Rainy day

I am at a cafe, sitting at a table in a corner by the window. Fat raindrops jump, one by one, from the overhanging storefront. I am at Cafe Titon. The walls are bright green and the accents are deep red and there is jazz playing, but yesterday it was punk. In the far corner, a young French girl is talking very loudly. She is excited about something. I get wireless here.
I am going to become a "regular" at Cafe Titon, I decided. Becoming a regular, I realize, is not something one should really decide on. In the world of regulars that I imagine, you choose a place to patronize, and suddenly, without any effort or time put in on your part, the waiters know your name and your order, and you get drinks sent to you, and you're allowed behind the bar to grab your own drink or something. But that just didn't seem like it was happening for me, so I sought out Cafe Titon (there were a couple other cafes in the running for a while, but Titon beat them out), made a conscious decision, and now I will come here every day until they greet me with a "Bonjour Kate!" goddammit!

Choosing Cafe Titon coincides with a general trend of regularizing my life in Paris. I have my cafe picked out I have my class schedule picked out. I picked a day for weekly visits to the Louvre (Thursdays, 4-6---by the end of December I might have seen half the museum). Things are falling into place. I need lots of regular, planned things to keep myself from becoming completement bouleversee, overwhelmed and panicked by too many things that are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to do and see.

Last night I went to a bar by myself. A huge group of IES girls went to Kilty's, this Irish pub in Bastille. I was supposed to meet them there, but when I got to Bastille, I just couldn't bring myself to enter, to spend my night speaking English and standing in a mob of Americans. So I went down the street to some random pub where drinks were two for one, and made friends with the bartenders and waiters and a pair of middle-aged French cops from Marseille who were in Paris on business because something top-secret is going down with the mafia apparently. One of the guys let me see his gun. It was fun.

Today I spent an hour in the rain trying to find Shakespeare and Co, and getting hopelessly lost. Despite my wet jeans, it was actually a nice way to spend the afternoon. St. Michel and Saint Germain are beautiful, interesting parts of Paris. I found a restaurant or something called "Bedford Arms" and took a picture of it. And side not for the rents--I found La Rhumerie. It looks pretty good, I think I'll stumble in on some cold November day and drink a grog or some other version of hot alcohol (p.s. hot alcohol, what a great idea!).



This was supposed to be a short entry, but I still have so many things to say. I'm not a very good blogger, I don't think.

Tonight Theo is taking me to play poker with him and his friends. Should be interesting.

Tomorrow I have plans to go shopping with Loubna, the French woman I met last weekend. Let the bank-account routing begin.

I just went to Crus et Decouverts, this wine store down the street from me that was written about in The Boston Globe. The guy was super nice and helpful and I tried, very inarticulately, to explain to him what kind of wine I like, and he picked out a bottle for me. A white wine that is a mix of Chardonnay and Sauvignon, made with no pesticides, and I should look for a smoky, fruity, floral flavor. This paragraph is pretty much just for my dad.
I'm trying to figure out if I can distinguish Americans from Parisians. Today I stood next to two women, waiting to hear if they spoke English, because I thought that one of them was eating her apple in a distinctly American way. I'm not sure what that means.

Next time will be shorter, I swear. I'll set myself a word limit or something.

Maggie I just IM-ed you and you're not responding. You bitch.