Sad cats, cheap cheese, and Victor Hugo

This morning I hit up the American Church for the first time since I was still looking for a place to live, with the hope that some cute Franco-American family was looking for an American babysitter to take care of their kids a few days a week. Not really the case -- there's an Irish setter that needs to be walked every single day for a couple in the center of Paris, and a lot of people want maids. Huh. Not so much with the success.

On the way home, I stopped at my quartier marche -- it's a small market on Saturday and Wednesday (not the same as my Sunday market, which is at Place Jeanne d'Arc) -- the Vincent-Auriol market goes underneath the above ground metro line and is full of produce sellers who will shout at you claiming to sell the cheapest produce. Reminds me of Senegal. I always go to a middle-aged woman and a younger guy who sell me cheap fruit and don't shout at me. They're nice and reasonably priced. Today I spent about half of what I would spend on fruit at the supermarche on bananas, apples, and tomatoes. There's also a cheese stand, where you can buy delicious cheese, and if you stick to small amounts (a sliver of cumin gouda, a little mound of chevre) it's also pretty cheap. And then there is the flower man, who sells fresh-cut flowers for a fraction of what you pay in the neighborhood florist shops.

I should add that the people I buy my cheese and produce from are really friendly. In Paris, people who have these jobs are often just plain rude -- not all the time, but there's less of a need to be overly friendly like in the US -- so it's really nice to have the cheese lady put up with my need to "reflechir" over the fromage and then only charge me 4 euro for two kinds that will last me all week.

I also discovered a boulangerie today that is apparently run by a woman with a sense of humor. This made my day. The thing is -- okay, my salary is not very much. I haven't even been paid yet, and when I do get paid, most of my pay will go to rent. So when I spend money, I'm more careful about it here. I like to linger over the pastry case before I pick out my pain au chocolat. I want to get my money's worth. I mean, I don't want to spend it on an unworthy, sub-par, not delicious enough pastry. When you're doing Paris on the cheap, you've got to make these things count. And a lot of times, Parisians aren't really fans of customers leaning over the pastry case deep in thought for a mini-eternity, when you could just buy your baguette and a pastry and head out.

But this woman? As I looked around her bakery and comparison-shopped tonight's dessert and explained myself by saying, "I have to reflect a little bit," she said, "That's fine. I'm open until 5."

Word. I am coming back.

So, things that I love about Paris:
-cumin gouda
-chevre
-French candy (Actually, I think Haribo is German, but still...)
-pain au chocolat
-how much more I read here
-how cheap and delicious my groceries are
-having breakfast in my apartment and looking out onto the other buildings and the courtyard
-free libraries that have excellent English sections
-cheap pools
-goofy little daily interactions
-the best public transit of anywhere I've ever lived
-my tiny kitchen and bedroom, especially since my last Ikea trip
-living alone (can be really nice, especially when the city gets overwhelming)

Things I don't like about Paris:
-my tiny, problematic shower
-having to watch my step over the urine trails on the sidewalk all the time
-how everything kind of slows down when it rains because people just walk everywhere
-old plumbing systems and consequent problems with pipes and stuff
-the fact that one of my hallway neighbors is turning out to be Mr. All Bad Music All The Time and seems to really enjoy the late-night conversations with people with high-pitched voices (and, this being an apartment building and not Smith, I can't just go over there all bleary-eyed and indignant and be like, "I have a test tomorrow, can you please be quiet?")
-living alone (can get lonely sometimes)

Things I miss about home:
-having on oven. I keep wanting to bake some cookies or brownies or something and that is just out of the question when your kitchen is equipped with hot plates and a mini-fridge.
-PANCAKES. Preferably chocolate chip or blueberry. I really want some pancakes. I don't know why, I don't even eat them that often at home.
-Oreos and peanut butter. Okay, so you can get both here, but they're so expensive!
-how everything doesn't close early,
-and how everything is (pretty much) open on Sunday
-a good mocha/latte that doesn't cost more than week's worth of bread
-American bureaucracy. I never thought I'd say that, but not getting paid until almost 3 months after my arrival in Paris? Yeah. I miss you, United States.

But one thing I love about Paris -- these random moments that sometimes happen in the metro. Like today, I was heading home from Invalides and the American Church with my earbuds in, and I was kind of on autopilot. I got to the Etoile/Nation line, and I started down the corridor to the direction of Etoile, when I realized that Nation is the direction where my neighborhood is, and so I quickly spun around and headed over to Nation.

A middle-aged woman in a hijab who was standing in the Nation corridor saw the whole thing and just smiled at me. I could tell she thought it was funny but there was nothing malicious about it. I smiled back and it was like we were in on a joke. This is a stranger I will never see again, but it's funny how you can connect with people in unexpected ways, even fleetingly, in a huge city full of strangers, which is exactly what Paris is.

I have plans to go to Victor Hugo's house this afternoon, but that moment made my day.

I go back to work tomorrow and I can't wait to start teaching again and see my students and attempt to make small talk in the teachers' lounge and have a million French children ask me questions about whether or not I was born in England or the English words for the days of the week or whether or not I have friends in Paris. I've already planned one lesson for Friday. We're playing Bingo with numbers up to 20 in English. Last week they counted pictures on the board and I tried to teach them little bits of English.

"How many sad cats are there?"
"Zair hah firteen sad cats."

"How many cats with hats are there?"
"Zair hah ten cats ins ats."

Vacation, schmacation, France. Maybe it's that pesky American/Protestant/Puritan work ethic, but I like going to work.