Monday Minute

Welcome to the Monday Minute...every Monday I plan to update 2-3 "nuggets of wisdom" that I've learned since I've been here. It might be a funny story that happened to us, or it might just be something that's different from life in the U.S. Be sure to check back every Monday :)



Here's the first round:

**I've learned not to be too confident in my French abilities--
Transacted with my first cashier ever without Nick last week and was super proud that I understood everything and even knew how to respond in a simple conversation. Left feeling like I could pretty much conquer this foreign language thing. Fast forward 10 minutes to the grocery store where "grouchy clerk" was working (she is the only stereotypically "rude" french person I've met, but I'm pretty sure she just hates her job). After a credit card not working and her throwing some food at me after I ended up paying in euros, my optimism from a few minutes ago was quickly replaced!

**The shopping, especially food shopping, here is an experience! I go to the store pretty much everyday to get fresh things, and I'm not gonna lie, I feel like a kid on Christmas every time, especially when I discover new stores! I always loved Walmart and Target for the fact that you could get everything in one place, but I'm now in love with this kind of shopping. There's your typical grocery stores (although much smaller and with a few different kinds of foods), bakeries, butchers, and seafood places pretty much everywhere you look.

Today I discovered a store called Picard, which only carries frozen foods. It was all I could do to not just fill up my entire cart with everything from deserts to frozen vegetables to seafood. Think Kroger frozen food section times 3 plus fresher ingredients. I had to put half my stuff back when I remembered how small my freezer is! I'm so excited to check out some more little shops, especially the weekly open air markets and some specialty places like cheese shops!