I made soup!

I have like, the worst cold in the entire world, and today after school I got really frustrated that I haven't been able to find any nice hot minestrone, so I just opened up the window, yelled "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" and went to the open market to get some vegetables.

It wasn't the best soup ever. I used some really low quality hamburger and bouillon, which kind of made it taste like feet. Delicious, flavorful feet, but still.

Treat yo self! To soup!

But I just love buying things here. Like, not even buying things I like, like shoes and sweaters and cookies. I just like making purchases because I get to talk to someone who doesn't know I'm American at first and then they figure it out and judge me. It's like a parlor game. It's fun! I get a real kick out of grocery shopping, but open markets are my favorite because the people there are so weird and the process is really confusing and the veggies are super cheap. Today I bought some tomatoes and a zucchini from these two guys, and one of them was peeling a mandarin and he offered me a piece, as a sample or whatever. And I said no thanks because I am morally opposed to trying samples of things I have no intention of buying. And the he was like, "You want, or you don't want?" (But in French and grammatically correct.) And I was like, "I don't want." (But in French and grammatically correct.) And then...well, he handed me half a mandarin anyway. It was really good. And then he realized I don't speak French and I realized that he didn't speak English. Come to think of it, not really sure he spoke French either.

Good times.

Then, after I made a giant pot of soup in a house that's not mine with dishes and tupperware that I'm not 100% sure I'm supposed to use, I went to this really creepy housewares store across the street. It was soooooo huge, and they had so many different types of pillows and so many different kinds of knives and coffee mugs, but there were only like 4 people in there and there was only one kind of tupperware. Seriously. 15 colors of coffee cup and only one size, one color, one style of Tupperware in the whole place. I don't get it.

Anyway, when I was purchasing several of this one kind of tupperware they had, the guy asked me if I had a Conforama card (who has a loyalty card for a housewares store? How often do you need new linens?), and then he asked me if I was interested in getting one. But I wasn't quite sure that that's what he said, so I said, "...no?" instead of "no merci, monsieur!" I don't know if he figured out that I'm not a native French speaker, but it was really awkward and hilarious because he thought I was just being mean, and then I started laughing quietly to myself.

All my best adventures are in checkout lines!

By the way, it really was the creepiest store. The checkout was weird and looked like it was part of this mini loan office that was there too, so I spent a long time looking around before I got in line. And he didn't have a cash register, he just had a regular keyboard and a cashbox. And my shoes were really loud and it echoed. It was eerie.