The Textbooks :: Les Manuels

The first thing I noticed when I went to school on the first day was that I was one of the only girls to have a backpack.  Very few people have backpacks, most girls, 99.9% of the girls, have leather bags the size of a tote bag...or a large purse.

I was so confused.  How can they carry everything?  Textbooks, binders, folders, notebooks?  Usually my textbooks end up being over a foot tall if I stack them on top of each other, and that's not including SAT prep books or Barron's AP books or random pieces of literature for English.

Add another foot

Well, here in France, or at least my school, all but one of the text books are half an inch thick.  The one exception is one inch thick.  Oh, by the way, none of them are hardback either.  They're that awkward, in between type of book where the outer covers are just a little bigger and laminated.  If I stack my books up? Slightly above half a foot, and that's by my estimation since THERE ARE NO RULERS HERE.

The textbooks look so modern too.  They're very pretty, bright colors, smooth pages, decently sized font that doesn't require magnifying lenses.  My only problem with them is that they're in French (and therefore, incomprehensible to me), but even that problem is diminishing...slowly.

They don't have book covers here like the ones I had in the States.  I haven't seen anyone use the stretchy, colored fabric book covers.  Instead, they take sheets of clear plastic and tape them to the books to coat the front and back.  Pretty much what we do with paper bags.

The French are too classy to re-use paper bags

Right, so my backpack?  Super practical in AMERICA since I can shove everything in there.  Here?  All I brought to school today (well today I had gym, so that's probably not a good example) was a pair of sneakers and a change of clothes.  They don't have lockers for gym here.  They have multiple changing rooms, as in empty rooms half the size of a typical classroom, with benches lining the walls and nothing else.  

Anyways, sneakers, t-shirt, and shorts in my mammoth of a backpack isn't practical.  Most days, I bring my pocket-sized-but-wouldn't-actually-fit-in-a-pocket English-French dictionary (which is surprisingly useful, I suggest getting one if ever going abroad), a pencil case, a notebook, and my textbooks for the day, which, remember, are tiny.  I look like I have a turtle shell for something that only takes up half of a pocket.

packed my home in that for the airplane

I thought that I may as well get a nice, leather bag then, since it'd be more practical.  So I mentioned it to my friends and we went to the city to look at some bags in the store.

First bag I saw: €34,59! You're not tricking me, I know you're actually €35!  I thought that was expensive, until I remembered that I got my backpack for way more.  Still though, if you google tote bag you can find one online for like €6,00 (oh, that's right.  They use commas for decimal points here.  Just another way the American system screws us over).  

Well, I ditched the leather bag idea and instead bought (my first!) macaroon.  I understand the fad behind them, they're delicious!  From what I understand, it's a rich, delicious cream/ganache sandwiched by two soft, chewy cookies with a slightly hard shell.  I got one that wasn't glacée (chilled, from what I gathered), but I imagine that the glacée macaroons would be similar to an ice cream sandwich.

Originated from Italy->source: my comprehension of Wikipedia in French 

I asked my friends why they're so famous, being similar (but better) to the cupcake popularity in the States.  Apparently, it takes a lot of technique and a special oven to make good macaroons...challenge accepted.