City Dwelling

Ahhh, it's been 10 days since I last posted!  My apologies.  Let's see, where to pick up?  Well it decided to become quite the blizzard last week, dumping some good snow on the greater Paris area.  I woke up one morning and couldn't see out the skylight in my room and to my amazement it was covered with SNOW!  I'm so glad I got to see some this year, as I had already left Texas when they got snow!  Here's a pic of the street I was living on with the family!

The powdery stuff was everywhere!  Here's a pic of Lisa and her mom trying to build a snowman but instead Lisa had rather engage in a snowball fight, haha!

So the exciting news as of late is that I finally moved into the city of Paris.  If you've been keeping up with the blog, you know that I have been staying with a family in a little suburb south of Paris.  This past Sunday, I made the move into the big city.  As mentioned in a previous post I'm living in little area called Montmartre. The apartment is very cute, take a look at some of the pictures!

This is the living room/sitting area

And here is the kitchen (where I won't be spending much time)

And here is my bedroom with a real working fireplace and a nice little balcony as well!

And the street below from my balcony, I'm on the 5th floor.

My first night in Paris, I decided to go explore a little bit.  The Moulin Rouge isn't too far from my apartment on Place de Clichy.  My real intentions were to go find some food and a few postcards.  But alas it was Sunday and kind of late so I just decided to pop into a fast food joint called Quick Burger.  I thought I was ordering a hamburger but somehow ended up with chicken, but it was tasty and hit the spot so no complaints I suppose.  A highlight of the meal was getting a little tub of mayo to dip my fries in!  The Quick Burger was actually next door to the Moulin Rouge so of course, like any good tourist would, I broke out my iPhone and took a quick snapshot!

I tried locating some postcards along the street but had no luck so I decided to walk back towards my apt.  I figured first though, I would pop into a little Irish Pub I had seen.  I'm so glad I stopped in, what a fun little joint!  Other than the beer's being way too expensive (EUR 6.50 for a pint), I had a blast.  Everyone spoke English and I finally had some real conversation!  The girl sitting next to me was from England and actually has lived in Paris for the last 4 years and is a dancer at the Moulin Rouge.  Her boyfriend was a bartender at the place and his name was Olivier.  And what a small world we live in, as he was born and raised in Houston, TX!  So we chatted a little bit about that.  Another cool bartender was a guy named Eddie who was Dutch.  He also spoke great english and gave me a free shot of Jameson Whiskey.  So I stayed at the bar for quite awhile as I was having a splendid time.  That is until a guy name Laurent showed up.  Apparently he is a regular at the bar and everyone knows him, but somehow he took a liking to me.  He was probably in his 50's and drunk as a skunk.  Two girls that were sitting at a booth not to far away seemed like they were a bit concerned for me.  At one point they held up a piece of paper that said really big "S.O.S?"  I shook my head YES!  So the two girls came to my rescue and acted like we were long lost friends who hadn't seen each other in years.  For the remainder of the night I sat and talked with them.  They are students here in Paris and are my age.  They are both French and their names are Emanuelle and Priscilla aka Life Savers! We had a great time chatting and I exchanged info with them so hopefully we will hang out again soon.  Finally we closed the place down around 3:00 am, but since the bartenders knew the girls I was with we were invited to stay after the bar closed to drink and hang out a bit longer.  Needless to say I rang in my first night in Paris pretty damn good.  Got home around 5:00 am and didn't get up out of bed until Tuesday!  Holy hangover!

Today I decided I needed to go buy a few groceries.  There is a supermarket not too far from my apt. called Champion.  I was probably roaming around the store for well over an hour just trying to figure out what kind of food to buy.  I knew for sure I wanted to buy some lunch meat so I first went to that section.  Ummm, can you please tell me why the largest amount of meat I could buy was 6 SLICES!  Say whhhaaa?  I can put 6 slices on 1 sandwich alone!  Of course I bought to 2 packages.  The sad thing is they even sold some with just 2 slices in a package.  Now why on earth would someone spend money on a measley 2 slices?  The highlight of the grocery store trip was happening upon a bag of Old El Paso Guacamole flavored tortilla chips.  And I busted into those bad boys tonight for dinner and let me tell ya, they are delish!  I also took the subway to the Latin Quarter this evening to finally find some postcards!  I remembered seeing a lot of souvenir shops in that area so I just decided to go there to find some since I didn't have any luck around my neck of the woods.  Well speaking of postcards I think I'll end this banter and fill out a few of them!