Gettin' Ready for a Big Week

Today has been rather low key so far. This morning, Paul talked with us for a long time about career opportunities and management styles, etc. It wasn't exactly planned for us to have this discussion, it was more of a side conversation that ended up lasting about an hour--nonetheless, it was educational. After our talk, Tara and I finally did the last check over our menus! We have officially entered every menu for the next school year at MSU!! Woohoo!! Believe me, it was a long and tedious job, but we are glad that it is finally over. After lunch, Paul gave us the rundown of how our week was going to run. Tomorrow, we have a big meeting in Billings, MT (about 2 hours away) with Western Marketing. Western Marketing is the largest foodservice brokerage in Montana. We will be touring the facility and then participating in a deli meat cutting. We will sample what MSU is currently using and then we will sample some other products that Western Marketing has to offer us (hopefully at a lower price). To get ready for this meeting, Tara and I will need to brush up on our foodservice lingo (all written out for us in our handy dandy internship binders) as well as remember to bring the MSU usage binder. This binder has all of the usages for every item involved in foodservice for the 2008-2009 school year. Once we are finished at Western Marketing, Paul is going to bring us back to Bozeman through Red Lodge and Yellowstone. We will do a little sightseeing, but our main purpose of visiting Yellowstone is to tour the kitchen in the Canyon section of the park. Like I mentioned before, Paul used to manage the foodservice operation at Canyon, so he is curious to see how it is being run today. This will be another great learning experience for Tara and me because we will get to see how yet another type of foodservice operation is run. It is going to be a long day, but I am looking forward to it.

Tara and I also have our own social plans for the week! On Wednesday evening, we are going out to dinner with Tara's Aunt Jodie (it was her son who won MVP of the football game a few posts back...). Anyway, she's at MSU this week for a teacher's conference, so she wanted to see us while she was here. THEN, on Thursday evening, Tara and I want to take advantage of the live music at Wild Joe's coffee shop. THEN, on Friday, our camping trip to Haylite reservoir with Paul and his family and some other friends begins.

I will update and post photos as often as I possibly can this week! It will be busy and exciting!!

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