Faire du shopping

Since Cheapness Studies is looking kaput, here goes:

During my first week in Paris, I've managed to acquire two new striped shirts; one pair of canvas slip-on sneakers; and just one book.* This is not counting cheese purchases the number of which I've long since lost track of; flans (same, including a 3€70 flan from Dalloyau, which I ate on the street as the haute bourgeoisie looked on in horror); one delicious and under-three-euro bottle of Cahors that will probably, at this rate, last me long enough to merit the "I am not French" tag to this post. (Or the visit to the nearby A.P.C. outlet store, where I tried on an outfit that made me look, if not Hasidic, then something more hardcore than Modern Orthodox, and probably enough so that I could wear it to assess the current state of anti-Semitism in various Paris neighborhoods. I left empty-handed.) In other words, I've done a bit of shopping. Nothing earth-shattering, but more than a typical week in NY.

I'd known on some level that The Sales had not yet arrived. But I recently met up with a fellow NYU grad student here who informed me that they're about to start and that Petit Bateau, where the striped shirts are from, is among the participants. My first thought was, what I fool I am. That pull marinière was pricey!

My second was to once again remember that one of the libraries I use is near two of the Grands Magasins, and that it's a good thing I haven't yet swung by Bon Marché, either. Depending how serious these "sales" turn out to be, I may come back a much chicer grad student. That is, at any rate, the plan.

*Lest this destroy my already slight intellectual credibility, I should point out that my first thought after a long stretch at a library (and I was at a library every day since I've been here except both Sundays and Friday) isn't that I've run out of reading material.