market, beyotches

Who needs peach moisturizer or body spray when you can just eat the real thing and then have your hands smell like it? And, mes amis, I did not just eat a regular peach, oh non non non, I ate a peche du vigne, or a vine peach. This is not, in fact, a peach that grows on a vine, but a peach that grows near grape vines, so that some of the red grapes color the outside and half of the inside dark red. It has a slightly different taste and is much prettier than a yellow peach. I picked a few up yesterday at the market at Place Jean Macé, a block away from the apartment. Yes, I am shopping at markets! Ha! Ha! Take that American grocery stores! I also picked up regular peaches, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, the most bizarre fruit ever, which it turns out is from a cactus, and tons of fresh cheese for the petite soirée I had here last night.

!!!We now interrupt this post for an important announcement- I have found THE BEST GOAT CHEESE EVER. EVER. Really. I picked it up for 1€40 at a farmer’s booth- it’s homemade, fresh, creamy chèvre like you would never find in the states. I am in love with this cheese. I’m thinking about sending out wedding announcements. It’s just a bit thicker than crème fraiche or sour cream but holds it’s shape and can be cut into slices. I want to eat it all the time, with everything. We now return to our regularly scheduled Quel est ton problème!!!

So, yes, this has been an exciting weekend, and it’s not even over yet. Friday I spent time exploring the Centre Commercial (which is apparently the biggest mall in Europe) with two of the students on the program, Taza and Kesley. Several hours dodging people can make you really hungry and not necessarily put you in the mood to cook. I had managed to go the entire time here so far without eating at a restaurant or café, but broke that streak when Kelsey and I started exploring the neighborhood (she lives about a block away) and decided on a little restaurant-pizzeria that I pass every day. Very good, not expensive and cute. Everyone there seemed to know each other, and we are determined to become regulars. We then ran out to Vieux Lyon to meet up with some other people at a Spanish café, then run out again to catch the last metro home. Saturday was a blur of market shopping, cleaning the apartment, getting myself ready and figuring out which button on the interphone buzzes people in. I was having some people over for wine and cheese (how very cliché Gina!) and then we would go out, as a post-birthday celebration (hey, it’s hard to celebrate on a Tuesday). People called me from right outside the building because they had forgotten then number of the door, made it inside, ate the lovely cheese, drank wine, etc. Marc gave a few of them mini-courses in how to tell which wine is which by the shape of the bottle and how to properly open a bottle. No one made fun of me for choosing wine based on the labels. I flew back into teacher mode for thirty seconds to explain the difference between “bien” and “bon” (adverbs and adjectives, anyone?) then realized what I was doing and flew back out. We went back to Vieux Lyon, very late, only to end up in an Irish pub that I spotted because there were Breton flags hanging in the window. Taza thought she was going to eat Styrofoam, I tried to eat other people’s candy and Marc tried to eat my hair. This is actually true. For future reference, my hair is not, in fact, edible. As has become a theme any time Marc and I go anywhere, we walked home. I managed to laze around for long portions of today before venturing out to catch a showing of Broken Flowers with Maranda and some friends of hers, Mathieu and Sophie, who then had us over for dinner. For the record, the theatre was packed- people are crazy for Bill Murray here. And the movie, yes, you should all see it. What I want to say I can’t because it will ruin the end. Ask me later. I also saw my very first episode of ER at Sophie and Mathieu’s. Yup, I had never seen it until tonight.

In other news, the lipstick I bought is supposed to have a scent, and thus I am not crazy for thinking it does. No longer will I make other people smell it to prove my sanity. And while we’re on the topic of scents, let me talk about my trouble with laundry detergent here. I have no washer or drier in the apartment, so I’m trying to hand-wash everything that I can. This is not the problem (I may even be able to do my jeans here, in the bathtub). The problem is the stupid detergent. I decided not to buy Woolite here (what I use in the states) because it’s so expensive. So off I went to decipher the various symbols on bottles here. The first time, I managed to come home with something that’s specifically for wool. Way to go, me. I wonder if I could use it for other things as well… I then made it to Carrefour and, after spending fifteen minutes looking at all the options, found something that appeared to work in both a machine and by hand. Victory! Or so I thought. I never buy scented detergent. So maybe this makes me more sensitive to it. But seriously, mes amis, this detergent makes my clothes smell like candy. No really, it does. It has been confirmed by friends (although they thought it was more like cough syrup than candy). So I can’t tell if my clothes are clean or just smell like candy. Actually, I know they’re clean, because even if they smell like candy they were washed in detergent. It is sort of funny.