Could I do Six Weeks?

In November of 2021, my annual need for a mileage run prompted me to take yet another trip to Paris. I travel to the French capital somewhat frequently; my sisters are convinced there’s only a matter of time until I move there permanently. I’ve been adamant about my life being in the United States, but I sure do love Paris.

For last year’s trip, I decided to spend the week taking cooking classes to fill my time. The first class I took was a Choux Pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu. From the moment I walked in, I was hooked. The professionalism of the kitchen, the aesthetics of (what I’ve come to learn is the) new building, the French instruction simultaneously translated to English for a parler-er of français de bébé like me all just felt so perfect. For the next few days, I took classes at another cooking institution that caters specifically to travelers, but it was the class at Le Cordon Bleu that stuck with me.

At the end of the class in November, I picked up some of the informational brochures that they had on hand: upselling is key, right? While reading them, I noticed that they offer three different 6-week intensive courses. Moving to Paris? That seemed like a big step for me, but six weeks? I could do six weeks!

In December, this was just a thought really. Could I really do six weeks abroad? I mean I am the owner/founder/whatever at a consulting firm that I started in the US. Surely I couldn’t leave my team to go live abroad for six weeks, could I? Well, since this is 2022 in the year of our lord, we have all learned, that some professions actually can be quite efficient working from anywhere where there’s a strong internet connection. Additionally, my team is stellar. I experienced firsthand how they were able to take the ball and run with it when a great loss took me out of work for a month in 2020. And this time would be different, I wouldn’t be unavailable, I’d just be on the other side of the Atlantic.

Okay so maybe I could do six weeks.

Le Cordon Bleu has been a dream of mine that started back when I was 12-years-old. I’ve always loved cooking and one thing my mother would teach us is to be the best at whatever we tried to do; she actually was the one who sparked my interest in cooking by teaching me to scramble eggs in the microwave at the age of 3. By 5 or 6 I’d learned to grill steak, albeit with way too much pepper, on the outdoor grill, and by age 12 or 13 I’d made my first entire Thanksgiving meal.

When I was in the sixth grade, my mother introduced me to the thought of going to Le Cordon Bleu. She told me it was the best cooking school in the world, so of course, my interest peaked. At the time, I was taking French as a required class at my school, and in seventh grade, I decided to make French my primary language selection so that one day I could matriculate to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and become an international chef.

Now clearly, I’m not a chef today. As I mentioned, I am actually professionally pretty far from it. Well, I cook up scalable solutions on the Salesforce platform which helps my clients do business better. Somewhere along the way, while my love for cooking never diminished, I found that I prefer to cook only for people I like really like, and therefore wouldn’t want to cook simply for anyone who could pay me. So instead of becoming a chef, I bought a house and started hosting parties, game nights, and all-night work parties for my friends and family catered by yours truly. My love for cooking never stopped and that trip in November relit a fire for me to learn to hone my craft in excellence. There was just one more thing to consider…

While my work could be done from anywhere, my boyfriend’s cannot. As an owner of a home renovation company, his work doesn’t travel as well as mine does. How was I going to tell my bébé that I wanted to go back to France, this time for six weeks to learn to cook? It was a very difficult discussion to have. As a matter of fact, I put it off for months because it never seemed like a great time to say, “Hey babe, I’m gonna go to Paris for a month and a half to live out a reignited lifelong dream, see ya when I get back! Don’t worry I’ll cook you some real good shit for being a good sport!”

When I finally did tell him, his reaction was as I’d imagined it would be. He wasn’t thrilled but he never considered asking me not to go because he knew what it meant to me… but don’t get it twisted, he still wasn’t thrilled about the impending duration of the distance. Now that he was on board, I pulled up the application, completed it and waited…

Congratulations you’ve been accepted

So it looks like maybe I actually could do six weeks.