Monday, 9/25-Tuesday 9/26: Our building has a little tiny elevator, which was helpful for getting my massive suitcases upstairs. But usually we come up the spiral staircase, because it’s only one floor, after all. When you come into the apartment, there’s a little foyer area with a coat rack, and double doors that lead into the spacious living room/dining room area. In one corner of the living room is a tiny wooden spiral staircase that leads to the master bedroom and a bathroom. (We aren’t renting the master bedroom, because the owner comes back about once a month for business. But she encouraged us to use the downstairs bathroom, because it has a “superior” shower.) Our bedrooms are at either end of a hallway that is behind you and to the left when you first come in the door. Laura’s is done in pink, and mine is done in blue. And we have matching desks, bookshelves, and wardrobes that are clearly from IKEA. In between the bedrooms, on the right side of the hallway are a “salle de bains” with a sink and bathtub, and a separate “WC” with a toilet and the washing machine. The kitchen is on the left and features lovely appliances. Anyway, the apartment is very nice.

Monday afternoon, Laura showed me around our quartier. There are several boulangeries where we can buy bread, a Monoprix supermarket, a fair number of neighborhood bars/brasseries, a fromagerie, a pharmacie, some tabacs, and a big church. There are also two MacDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, and a Domino’s. We are near the Alésia stop on the #4 line of the Metro.

I did some of my own wandering around the neighborhood on Tuesday. I got a little bit lost and I was hungry, so I decided to get a sandwich. I walked by a couple of sandwich places and spotted a bar with a sandwich menu. So I went in and looked at the sandwich menu. The bartender (it turned out she was the owner) asked me what kind of sandwich I wanted, and I asked for a sandwich au pâté, since they seemed inexpensive. And then I asked for a beer, and I did not understand the next thing she said at all. It sounded like “mm-Lef-womp-wa.” So this guy who was sitting at the bar pointed at his beer and said “une Leffe” and I was like, “Oh, sure, I’ll have one of those.” I had not heard of Leffe before, but it turned out to be quite good. The bartender then says to the guy, “Merci, Monsieur le professeur.” Then she went to get me a sandwich. She came back with this enormous long roll full of pâté, and she told me it was “pâté Grand-mère.” I assumed that was supposed to be evocative of having been made by a grandmother rather than being made of grandmothers. The sandwich was very good, but of course the minute I started eating, the bartender wanted to have a conversation. So she asked me if I was Canadian, and I said no, I was from the U.S. She asked where. I said Chicago. She told me she has a sister in Ohio and that her sister is coming to visit soon. Then she talked to the other guy some more, and when he left she decided to make a phone call to complain about her neighbors to their landlord. I wasn’t really clear what the issue with the neighbors was. It sounded like an extra person had moved in. She was definitely annoyed about it, and couched her annoyance as concern for her business.

I don’t really remember what else happened that day. I probably went to bed early because I knew I had to get up the next morning for our first seminar meeting.