Fnac and Glace Italien

This morning I had something called “Le Petit Suisse” (the little Swiss) on my bread. It tasted like a cross between cream cheese and yogurt; it was pretty tasty and was lighter feeling than cream cheese, though the container said it was 30% fat. My host mother and I discussed the rising costs of food and the overall cost of living and also paying for school with scholarships, grants and loans and how the French are having to do more of that like Americans now. We also discussed Ikea and I think taking a trip there when her car is working again!! We’re going to the “marché” tomorrow morning and I’m hoping to buy some fresh fruit and perhaps a vegetable or two ☺.

Apparently Saturday late morning is the time for all the French to take a walk with their children as I observed while walking down to the mall, which is less than 10 minutes from the apartment. It’s amazing! I will definitely be going there again. I walked all around to see the different stores; there are quite a few that I want to explore. There is one that looks like the French version of Pottery Barn, some clothing stores, a purse store, and many others (Maren - they have a Paul bakery!!! I'm definitely going to get something from there next time!). I had actually gone to the mall to buy the 6th Harry Potter book in French and to grocery shop. My host mother recommended that I go to a bookstore called FNAC, it’s incredible! Imagine Border’s and Best Buy combined in to one store! Anyway so I wandered around for a while trying to figure out where one finds a Harry Potter book in a bookstore because I always buy them on the first day when you trip over them walking into the store. Eventually I found it and then headed to Inno (a grocery store) to get some food.

Inno was also incredible! It was really big, like the size of an American grocery store almost, and had a huge selection of items. I wandered around for at least 5 minutes before I decided to finally put something into my basket. They had a “world foods” section that had things like ramen, fluff, peanut butter (6 euros!), a bunch of British stuff and some Old El Paso products. I finally decided on pasta, tomato sauce, cheese, yogurt, bread, chicken, hummus and of course some chocolate. Hopefully I’ll more creative with groceries I stop feeling overwhelmed by the French versions of items. (BTW tomato sauce comes in MUCH smaller jars here, I bought the biggest one they had and it would take at least 3 of them be equivalent to an American jar)

After I finished my grocery shopping I decided to go back the Chocolatier that I saw while meandering around the mall. It’s called Jeff de Bruges and apparently it’s Belgian. Anyway, they had soft-serve ice cream, which is called Italian ice cream here, in amazing flavors! I finally decided on the raspberry and passion fruit combination to keep me going while I walked home. It was delicious!! For only 2 euro I will definitely be doing that again soon!!

My host mother and I talked while we ate lunch, she shared her salad with me and I ate some of my bread and cheese. Apparently she knows something about Oriental rugs too, so we discussed them for most of lunch. After lunch I just hung around the apartment and talked to friends and family online. Then my host mother’s friend Skype’d me and helped me set up French TV on my computer so I can watch it. I’m still having some technical difficulties and trying to figure them out, but it’s pretty cool! Talking to someone over the phone in French though is not easy and she was correcting me whenever I made a mistake, but I guess that’s good for learning… My host mother has also offered to help me improve my French by giving me dictations from Harry Potter if I’d like. I know I should take her up on the offer. For dinner I made myself some soup and ravioli and had some yogurt for dessert. I’ve started reading my Harry Potter book and I think I’ll do that ‘til I decide to go to bed.