Culinary Fundamentals; Friday, First Period [01/15].

[chef_chocobro]

"Good morning, everyone," Ignis greeted the class from the front of the cooking classroom with a nod and a barely perceptable adjustment of the cuffs of his jacket. "Welcome back. Now, before we truly get started on our culinary journey, we still have a few more techniques to pick up along the way to ensure better results when we start actually working with the food, and today, we're going to cover basic knife skills.

( Cut for...cutting! )

"And now," he prompted, "it's your turn. For the rest of the hour, you can spend your time either trying to get to know the various different cuts, improving on ones you're not as familiar with, and trying them on different types of vegetables or fruits to see just how each one responds to different cuts. Please let me know if you have any questions, please be careful, and if you're feeling ready, we'll begin."

Intro to Performing Arts | Friday, 2nd Period

[defenderofdesmoines]

Class met in the Danger Shop today, which was set up to look like a gymnastics gym, complete with tumbling mats and balance beams of varying heights. There was also - inexplicably - a set of encyclopedias.

"Hey guys!" Annie waved from where she was standing on a beam about four feet off the ground. "I figured today we could work on one of the core skills needed to master a lot of what's coming up: balance. You're going to need to be able to keep your balance when dancing and stage-fighting, and honestly it's kind of just a good idea for your life. These are balance beams, if you've never seen one before - the idea is that you walk back and forth across these without falling." She demonstrated, placing one foot in front of the other and holding her arms out to her sides in a T-shape.

"If this is easy for you and you don't feel like you need to learn to balance, try something a little challenging - you can walk in relevé, which just means on your tippy-toes," Annie added, going onto her toes to demonstrate before jumping up and quickly switching the position of her feet. "You can try jumping. You can do a funny walk. The idea here is to get a feel for how your spine feels when you're trying to keep your balance. If you can maintain a strong, straight spine, you're basically unshakable, and that'll help form the foundation for a lot of what we'll be doing down the road."

"If," she added, "you can't or don't want to get up on a beam, I have these!" Annie hopped down off the beam, crossing over to the encyclopedias and plucking up the A volume to carefully place it on her head. "See how long you can keep a book on your head." And she wasn't looking at anyone in particular, but this was for you, Jules - though knowing what little she did of what they used to put girls through back in the day, she wouldn't be shocked if Enola could carry around A-F on her head or something.

"Let me know if you have any questions," Annie added, waving towards the beams and keeping the book balanced perfectly on her head. She'd probably keep this up for awhile.

Disappearing in the Modern World, Friday, Period 4

[doesntstophurting]

"Let's just go over this real quick," Booker told his students. "Say you still need to stay in touch with someone--someone mentioned family last week. Family is important. Or you're going to need to get a job or something. So, this is the modern world, nobody sends letters anymore, what are you gonna do?" He held up a smartphone. "This is a tracking device. Not just the phone itself, which can track you down off pings from cell towers, but half the apps on it are tracking you at all times. And not just your location! If you doubt it, mention a specific brand while it's in your pocket and see what you have ads for the next time you open Instagram." He held up a cheap flip phone. "This can still be a tracking device, because of those tower pings I mentioned before, so you're going to want to turn it off completely between calls, and periodically destroy it and get a new one. Prepaid. Memorize the numbers you need to call, don't store them in the phone or write them down."

Booker held the smartphone up again. "This does everything except toast bread for your sandwich." The flip phone. "This makes calls and, if you learn how to manage the keys like we did in the nineties, sends texts. That's it. So, how are you going to get by without all of the things this," the smartphone, "does for you? And how are you going to explain to people why you have a crappy flip phone in this day and age? Discuss."