Certains L'Aiment Chaud

This weekend proved to be infinitely better and less stressful than the last. I woke up on Saturday morning and it was a glorious day, so I decided to take my camera out and photograph the neighborhood so I can put the pictures up here. After spending most of this summer photographing strangers, I still feel like a total asshole. Except now I'm even more of an asshole because I look like a tourist. I'm sure they can picture me back on my plaid couch in Arkansas showing the pictures to my toothless, inbred parents. That evening I went with three friends from MICEFA to Arene de Lutece to watch Some Like it Hot. Arene de Lutece is a Roman arena and one of the few Roman traces left in Paris. Apparently Rue Mouffetard used to be the Roman highway to Italy. Hmm cool. Anyway, it was totally bizarre to be watching this movie in a gladiator pit, cuz my brain can't really wrap around anything being that old.
On Sunday I got up and went to the Place Monge farmer's market, which was an interesting experience. It was basically like the farmer's markets in America, except the fishmongers and butchers were there. I swear if I have to see one more skinless rabbit with its bowels sliced open, I'm going to have a psychotic break. And I was actually considering buying some salmon from a fishmonger, but the evil meat bees were crawling all over the fish. That's right -- evil meat bees. I have no idea what they're actually called, but they're black and yellow, kind of shiny, and they bite. One year at Girl Scout camp these meat bees attacked us ruthlessly in hoards. It was so bad that Lauren Hays's mom was bitten by one in a paper towel she was holding underwater and using to scrub a dutch oven. We had to cook our meals outside and run into our cabins to eat. This was also the trip that Karin Alyon went on, and if she's reading this, she should consider herself lucky to be alive because we almost attacked her and buried her in that forest. I warned everyone when she joined the troup that she was a big weirdo, but no one listens to me.
ANYWAY. No fish. But I needed garlic. But how to ask for it? I'm not even sure what one unit of garlic is called in English (a head? I think it's a head of garlic), much less in French. So I thought, okay, I'll just ask for two garlics. "J'aimerai deux ails, s'il vous plait." It worked well enough, but he was disappointed at only making a 0,59 sale and I'm pretty sure he knew I was American. No matter. Oh and I made a HUGE ass of myself with the homeless-newspaper vendor (the newspaper is for the homeless, I'm pretty sure the guy wasn't homeless). Anyway, it's basically the Parisian Street Sheet. And I walked by this guy and he sort of shoved it in my hand, so I thought it was free. Not so. I could hear his voice a little and him poking me as I hurried away, but he caught up to me and apparently it wasn't free. Haha. So I gave it back, told home "desolee," and peaced it. I definitely made an idiot of myself, but maybe this guy shouldn't shove newspapers into people's hands.
That afternoon I braved the laundromat for the first time. I packed my clothes, sheets, and towels into duffel bags and headed to the nearest one, about two blocks away. The previous tenant here left me a note to warn me that you pay for each machine at a central station, so I kept that in mind. I managed to fit everything into one machine, paid my 3,40 (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH) at the station, and sat down with Anna Wintour's biography. I usually leave my laundry in the machines and leave when I do it, but this was my first time using public machines, so I wasn't sure of the protocol.
A strange Frenchman with heinous BO came in and put about three loads of wet clothes into two dryers. He came back with three more loads of clothes and put them in the washing machines. Then he left. But he never turned the dryers on. I was perplexed, but also secretly laughing because he was smelly and about to come back to a ton of wet clothing. He did come back about half an hour later, emptied the three washing machines and added them to his loads already in the dryers. This asshole wasn't stupid -- he had just hogged those dryers for half an hour without actually drying anyway.
This next story is bittersweet. Haha. This guy came in and moved his stuff into a dryer. He left and came back with a baguette and Cadbury chocolate-dipped biscuits. He set them down on a washing machine, took his stuff out of the dryer, and left. I thought maybe he was coming back for them, but who would leave their food in the laundromat while they wait at home for their clothes to wash? About half an hour later, he was still gone. So I did what any poor student does -- I jacked them. Sorry, dude.
So after you pay 3,40 to do your tiny load of laundry in one of maybe 12 machines, you put it in a giant dryer, one of five. I guess the idea is to wash separately and dry together. Whatever. But it costs one euro for every ten minutes in the dryer. Luckily they are industrial dryers you probably don't need more than twenty minutes to dry, but I was over it after one cycle so I just shlepped my slightly moist stuff home.