La vie quotidienne

It's hard to believe I haven't been here for even a week yet; we've been so busy and done so much that it feels like longer. And even though I've spent all day everyday out and about the city I've barely scratched the surface of what this place has to offer. Our apartment couldn't be in a better spot (by the way, it wasn't built until around 1850, which according to Madame Des Mazery isn't that old. I beg to differ.). Our metro station is Brégeut-Sabin if you want to find us on a map. I'll be getting pictures of the apartment up here soon, but right now everything is in disarray because Madame is rearranging stuff.

Yesterday my roomie Angela and I found the Latin Quarter, which is so far my favorite neighborhood. It's called the Latin Quarter because it's the home of the Sorbonne, and hundreds of years ago all the students there spoke Latin. It's still crawling with students today, and so the shops and restaurants cater to the poor student crowd instead of the tourist crowd around Notre Dame or Montmartre. I had my first French crêpe (with nutella, of course) there, and found some great used book stores that are just fun to be in.

Speaking of stores, Angela and I also ventured out to Les Gobelins to get some groceries at Carrefour, a big chain grocery store. The store has two floors, or étages, with escalators connecting. There's a special escalator for shopping carts, too. The produce section comes first, along with great bread. Then there is an entire wall of cheese, and another one of yogurt. French yogurt is delicious, by the way, and I bought the cheap Carrefour stuff. If you're looking for canned or frozen goods there's not much to choose from, although there is an entire chain (Picard) dedicated to selling surgelés (frozen food). The chocolate aisle offers a variety of Kinder products, and a half dozen brands of nutella type spreads. Even the cheap stuff is delicious. There's a section of the International aisle dedicated to Mexico; there you can find Old El Paso tortillas, salsa, and taco seasoning.

Today was our first Sunday in Paris, so we all met up at church on Rue St Merri. The Paris ward (Paroisse Paris) is an eclectic mix of people from all over the world who speak all kinds of languages. Most of the new members are immigrants as far as I know, so the missionaries are kept busy translating the meeting into Mandarin. None of the Relief Society (Societé de Secours) Presidency are native French, although our teacher was. We have a YSA Sunday School and a very active Institute that all of us BYU students are encouraged to attend. The ward is very welcoming; the Relief Society had cookies and Eiffel Tower keychains for all of us.

For those of you not on facebook, here's a link to some of the pictures I've been taking. I'm still figuring out the best way to show these to everyone.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46735352@N02/




On the way home the other night Seine looked fabulous: