The good and the bad.

Our apartment and as far as I can tell most apartments in Paris have two access codes to get in the first two doors of entry, after that we use our keys. I like this a lot, it means when you've got two bags of groceries and a purse you don't have to do anything but push a few numbers with your finger, then when you get to your door you can put your bags down and search for your keys. My apartment in New York had two entry doors and then our apartment door, each with a different key and this way I'm not digging out keys and constantly lifting up and putting down bags.

Another thing I like about the apartment buildings here is their effort to save energy, instead of having lights on in all the hallways on all the floors they have timer lights, each floor has it's own and you just press it and the light turns on for a minute or whatever, but when no ones using the hallway it turns off saving energy.

It's illegal to put hormones in your animal products here- I've mentioned Eating Animals about 5 times already in this blog, but what I'm learning is seriously disturbing. I only bought the book because I've read Jonathan Safran Foer's two novels and thought he was a great writer, I didn't have that much interest in the whole animal flesh as food debate because I hardly eat any as it is, but it's easily the best book I've read in the last year or so. Normally I dont eat meat but Sylvain likes it so we sometimes have chicken. In the states once a chicken is slaughtered it goes into a large tank where the chickens take a water bath so their body temperatures cool. Since none of the fecal matter is rinsed off prior to the bath it becomes fecal soup and our chicken's absorb up to 13% or this water since we pay by weight we are actually paying for 13% of just plain water and fecal matter. In countries like Canada and all of Europe this is illegal and instead chickens are cooled in a big refrigerator instead. Moreover it's also satisfying to know the French don't have to worry about the early onset of puberty in young people (in addition to the added weight gain) that studies have linked the hormones we put in chicken feed in the States. So, the chicken you buy here is a lot smaller, but I suddenly feel like 13% extra fecal soup and hormone therapy isn't really a deal anyway.

I've never had to wait more than a minute- even at night, for the metro to come, it is so fast and so efficient. But the subway map is a huge mess that makes no sense.

So I don't love our neighborhood. I don't know what to say except it lacks charm and there aren't any particular conveniences to be had, no parks, no cute cafes or great grocery stores it's a bit grey and dull. Our apartment is kind of the same, last night we were laying there and I said, in our next apartment I really want two rooms- so we have a separate bedroom. Sylvain really wants windows that look out onto something other than a building next to us. It would also be great- if it's not asking to much, to have a kitchen bigger than the handicap stall in public bathrooms.