Rant part 3: shopping and food -- 08/09-06

This weekend I'm going to have to write up a budget for my spending. yuck..

Things/food is expensive here. The numbers are the same but everything is of course in euro so everything is 1.6 times more expensive... or more! Not that I would know anyway. Like I do any real shopping back at home. You would've laughed at how long it took me to decide on a laundry powder. I've never had to buy it in my life. Especially since everything's in French and for some weird reason, cleaning agents and day to day necessities have never made it into the vocab of French classes at high school OR university...

Supermarkets here are small. Except for Carrefour which is SCARY crazy and big and horrible... there's not as much of a choice of brands as say, Safeway and Coles. And I can't ever seem to find what I want. For example, I need to buy food in small portions, as I don't have a fridge, I can't keep fresh food. Cans are good except I need to buy little cans that I can finish in one meal... So I want to buy tuna. In small cans with lemon juice. Nope. Only sardines. OR, big cans of tuna and lemon juice. Or, soup. I want to buy canned soup. For one. Easy, yummy, meal with a piece of bread. Nope again. Back in Melbourne, the tuna or canned soup section would've taken up at least half a frekkin aisle if not the whole thing. Not here. It's like French people don't drink soup from cans. They probably don't... or perhaps I still don't yet know where to shop...

I'll keep you updated if I find hidden aisles of canned soup or tuna fish...

In the meantime, I have tuna, sardines, peanut butter, chocolate, apples, chips and bread in my food cupboard. Oh, and water. Lots of Volvic because everything else tastes funny. The more expensive the water, such as Evian or Vittel, the funnier it tastes. Oh and I also can have whole meals at the residence canteen which cost 2,70 euro. I think I'll be doing that a lot. Any hopes of me learning to cook whilst over here have totally disippated.

Saturday/tomorrow is market day. Free cheese! Yay! I think that's what hurt most when I discovered I didn't have a little fridge space. The inability to store cheese :(

I will have to find a cheap kettle somewhere... and an asian grocery store. Stock up on instant noodles....