L'installation: il faut de bon courage!

Bonjour à tout le monde!

Premièrement: the fact that I'm updating my blog is proof of a recent grand succès! That is to say...drum roll please...I have hooked my laptop up to the internet!!! All you high-tech, Wi-Fi-loving, blackberry-toting, email-checking people back home are probably saying, "Ho-hum, what's the big deal?" But as anyone who has lived abroad will know, hooking up one's American laptop to a foreign internet system is no small feat. Here's how it goes:

Step 1: Shlep to the Fnac with Mommy (like Office Depot+Mac store+bookstore+cell phone store+...well, you get the idea)
Step 2: Attempt to navigate the five floors crowded with French students getting ready for la Rentreé; Mommy and Alice adopt "Airport Face," a term coined by the Laskin sisters to describe the open-mouthed, wide-eyed, completely lost expression often worn by K+D Laskin in airports
Step 3: Eventually locate the ethernet cords, endlessly ponder which one will work; much hand-wringing and shrugging ensues
Step 4: Find the registers to purchase the Chosen Cable d'Internet; Mommy breaks out the phrase she has perfected: "Prenez-vous le MasterCard?"
Step 5: Shelp back to the dorm only to discover that the French prefer to package ethernet cords in absolutely indestructible plastic; for lack of scissors, Mommy and Alice attack the package with a nail-clipper
Step 6: Plug the Chosen Cable d'Internet into the MacBook and discover...it doesn't fit
Step 7: Concede defeat

Today, however, I returned to the Fnac with my French friend Quentin (he was a language asistant at Claremont McKenna last year). Maybe it was just that his presence made me more confident, maybe it was because I had experienced the Fnac before, or maybe it was because he knew the magic phrase to ask the Fnac computer experts ("C'est compatible avec le Mac?"), but we found an ethernet cord and it works!!

Hassles aside (and there have been many), I am making babysteps in becoming a functional inhabitant of Paris. There are little successes everyday, and I celebrate their occurence with a level of enthousiasm akin to, say, the welcoming of a newborn (i.e. a LOT). For example, there was the little dance I did to celebrate my new coffee maker. It makes the best coffee!! Sorry Boris (my coffee maker back in California, currently living with Taiki), but you may have been upstaged. Also, there was the leap of joy into my mountainous pile of pillows (merci Maman!) to celebrate meeting the girls who live on my floor. I heard some giggling the other night so I ventured out into the hall to find (real!) French girls! There is Sophie, Delphine, Marie, and Émode--a very lively bunch who were discussing epic stomach aches when I stumbled upon them (Marie was suffering a bout of la nausée due to some very rich cheese from Émode's region of France).

To clarify: I am living in a foyer (an international dormitory, though most residents are French) full of young women about my age. I'm on the sixth floor and have a big set of windows that look out onto Parisian rooftops and the dome of the Panthéon. It is absolutely lovely (I'll post pictures soon!). The Mesdames who run the place are strict but very nice, and are forever talking about keeping one's room and the comunal kitchen propre (that is to say, very clean). My neighborhood is equal parts commercial and residential--not toursity, which is nice--with some old churches, a hospital, and beautiful buildings mixed in. But the star, à mon avis, of the 6th arrondisement (where I live), is the Luxembourg Gardens. I'm pleased to say that the gardens are less than a 10 minute walk from my dorm.

So, on that note, I'm off to wander around my quartier.

À très bientôt, and don't hesitate to email me at alaskin@middlebury.edu if you want to contact me!

Bisous,
Alice