Faux pas

-Realized, hours after the fact, that the "broken" hall light I tried to turn on meant that I'd shut the light in all the showers, the shower light being next to the one I was looking for. Hoping no one was in a shower, although I think (hope?) there's a way to turn it back on from inside. It might not be a terrible idea for those to be labeled.

-In either language! Although I completely forgot how to say "alarm clock." For what it's worth, Monoprix, at least the one I went to, doesn't have any.

-Went to Monoprix with exactly one tote bag. Knowing the Monoprix reusable totes to fall apart, and that I needed bags for garbage (so as not to mimic my predecessor here), I ended up with a whole bunch of plastic ones. This is not done, I suppose, given the dirty looks I got with the bags, looks I hadn't got when I was just a regular American.

-A regular American, that is, eating a croissant (beurre!) while walking down the street around 2pm. In my defense, I was trying to sleep when the flight attendants served breakfast, and in NY, this would have meant I was getting an early start.

-While eating said croissant, looked longingly through the window of a signless minimalist boutique, whose internal signage, however, reminded me of the soldes. Then I went and spent 92 euros on... where to begin? Water heater, hairdryer, cutlery, dish detergent, shampoo... All reasonably priced, all necessary for a not uncomfortable winter-to-summer in a Paris dorm room. Which got me thinking of Prudie's advice to the would-be Shakespeare Studies grad student - that it's better to enter a high-paying field and vacation abroad. When one of the plastic bags' handles started to tear, Paris started to seem a little less special.