Life's little pleasures

Regular blog readers will know that American style mayo fetches a steep price here in Paris. The past couple of months, I have gained an alternative source of Hellmans and I just had to share my joy.

An American friend of mine makes a trip to Belgium once a month to shop at the US military commissary. She recently offered to pick me up a few things. Of course, I ordered a big jar of Hellmann's. Upon receipt of the Mondo American sized jar, I did a quick calculation of its street value in Paris, based on the baby food sized jar that I am used to buying.

1.4L of Hellmann's in Paris would be worth $27 cdn!!!! Uncle Sam helped me get it for $6!!! God bless America and my mule who brought it back.

Drinks in the Courtyard

This week the tenants of our building were invited to "prend un verre" in the courtyard. What a lovely idea! Finally, we would socialize with other members of the building beyond the "bonjour", and "pardon" 's in the hallway. I have say, this took some courage. My wingman Rupert was in Finland and D at Pony camp, so it would be just P and I to face the small talk in a foreign language. Small talk is not a particular strength of mine and small talk in french has been one of my biggest challenges since we moved here, but I felt I would be more embarrassed in not going, so I took a deep breath and plunged right in.

In the end, everyone was very nice, I did the best I could with what french I had and finally excused myself after 45min when I felt everyone was exhausted from conversing with me. Hopefully I wasn't judged too severely when I didn't personally say good bye to *each* person individually. It is considered rude not to do so here. You are expected to shake hands or give the b's (two kisses) to each and every person at the party, when leaving. I hit most of the crowd but gave up when the final three good byes required moving two old ladies from their chairs. Hopefully they didn't take it personally.