbrook Winery... my camera had some challenges part of the way through but here are some of the shots there:
Don't worry, it was still raining so you didn't miss too much. We learned a lot about the wine making process and spent some quality time in the art gallery that they have above the wine-making place.
We went back onto campus when it was sunny. The campus is right on the Hudson River.
You'll all be glad that I've finally found a place to live!
In a VAN down by the RIVER!Some other parts of our trip:
My mother and I disagreed on how to pronounce Nyack. It turns out we were both wrong.
What exactly
is technical animal fat?
The church I'll be going to.
A truck found in the parking lot of the one grocery store we found during our time there.
And we looked for a long, long time for that one. We were on the verge of asking for directions but you know where that got us last time. Oh, and they didn't have bite-sized Reeses. Which is to say that they did but they were almost impossible to find and so it is almost exactly like they didn't have any at all.
My mother and I feeling pretty good about this whole deal (and my home by the river).
Some very beautiful pictures of New York.
This one was taken where my wallet fell out of the car by the side of the road.
This isn't unusual for my wallet... it was stolen in Washington D.C. too. (By "stolen" I mean found by a really nice man who called me the next day, right before I left, and returned it). We found that it was missing about 15 minutes away from that spot when I was getting out the money for yet another toll booth. So really those toll booths turned out to be good. Though I wouldn't have had it out in the first place if it hadn't been for the toll booths.
My real home... the ghetto dorm.
How 'bout them Yankees?
New York City (and one of its 10 BILLION toll booths)
And back to New Mexico.
I'm not really too excited about the January weather. When I told people where I was from invariably they would cringe, suck air through their teeth and say, "Ooohh. You're going to have a rough winter."
THE END
Layers: Pastry, breadcrumbs, rice/mushroom mixture, salmon, hardboiled eggs, rice/mushroom mixture
And then pastry
It was fabulous.
