Internships and Interviews

The strangest thing happened to me the other day...Santiago actually complimented me!  Usually with him, no news is good news, so when he stops saying, "what are you doing?!" 15 times a day (usually I wasn't even doing anything wrong, he just wanted to mess with me...), I knew that I was doing alright, but the other day he actually took the time, to tell me he like something.  I made the chef's "oreo-style" cookies on Saturday after they'd both left for the day, and usually they're fine, but not perfect, but I guess I made them pretty well this time, yay me!   Of course, none of this matters since he doesn't like me anymore after finding out that I'm "judío" (aka: Jewish), and I'm not entirely sure whether this is a joke or not.

He always likes to tell me that he's teaching me Spanish and doing me a great service, so I was joking with him that I was going to teach him Yiddish, but he didn't really seem to get what that was.  So, I mentioned to Jolene that I was trying to teach him to say, "Oy Vey", and she said, "Oh, you speak Yiddish?" and I said a little bit, and she kind of paused like she wanted to say something but didn't know how to, and she said, "So, that means you're..." and I kind of chuckled and said "Yes, I'm Jewish." and she was like, "Oh! That's cool!" and then she told Santiago, and he just kept smiling and saying, "No...serious?" over and over again, and then he looks at me and says, "You no Jesus?" and I said, "No, me no Jesus..." and just looks at me, very puzzled and says, "why?"  I tried explaining to him that Judaism is just different, but as I'm sure you can guess by the fact that I refer to our interactions as the "Brooke and Santiago Variety Show", didn't really translate.  He seems fine with me now, but I can't really shake the feeling that I got after this happened.  It's been a long time since I've gotten this kind of reaction from another person, and I suppose that some of it has to do with our different backgrounds.  After all, I don't know the exact details, but I'm sure that Ecuador doesn't have much in the way of Jewish communities.  It's just kind of sadly funny, either people refuse to believe me when they find out that I'm Jewish, saying things like, "that's funny, you don't LOOK Jewish', or, "so how are you Jewish exactly?" Or, apparently they take offense to it.  But like I said, he hasn't mentioned it since, and as of today I only have 4 days left there, so I'm going to try and not worry about it for now.

In much happier news, I have an interview today!  My very first at a real bakery.  I'm extremely excited and terrified all at the same time.  I actually applied for a job there on the recommendation of a friend of my Mom's first, before I even saw them advertising jobs,  and when they first called me for an interview I was excited, but I guess I didn't realize what I'd stumbled into.  On Friday when I was at my internship, I casually mentioned to the chef that I had an interview lined up for today.  He asked where, and when I told him he just started laughing.  I was kind of surprised, but I know that he has very specific ideas on what makes a good bakery, so I said, "What, is that not good?" But to my surprise, he said, "No!  They're one of the very best bakeries in the city!  Do you realize how many people wish they were in your position right now?"  Needless to say, that made me a lot more nervous, but luckily he's been helping me prep since then, as he's determined that I get this job.  They're primarily a bread bakery, and they supply bread to a lot of well known places in the city, even the chef at my internship stocks some of their breads for sale in his bakery as it's one of the only things he doesn't make from scratch.  He's already joke that he's going to call me when I get the job so that he can finally learn the secret to making their foccacia, which I might add, is pretty fantastic - I had some last night, yum!

So please please please, think extremely good thoughts for me around 4 o'clock today, b/c that's when I'll be starting my working interview.  I won't say where for now so that I don't jinx it completely, but I'm excited that it's Manhattan, and also, not too far from where Dave works, so if our schedules ever coincide, we can try to catch-up with each other in the city.  I'll let you know how it goes!!

Thanks for Reading :)