But seriously, I have had to make some adjustments to living in a foreign country. For example, I've had to "adjust" to the fact that I now live right across the street from the back of a Monoprix (pretty much a Super Target, but with more cheese), and therefore, I've "adjusted" my sleeping habits to work around their three-to-six a.m. delivery schedule of all things canned, boxed, and bottled.
Speaking of Monoprix, it's my new favorite hangout (just overtaking McDonald's). In the two full days I've been here, I've made four trips to the multi-level mega chain. I was going to go there for dinner tonight, at the in-house café next to the electronics section, but then I realized they stopped serving at seven. And I had already been there for lunch.
So I was met with a dilemma. For the past few days, I've been subsisting on Monoprix's pain chocolats and half of a stale baguette. But (wo)man cannot live on bread alone.* Thus, my choices for dinner boiled down to two options: I could eat spoonfuls of Nutella straight out of the jar while alone in my room (not opposed to the idea, actually), or I could go to (dun dun dun) a real café.
Paris is a culinary capital of the world, and I bet that, upon arrival in this city, any sane person would rush to get a table at the iconic café. Yet I put off going out to eat, in part, because of my hatred/fear of strangers (L'enfer, c'est les autres).
Really, though, I was just scared.
Scared that I'd order wrong. Scared that I'd sit at the wrong type of table. Scared I would accidently insult the patron with my wily American ways. Scared that I might mistakenly order pig's feet. Eating out is, of course, a ritual, and like all rituals, eating out in France comes with a set of codes - seating yourself, no café au lait after morning, hands kept anywhere but in your lap - that is completely ingrained in a French person but to a foreigner is completely, well, foreign. And nobody wants to mess up rituals.
But once I could take the hunger no longer, I left my little room to roam the streets of Paris (gosh, that sounds cool) in search of a suitable café. I kept making excuses, though, as to why none of the myriad eateries I passed would do -- "no open tables," "too many open tables," "that smells good - too good." I made so many excuses that after an hour of passing boulangerie after patisserie after brasserie, I found myself smack dab in the middle of the Port de Versailles, the huge expo center separating this corner of Paris from the decidedly un-chic surrounding suburbs. Fueled by a bad bout of social phobia, I had nearly driven myself out of Paris!
Lots of back tracking later, blah blah blah, and I found myself seated at a little Italian eaterie not even three minutes from my hole-in-the-wall housing. And I had barely gotten out my "bonjour" before the waiter asked me where I was from. Just like that, "Where are you from?," in English. I was kind of offended that the waiter was able to detect my American-ness after two measly syllables. Offended, but relieved.
*Has this been proven?
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