Shopping On Mars

Whenever my mom goes to a new country, or even sometimes just an out of the way place, she always finds a grocery store. Sometimes she will invent a need (aloe! Corn chips! Obviously together...) But more often it is just a kind of wander by and pop in kind of thing. It's her litmus test. Restaurants with translated menues and American media steryotypes can feed me all the lies they want, but this grocery store is going to be honest with me. How do you people live? Seriously. How does this all work?

And she finds out. How many American brands they stock. What kind of deals they have. What do they try to get you to impulse buy at checkout. How much does a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk cost. And we all leave a little bit better informed about the way the world beyond us works.

A noble pursuit, to be certain. But an exploratory mission that photographs a planet's atmosphere is not the same as landing on the surface.

And Houston, we have our problem. I'm going to say that over the past 8 days I have picked up 2 dozen or so, maybe more, French words and phrases. Unfortunately none of these words were butter, or blueberry, or milk. When do you don't speak French, how do you tell the difference between milk and creme?!? In short, you don't. You just go for it and hope for the best.

I moved in to my apartment (technically a rented room within someone else's apartment) on Wednesday just after noon. In addition to being a huge burden released, it was also an invitation to do my absolute favorite chore: shop. I needed a blow dryer. I wanted a thick graphite pencil for sketching. My key is completely naked and desperate for something adorable to cling to to prevent it getting lost in my bag. Bag. Singular. I want a new bag! How could I come to the fashion capital of the universe with one purse? Man plans; God laughs. Ammiright? Not quite. But you see what I'm getting at.

Ever since I committed to France I have had something else to live for besides the adrenaline surge of newly acquired clothing, so I've been very good. Everything I brought with me is something I already owned. No splurges. No extravagances. I was a good girl. But now, in Paris with literally nothing to do except breathe until school starts, how can you expect me not to wander in and out of the stores on Raspaille and St Michel and Bd St. Germaine as street jazz quartets belt Amy Whinehouse and Frank Sinatra at me. I am only so strong!

And for the most part I have been good. I really want a pair of shoes, but I've resisted, despite having visiting no fewer than 3 dozen shoes stores. I have been spending wisely and frugally and the success of that goal is a kind of reward unto itself. But as a standalone activity, as an exercise in orienting myself with a new culture and its standards, this shopping without buying may be the most fun I have had shopping...Ever.

Bon jour! Bon nuit! They say, welcoming me to the store. Bon jour! Bon nuit! I say back, in my terrible accent, thankful to them for letting me play along. I browse. I listen to snippets of French conversation. I try to pull apart the words. I fail. I move back to the street. Someone asks me what time it is. They could be asking me where I bought my face, for all I know, but they thought I was French! Magnifique!

It all feels very familiar, except for the part that I don't know what anyone is saying and there are all these unwritten rules that I don't know. It's solde, which is a semi annual sale that's like black Friday on crack but for a month and all the stores, especially the more popular ones, just look like diagrams of the circulatory system: everyone moving around in these big loops and then breaking off in to tangential loops for better access to shoes, coats, skirts, dogs, etc. But that's one thing. You pick up on it. But how close do I stand to the person in front of me in line? How friendly am I to the cashier. How close am I allowed to get to someone whose monopolizing a whole section of the wall? (Hint hint move over buddy)

I have no idea! And there's really no field guide to the thickets of Parisian retail grounds. But the whole thing feels remarkably like playing dress up. I was never particularly enamored with this exercise, but this feels like a more positive, thrilling version of that. I get to pretend that I live here. That I know what's going on. That this is the mango I always go to and I just can't bare the h&m on the champs Élysées. And the REALLY fun thing about this is that I do actually live here. And this is actually my neighborhood shopping. And I actually don't have an interest in submitting myself to the plebs on the champs Élysées. So all this browsing and exploring and discovering is actually way cooler than playing make believe, because it's actually true. My fantasy has come to life. The Kilo Shop is my first stop for anything apparel based. Rogier and Ple is my favorite and unparalleled art store. Market is my supermarket. And what a cleverly named super market it is.

So even though I have no idea what anyone is ever saying to me, I'm not even faking it until i make it, I'm just making it work. Bienvenue à moi chez.