Cell Phone

Finally got my phone working! I'm going to be canceling my old number, so don't try to reach me on it! Instead, you can reach me on my French number if it's really necessary. Text messaging is not so expensive, so you can always do that too. Please email me if you would like to know my new number.

Today I bought my 'Navigo' pass, and now I feel almost like an authentic Parisian! The Navigo pass is just like a muni fast pass, but for the métro here. I'm taking advantage of having unlimited rides by getting on and off the train as much as possible. Today, a few of us stopped at Place d'Italie, which is basically a really big shopping center. Literally every single store has huge "Soldes" signs in the windows - that means "Sale!" Supposedly, January is the one month when stores have sales. After February, they don't have any more sales until a long time. Now is the time to get shopping done!

A few weird things about France:

1. They eat with both hands on the table. You don't put your hands on your lap. At all. They don't trust it. Also, you keep the fork in your left hand and the knife in your right hand. No switching, like in the US.
2. When you eat bread with a meal, it DOES NOT GO ON THE PLATE! Never. You put the bread right on the table, so that it doesn't get ruined by whatever is on your plate.
   
3. Showers have no stand for the nozzle, and no shower curtain. It's bizarre.
4. The toilet is separate from the sink/shower room ("bath" room).
5. The public restrooms ("toilettes") have fully-walled compartments, not stalls. You can't see your neighbor's feet when you go in.
6. The tip is included in the price of a meal. This makes it a lot easier to figure out what to pay, i.e. you just pay what they tell you to pay.
7. The French have this tradition of January where they hide a little plastic thing in a cake. Then you cut the pieces and hand them out. Whoever gets the piece with the plastic thing in it has to buy the next week's cake, or alternately, gets to be the King. When handing out the pieces, the youngest member (usually the child) goes under the table and calls out who gets which piece, so that it is totally random. The whole charade has a biblical reference, something about 3 kings and an epiphany.. I think...
8. I think I ate duck today at lunch. It tasted a lot like turkey, but drier and a little rougher.
   

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'm hoping to go to the Paris Catacombs!