Burned and bruised but happy

So my first week as a stagiare (intern) is complete, and it feels pretty good. Friday was a little crazy in the kitchen- me and this other cook had to break down like 12 seabass and make about 5 gallons of onion soup, which means I had to peal about 50 onions, so I really had to put my knife skills to the test.
To bring you up to speed, knife skills are kind of a hallmark of how good you are as a cook. If somebody can dice a pepper really fast, or fillet a fish really well, it tells you something about them. They are experienced, fast, agile and precise. These are four words that I would not apply to myself at the moment. For example, a small dice is a dice of any vegetable or fruit that is exactly one eighth of an inch by one eighth of an inch. Pretty small, and that is pretty hard to do, but there are guys who can do that to 50 onions in like 5 minutes. I, however, need a bit more time. For example, I took a bit longer with dicing those onions because I had to pick out the pieces that had my blood on them because chef thinks that bleeding in the soup is "unsanitary." What a quack. I jabbed myself in the thumb pretty good; its not too big of a cut, but its deep. It really made me realize how often the thumb is used. I have been reopenning the cut all weekend. Sometimes I think this whole opposable thumb thing is overrated.
Later that same day, I was grilling some chicken in the show kitchen (where all the customers can watch), and I went to pick up a bowl of raw chicken that I wanted to prep. Turns out it was sitting juuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit too close to the, um, fire, and I burned my hand on it. You have no idea how hard it is not to scream when you are barbequing yourself in front of 12 Korean business men. They were polite enough not to take out their cameras to capture that precious moment, but still, if they hadnt ordered the chicken in the first place.....
So I am officially in the club. Everybody has these cuts and scars, and they are a kind of badge of honor, so I guess Im cool now.
WANG UPDATE:
The underwear are off the walls. He reports that he had washed them in the sink- the sink in our room - the sink where I brush my teeth- the sink that I will now use to throw up uncontrollably- and had hung them on the walls to dry. He "doesnt trust the woman who does the laundry" but only with his underwear. He is more than happy to let her wash the rest of his clothes, as though his underwear are some sort of mystic sexual artifact that this laundress is clearly too naive to handle. I dont know, I mean, I guess they could be. Mine are...
In other news, my Wang is having a hard time understanding the English accent. He tells me that he is trying to appear "more happy" in front of the Apollos guests because that is what his manager told him to do. He says he smiles all the time now, so they can see how happy he is to serve them. People, I have seen this guy do it. He walks around the restaurant with this enormous smile on his face that makes him look way too happy to be there; in fact, he kind of looks a little crazy, but he persists with this smile that looks like someone has tried to pull his mouth all the way around his head. Still the manager is unhappy, and this is where the accent problem comes in, because, you see, his manager didnt say "You smile" as some sort of command. No no, gentle reader, he actually told Wang "You smell" so poor Wang is wandering the restaurant, stinking to high heaven and smiling like he just won the lotto, and wondering what the problem could be. Turns out, the problem is that he smokes too much and wears his work suit while doing it, so it reaks of stale cigarettes. Why does it smell so when we have a laundry lady? Because Will doesnt trust her with that either.
This is what I live with. And you all felt bad for Ruta.
This weekend, I spent all of Friday evening and all of Saturday in Paris. I did some of the touristy stuff (Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, etc) but at night a new friend, Olivier, took us out to a club (Latin music). That was a good time; it was near the Bastille area, which is really young and fun. That was Friday. On Saturday, my friend Esteban and I were in the city, and stopped to have a beer on the Champs Elysees. Bad idea. Right now the exchange rate here is .5 euros to the dollar, which translates to half. So if I exchange 100 dollars I get 50 euros, get it? Thats REALLY bad. I ordered my beer, and this tiny little glass was delivered. I thought it was a sippy cup or something, but it was actually my beer. Three sips later, I was done, and we decided to pay and get the hell out of there. My bill? Ten euros for the beer. TEN. That was a twenty dollar beer, and on the left bank, thats pretty common. My days of beer snobbery have ended.
That night, we all met up on the hill below Sacre Coeur, the church that is at the highest point of Paris. There were loads of kids there, but hanging out, looking down on Paris. It was a blast. It was the last weekend in Paris for a couple of guys from the hotel, so we were out to celebrate. Someone brought a bottle of whiskey, and it turns out that the more I drank, the better my French got. Weird. Later we all went to a bar in Place Pigalle (another neighborhood in Paris), and I got in at about 5am. It was a lot of fun, and I have absolutely no desire to go back to work tomorrow.
However, seeing as it is 11:30 here, I best be on my way to bed, as I have a feeling I will be losing a lot of blood in the morning.