A 6 course meal

Today I have achieved what I believed impossible. Well its both what you think and what you don't know. I lasted a 6 course meal - you got that from the title of the post. But I also lasted an entire day of presentations in... FRENCH. Congratulations to me! I never thought it was possible. When my professor suggested that it would be "good for me" to attend the presentations given by the senior members and partners of the project and get introduced to them as the new stellar PhD student, I was excited. Then he revealed that they would be in French. Thats when I mentally tuned out and willed myself not to sleep. I have slept in many classes in the past and A will vouch for that a 100%.. But in a teeny conference room with 6 senior members all waiting to see that spark of brilliance come from me, it wasn't the best of ideas. But this post is not about how I survived 6 gruelling hours of making out an odd phrase here... a number there and the parallels between French and English on the screen ahead of me (scientific is scientifiqué - there are many words like that). Its about lunch. The French like their food. That explains why the initially decided upon hour-long lunch stretched into twice that length.. It can also be explained by the fact that there were 6 courses.

Before today I had no idea how any meal could have more than 3 courses -appetizer, lunch and dessert, right? Wrong! The French start with what they love most - bread. Our choices today for Course 1 were wheat bread and baguette... And then the chef brought in Course 2 - plates of salad for each of us.. Thankfully he was forewarned about me being veggie and so while the others crunched on their chicken/pork/lamb or whatever, I grazed on my carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes. The salad was soo huge that I half suspected that that was it. Wrong again! Giving us ample time to finish (everyone had scraped their plates clean except me), the chef cleared the plates and brought in the main courses - Course 3... Boiled ripe Roma tomatoes and boiled beans with basmati rice for me as opposed to chicken tikka masala for them.. Its an unfair world. The boiled beans had no salt or any flavour and I couldn't take more than two of them. The tomatoes were yummy and thats all I ate.. what was I to eat the rice with anyways? I was sure dessert was next after the Basmati disaster - wrong again.. And in came Course 4 - Cheese. Seriously, I thought it was flan or something on my plate - but it turned out to be 3 ample portions of what I identified as blue cheese, goat cheese and ambiguous cheese.. with guess what? Bread of course! I was mortified by then and barely chewed anything while others munched away to glory. I was hoping we were done once and for all. Of course I was wrong. Course 5 - Dessert - a fried banana pie. This was yummy with a delectable crust and everyone cleaned up their plates, thank you very much. Now surely it was over? Who could get back to those meetings without that last course? Course 6- A shot of espresso!! My first ever and I needed it to wake me from the lull of the 2 hour lunch. The caffeine didn't as much as the bitterness did and I was grateful for the dark chocolate that accompanied it to remove the taste from my mouth.

Off we all trudged into the meeting room. Waiting for us was what we'd started with at breakfast- coffee, tea, orange juice, croissants and pain aù chocolat.