Odds and ends

No school on Wednesdays!  It took me a long time to get used to working 7 days a week but I adjusted to all the free time almost instantly. Going back to the US is going to be a shock to my system.  I won't think about that now.

I did laundry for the first time last night.  Electricity is cheaper at certain hours here: like at night, and for a few hours in the afternoon.  The washing machine even has a timer, so you can get everything ready and it will turn itself on to wash the clothes when electricity is cheapest.  And then they dry their clothes on a clothesline, which to me always looks picturesque.

Hope it doesn't rain today!

The clothesline is in the back corner of the garden, which means nobody could see me when I took that picture.  I can imagine the neighbors saying, "is that girl seriously taking pictures of her clothes drying?" 

I now officially have a bank card, shiny and new and ready to go!  That's right, a French, chip-and-pin debit card, a mere 8 days after I set up the account.  (To be fair, the card may have been there yesterday, but I didn't get the pin in the mail until today.) 

Also, I am now the proud user of plant flavored toothpaste!  They had flavors I was used to, but I couldn't pass this up.  Also the package said "American" on it in like ten different places.  Do we have some kind of dental hygiene gold standard or something?  We definitely do not have plant flavored toothpaste, that's for sure.

Seriously.  That says "plant freshness".

In other news, I'm pretty sure I've lost weight since I came to France, which is next to unbelievable considering all the delicious goat cheese I've been eating.  The jeans that previously would button, but not zip, now do both!  I wore them for awhile even though I could barely breathe (they were kind of like a corset), just because I could.  Then I put my sweatpants back on and ate mini croissants and a mini pain au chocolat.  So two steps forward, one step back I suppose.