MSU Week 6

This past week included some of my favorite things experienced thus far at MSU. I've been so lucky to be at a university with so many cool things only a few hours away. I've loved getting to see so many different places while I've been here.

Monday and Tuesday I spent more time in The Gallery, my home away from home :) Monday I had the chance to work with Mike, one of the managers, and see how he does some of the ordering. We spent some time seeing how much of each item was in dry storage so that we knew what we should order more of. He let me fill out and submit the order online. Technology makes things like this pretty easy!

Wednesday was a lot of fun! We had the chance to see the lovely Ferris State interns, Margaret and Emily, again. Brenda and another man from FSU accompanied them. We started off the day with Lary telling our visitors all about MSU and dining services on campus. I even learned a few new things about the university! We spent the morning touring some of the athletic facilities. I was so excited to get to see everything! We were led around the big football stadium. Seeing everything there just made me even more excited for football season and the chance to cheer on my BYU cougars again :)

The view from the top of the stadium

Me inside the stadium

We got to see a lot of the really nice boxes inside the stadium where the important people sit for the games. They had really nice seats and accommodations! 

Emily, Margaret, Jeanette, and I with the original Spartan statue

 We also toured the Breslin Center, where the basketball games are played. It was very similar to our Marriott Center at BYU, so I felt right at home! It was a really nice facility. We learned about the Izzone, the student section. It's named after the head basketball coach, Coach Izzo. It's a pretty big deal to sit in this section. You have to camp out to be eligible to buy season tickets for this section,  you can't  have missed more than a couple games the previous season if you're a returning member, and when you're in this section you have a heavy responsibility to support the team and be energized. It sounds pretty cool and a good way to get the crowd and team fired up!

The basketball court

The MSU basketball team is pretty good, as you can see by their championship trophies

I loved seeing all of the athletic facilities. I wish I could see a football or basketball game here! It did make me miss supporting BYU sports a lot though. Can't wait to be back for my own team's season. Go Cougs!

We also showed the FSU visitors one of our Starbucks on campus and the manager let everybody get free drinks! We headed to Brody when it was close to lunchtime. We showed them the front and back of house and ate lunch. The lunch was delicious as always, and I think they were really impressed with how big the dining hall was, how many options, and how delicious and fresh the food tasted. I think it left a good impression with them! We also showed them Shaw's dining hall since it's the newest. To end the day, we headed to the dairy store so our visitors could have some MSU ice cream. We also took a peek of what was going on from the observation deck in the dairy. It was a really fun day and I'm so glad that I got to know the FSU interns while I was here. It was fun to hear what Emily and Margaret have been up to all summer at Ferris and talk dietetics with Emily since she just graduated and is headed off to do an internship next year. 

Thursday was my favorite field trip of the internship! We went to Notre Dame! I've always heard about how beautiful and historic this campus is, so I was really excited when I found out that we were going to be visiting the campus during our stay here. I've basically been looking forward to this day since I got my internship schedule. Don't worry, Notre Dame brought its A game and did not disappoint my expectations. 

I just loved seeing all of the beautiful buildings and the campus had lots of green grass and trees

We traveled with Saul and 3 chefs from different dining halls at MSU. I liked touring with the chefs because they think of different questions to ask than I do. We started off the morning by touring Notre Dame's dining facilities. Our first stop was their central food stores type building. We got to see their coolers and dry storage. They also showed us their central processing areas where they do some produce chopping and sauce making that then gets sent out to the dining halls. We also saw the bakery and decorating area. It sure smelled good!

Check out all that buttercream frosting!

Notre Dame cake

Notre Dame has a pub on campus, which is pretty unique. It's called Legends and also has a club inside. It was a really nice building. The club has hosted many musicians/comedians/performers over the years. They had a whole wall with pictures of everyone who has performed there. 

Part of the wall of pictures

Flags from the universities that Notre Dame plays during football season, including my own BYU!

We saw both dining halls on campus. They seemed pretty dated, but were still pretty nice. We ate lunch at one of them. It was fun to taste another school's food and they had some pretty yummy options. Notre Dame is really big on the feeling of community. They really want their students to get to know each other and become united. They even require all students to live on campus with a random roommate for freshman year. Pretty cool! The seating in the dining halls is meant to encourage this goal.

Inside one of the dining halls.

After lunch was my favorite part of the day! We took a walking tour of campus. We were so blessed to have such a beautiful day for this trip. The skies were blue, humidity was low, and there was a nice breeze. It really couldn't have been better. We were led around campus and learned a few history tidbits about the university.

This porch is in the movie Rudy

The grotto on campus 

The gold dome with Mary on top

Me with touchdown Jesus

The football stadium. If only they'd let us see inside!

Another shot of touchdown Jesus

We also made a pit stop at the bookstore and the woman from dining services that we spent the day with was so nice and gave us all goody bags to take home. It was such an awesome day! I loved it all!

Friday Jeanette and I started the day by finalizing which recipes we're going to test for our food truck special debut. I'll talk more about this next week, but don't worry, we're going to be making something delicious :)

The afternoon was spent in the good old Gallery. Lunchtime was super busy. A few large conference groups came through and they filled up the place. It was fun to get a small taste of what every day is like during the school year. I also helped prepare sandwiches for box lunches. Sometimes groups order box lunches from The Gallery. They usually contain a sandwich, chips, soda, fruit, and a cookie. 

I can't believe how close my time is to being done here. The next two weeks should be really fun!