There's no Wi-Fi at my Laundromat, and Other Inconveniences

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There's no Wi-Fi at my Laundromat. Not only do I have to go OUTSIDE to do my laundry, I can't even get my homework done while I'm there. Because let's face it, all homework involves the internet these days. Although some quiet reading time on the very uncomfortable bench in the middle of the laundromat is nice, I don't really have time to read for leisure. After all, I have FIFTEEN courses this semester. But more on that later. At least this laundromat accepts both coins and bills, which is quite necessary, since a large washing load costs 5 euros, and it's 1.20 per 10 minutes of drying. My last trip cost 20 euros. I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CLOTHING FOR THIS. Because I couldn't take it all on the plane. Downsizing has its drawbacks.



My building doesn't recycle. When Bertha introduced me to the building on the first day, she showed me where the trash bins were, and indicated that one was for trash, the other for recycling. So, naturally, I separated my items, then when my bags were full, brought them downstairs. And then I was confused. Upon closer inspection, both bins were identical. I thought this odd, but made my best guess, and carried on with my day. As the days passed, in my travels around the city, I began to notice that other establishments were putting out bins of different colors on different days. As it turns out, the bins with yellow lids were for recycling, and the green ones were trash only. Now, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to dump your recycling into other places' bins, but what was I going to do? Not recycle for two years? SOL Earth? Of course not. So I took note of which days per week there were yellow bins out near my house, and decided to just casually add my recycling to theirs. One further complication remained: the yellow bins take everything EXCEPT glass. There are other, separate bins with white lids that take glass only. And those appear on different days than the yellow ones. Having been spoiled by Ann Arbor's awesome single-stream recycling for everyone, I was a bit annoyed at having to negotiate something that should be so simple. The good news is that the pickups seem to be staggered enough that I have somewhere to put my recycling almost every day. If I feel like wandering the streets looking like a bag lady, that is.



The world stops on Sundays. Today, I had two goals: fill out job applications, and go to the big Monoprix a few streets over and buy school supplies (the one closest to me is mostly food). Unfortunately, in respect to the latter, I was destined to fail. Not only are most stores completely closed on Sundays, the few that do open do so only for a few hours. By 3pm, pretty much everything is shut down except for a few bars and restaurants. It's also raining, and my umbrella broke. So I guess I'll just sit here and write a blog post.



It's really loud, all the time. It's pretty cool that I live in such a happening place in the city. Stores, restaurants, hotels, and bars abound. Even better, there are places here open til 4am or later, so the party never has to stop! And this is all great, except when I feel like sleeping. There's a party in the street outside of my window every weekend night until around 3am, and every week night until 2am. Laughing, singing, and shouting last through the night, and then around 6am the street cleaners come through, and then the garbage trucks, and then before I know it, I hear dogs barking all day, while kids play pickup games in the streets. It's ok, I wasn't planning on sleeping much anyway. Grad school, you know.

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