Cher mes amis

Paris doesn't have to be as expensive as you think... Some wonderful things are actually really cheap!

For example:

Package of 24 biscuits (the kind on the bottom of petit ecoliers): €0.52
+ 1L carton of nectar from 5 kinds of citrus fruits (delicious): €0.97
+ Thing of bonne maman plum jam: €1.47 I believe?
+ 12 or so plain yogurt things: €2.90
+ 1 Kilo oranges = €2.40

=

Breakfast for a week+ yeah!!


Price comparison shopping a la Paris?

CitizenK magazine (<3!): $14 US; 1€ Paris.

DING DING DING I think we have a winner!

and definitely enjoying the dollar rising against the euro....

Miss u xoxo

Cleveland Rox,
Cleveland Sux

Weeee my life is a rollercoaster! (Cle being the worst place in the US and France being the best place in the world yeah yeah yeah)

highlight of the week, compliment of the life, YES YES YES

I step out of my placement exam for phonetics and registration for the civilizations courses, or what they call 'conferences' here, beaming and excited like a newly-minted freshman in college on the first day (a hypothetical freshman. not me. i was enjoying the purity and innocence of youth by skipping orientation activities and smoking with Yaya). I was beaming because I was placed into the advanced level for phonetics AND got into the 2 classes I wanted: 19th & 20th french literature, and France & Europe: société (aka politics, economics, etc).

2 steps later, an 80+ year old, refined-looking grandma with biiig round glasses, the kind that take up an entire old persons face and are double-paned, long coat, woven hat and a cane, stops in her tracks and angrily points said cane at me, yelling with a thick german or maybe austrian accent,


'You must learn english you damned french!!!'


loves. it.

Edumacation

I learn lots of new words and slang words everday but so far this is my favorite one that I learned today from my 50-smthing year old prof in leather pants and a biker jacket (bc he rode his moto to class today... yes!).

'Les bo-bos'

It means 'bourgeois-bohèmes.' In explaining which parisians this was in reference to, he basically described your average NYT reader.

on the slang front another tough thing - txting. txting lingo 'whole nother language' yada yada... we hear our old people saying that in the states but. when its in another language it sux bc u can't look up the words in the dictionary cuz u have no idea what they are or are combined or are substituted like instead of 'qui' its 'ke' arggghh haha


On another note...
I've decided it should be illegal to sell packages of pre-made crepes from Breton (their home town) and nutella in the same supermarket. Maybe the solution is to just buy all of it from all stores so it will no longer be in the supermarket when I'm shopping and hungry...

other delicious things... almond yogurt... mmmm. all yogurt here in general of course, but the crème almond is great.

RIP

Favorite designer, Alexander McQueen... :(

YES

Thank you to Tara for sending this...

The hood

I am now settled and content. I live in a chambre de bonne, or essentially, a maid's room in the attic of a really nice appartment building in the quartier latin. Fortunately everything in my little shoebox is new and redone so its not really like living in the roof....My favorite part about it is that its called a chambre de bonne (bedroom of good), and then the sign on the door to the 7th floor says 'étage superieurs' or something, but you get up there, and its a whole slew of tiny apartents with numbers stenciled on jail-style and the whole floor looking like maybe its a step up from alcatraz, bc at least the cells have doors not bars.

Observations thus far.

Mad Props. I don't know why but I'm seeing canes everywhere! I was thinking god why are all these (mostly women) young and old needing canes is it the whole 4 inch heels on cobblestone ruining your knees thing is that the direction that im going too?? but then i saw one lying on the floor in the corner at a nightclub over the weekend, and i realized that theyre probably all just a bunch of fakers, and remembered that it does take a lot to get any pity out of a french person, nevermind a kind word or a door held unless they think you're attractive. so i give them props for their props.

Macarons at McDonald's. Ok so this is kind of brilliant. I know Charlisse said Starbucks in Seattle has macarons (the ones here do not but they DO have pancake specials...???) but, its sort of brilliant that not only do the french McDonalds have your everyday fatty grease-dripping meat burgers, but also, they sell petite light-as-air and multicolored pastel pastry burgers... genius. Some places in the US call macarons 'luxembourgers'... I'm not sure if thats what MickyD's calls them here, but bravo macdunaldz, bravo!

Flower shops. I think the most common types of businesses in my neighborhood are 1. flower shops 2. bakeries 3. cheese shops 4. butchery. How can a country like this NOT be #1 for quality of life??

Le job. My neighborhood is a cobblestone square with a notre dame style cathedral and a windy cobblestony street with markets and little shops. I got a job at one of the tiny tiny restaurants on this tiny windy street, but I don't know anything about the pay, how often, or anything else. I know its called Chez Nadine.

After being completely berated by a stodgey irish woman in the 6th arrondisement for speaking french to her ('Yer stoopid yeh know dat??' for introducing myself and why I was there in French not in English, as apparently this was an IRISH bar despite all the french people)I've filled my job hunt with more smiles than actual words.

So... when the ity bity restaurant around the corner, Chez Nadine, said to me, 'Come saturday,' I said 'Ok.' And then I turned around and left. And on saturday, I will do as I'm told.

Classes start tomorrow! I'm in the intermediate level... though I'll have an extended review period because I don't remember much french now!!

After being sick all week upon arrival to paris, i finally did some house - hunting; today i visited a rich old woman in her palacial apartment near the eiffel tower (fancy area) to talk to her about renting a maids room in one of her buildings.

lets see so other than being sick, ive done a fair bit of what youd expect a natasha in paris experience would be (ahem, *broke* natasha)- spinning my wheels, eating macarons, freaking out. i was completely sure that the preagreed upon 5 day stay was firm (with my couchsurfer) so when saturday rolled around and i was sick and homeless, and sunday rolled around when i seemed to have misunderstood him to have said something lke 'ok so you're out by 5 pm tomorrow got it?' i started to freak out a little. mostly bc i have a very large suitcase too big to fit through european doors it is full of shoes = heavy!! so i msged lots of couchsurfers with little success until i finally posted a major SOS on the paris group bulletin board sunday night (on the couchsurfing site). monday at 5 im like out the door and he comes home and hes like oh ur already leaving? u can stay another day or 2 if u need to u know.

fucking language barriers.

david sedaris humor has been quite comforting for this experience lol.

but anyway. got myself a cute little shoebox with a view of all of paris (in the quartier latin) and everything inside is new which is nice. and it has an elevator up 5 of the 7 floors... major plus! now after spending all day going to banks of scotlands all over paris to find out theres no banks for doing banking, im trying to figure out how to get nearly a grand by the morning, and what i want for dinner.

lol.

on a more normal note (or perhaps less normal), saw a movie of serge gainsbourgs life it was cool.