A Nice Southern Welcome: First week at UGA

Week 1 at UGA

Both Meghan (my intern partner) and I arrived on Tuesday and met each other in the airport. It was nice to get acquainted with each other before arriving to campus and meeting Kris (our boss!!!). We got to campus after an easy shuttle ride from the ATL airport and met Kris. She welcomed us with a basket of goodies and a Let The Big Dawg Eat Student Services bag filled with a bunch of stuff. We then moved into our summer home, Myers Hall. One thing that shocked me they use a card swipe and a hand scanner to give you access to dorms, gym, and food halls. We got the rest of the day to check out Downtown Athens and see what UGA is all about. On our walk to town we passed the football stadium which is absolutely beautiful and in the MIDDLE of campus. Meghan and I could not believe that the students here can be on their way to class and pass by their stadium! Our first official day was not until Thursday so on Wednesday we met Kris at her office and went out with Phillip (one of her student workers) and got all of our ID cards set up and joined the gym (their facility is HUGE and even has racket ball courts).

Our welcome bags with our uniforms and goodies. 

Sanford Stadium

THURSDAY JUNE, 6th : OUR FIRST DAY

Well today was our first official day. We arrived at Bolton Dinning Hall and had a nice meal as well as went over our projects for the summer. Our first project is blogging and reflecting on our experience, which is nice and will truly allow us to get the most out of this experience. Our second big project for the summer is planning a banquet for about 400 people (students and faculty). We will be picking the theme, foods, decorations and executing the banquet at the end of July. Finally, we will be making build charts and temperature regulations for new foods and stations at the new Dining Hall being built (opening in Fall 2013).

Then we were off to do a scavenger hunt around UGA campus. We traveled all around to different landmarks and historical places on campus. We were able to get acquainted with the area as well as work together as intern partners, which we will be doing a lot in the future.

Some different places on our Scavenger Hunt

The Arch-- You are not suppose to walk under it until after you graduate

Their first football field-- it immediately made me think of PSU and Old Main lawn!

In the afternoon we did some paperwork and Kris took us on a tour of all the dining locations. We visited Bolton, Summit, Snelling, The Tate Center (like the HUB) and all the other grab and go locations. It was neat to see the similarities between our food services at Penn State and UGA. The one thing I was astonished by is that they are not required to buy a meal plan as freshman. With that being said they have to put a lot of marketing and PR into selling the plan to freshman. During the summer orientation for freshman they have workers trying to sell the meal plans to all the incoming students. At lunch we got to meet a bunch of the staff in food service, they seem to be a big family which I really like. I swear we met about 5 Brians, it was overwhelming.

FRIDAY JUNE, 7th:

Today we worked with campus catering in the commissary. They had to prepare for a wedding as well as all the other weekend events they were catering. We worked with both Chef Rich and Paul (interestingly they are both originally from the North) and learned how they prepare for such events and about the catering process. Meghan and I got to help Casey prepare a cheese plate as well as items to go with the main dish and appetizers. This wedding was different because it was all appetizer type dishes so it was imperative that we had back up items of everything in case everyone tore through the food. Chef Paul told us that is one of the most important things in catering is NEVER RUN OUT! 

The coolest thing for me today was preparing the shrimp and grits dish. Being from the North I never have had grits and I heard Paul learned from the best. We made sure to melt a TON of heavy cream and butter before we added the grits. It was very important to whisk like crazy when adding the grits! What made the grits amazing was all the Parmesan cheese we added. I was very impressed with the grits that we made and I will definitely try them again!

We then loaded everything up on speed racks and hot holders because we needed to take it to an offsite location. That whole process takes longer than I expected because in catering you cannot afford for things to fall off the rack because there is no way to replace it when you are 15 minutes away from you kitchen. I have worked in catering before and found that their process was very smooth and I attributed it to their numbering system. Each event gets a different number and each item in the event gets labeled with that number and put away when finished to keep it organized. I will definitely take this with me in the future if I go into catering. The wedding was in the beautiful Botanical Gardens of UGA, sort of like a inside Green House. We delivered the food and met Wayne the catering manager. Finally,we got the first of the shrimp and grits started for the catering staff and called it a day. I really enjoyed today with catering and hope to go back again this summer. 

Overall, the first week was more than I could have asked for. It was really nice experiencing southern hospitality and getting acquainted with a new culture in America. It was really refreshing seeing how nice and polite everyone is. There were multiple times when we were startled because people were just being nice and asking us if we needed directions or how our day was out of the blue. We are definitely becoming use to it, but at first we would get really freaked out wondering what we did. I am excited for the summer and cannot wait to get started planning our banquet and seeing more departments.