Ou est le supermarche????

So this morning I woke up and my family invited me to go with them to see a Mahler concert in the park, which is nice, but I had to go and do my grocery shopping. Oh dear.

Yesterday I did a little tour of the neighborhood and they showed me where everything is. Too bad I forgot almost everything. So after getting pushed out the door to shop (because most everything is closed on Sunday afternoons and evenings), a wave of moderate panic swept over me. After running around the neighborhood with a crazy look in my eye, I finally crumbled and asked someone in a panic-ed broken french is they knew where a supermarket was. Of course the young man looked at me like I was totally insane and told me there was one a block away, which I sort of knew the entire time. There are FOUR supermarkets within two blocks of my apartment. How I had not yet run into one of them was just bad luck.

So after finally finding the grocery store, I went in. Not only was it totally pandemonium, it is not like an american grocery store. People here have a totally different conception of personal space, how to walk in aisles, all that. I am not saying that its necessairly better in America, but if there is some code of conduct here it is more or less impossible to decipher. I ended up getting:

Spaghetti
Sauce
Cereal (but I forgot the milk)
Some Cheese (but I forgot the bread)

As my old roomate Val would surely say "Go Katharine"

Incidents and Accidents like this are the best, worst, and hardest part of living in Paris. I know how to grocery shop and I know how to speak French, but at the same time I have no idea how to shop or speak. Every banal, basic task from home becomes an adventure and an ordeal.

Looks like tonight will be some spaghetti and dry cereal!