Ma Vie Quotidienne~My Daily Life

In case you were wondering, not every day is galettes and gallivanting. But as of now, I am still easily charmed by my life here, like my daily métro commute and my neighborhood. The cliché image of a French person toting a baguette? Not cliché, 100% true. In the morning, just about 1/3 people has a baguette peeking out of their bag, having just come from their preferrred boulangerie to pick up a baguette (or 2 or 3, which is also common) for the family.

Turns out that my preferred bread bakery is also the favorite of my host parents, so that's good. This house gives them quite a bit of business. The bakery is just on the corner, across the street, and its run by a woman from Normandy, who is a French force of nature.

Below are some snippets of the things I see/do every day, or nearly that often, to give you a glimpse of what my life here is actually like:

My kitty friend in the café down the block. She was very cooperative while I photographed her.

I can see this beautiful old church from the living room window; my roommate and I already call it "our church."

What a comfort! The Gallo family made it all the way to France! If the price weren't in Euros, I could very well be at the CVS in Ann Arbor. I found this at the Monoprix (convenient grocery store) 10 seconds away from my front door. I'm there all the time anyway

A men's shoe store down the street, that I detest, because I always mistake it for a charming wine store. I blame the lights.

I spend quite a bit of time with these jokers, Diarra and Anne. Here, we are actually walking to lunch, but we stopped for muffins along the way...Gluttony just seems right in Paris

The view from the Madeleine church, a block away from the Middlebury Center where I take classes. This was a day when the sun finally decided to show its face. Not bad, right?

My French parents, at our first family dinner. My host mom is a great cook, and her husband is an excellent wine-pourer.
 

Additional pictures of "The Crew," doing what we do best: going out to bars and clubs absorb the French culture.

That's a glimpse of my life so far, but today I had a great experience where I felt like an insider, rather than the obvious American, for once. While entering the Métro after some window shopping with friends, a petite Asian woman with a baby strapped to her front muttered to herself as she came up the stairs and onto the street, "I am so f*cking lost right now.." I chuckled and was about to go on my way when I realized that I knew exactly where I was (just stops away from my métro stop, so I know the area) and could be of help.

Knowing how nice it is to hear some English when you need it most, I asked her where she was going (Bourse--she was entirely on the wrong line, not just at the wrong stop) and then led her back down to the trains, and because I had little else to do except shop for food and cook dinner, I rode the trains with her to her destination, helping her use the turnstiles and make a transfer. She thanked me profusely, but it brightened my day to realize that even when I mess up/get lost/pretty much live in bewilderment/buy cheese instead of yogurt by accident/have wordreference.com open as a permanent tab on my computer, I am not completely incompetent. It's the little things, right?