All in expat life

Mirabelle Jam

My first foray into making a confiture (jam) in France.

I've been seeing mirabelles at markets all over for the past couple weeks; I wasn't quite sure what they were. But just two days ago, I happened to stumble upon David Lebovitz's Mirabelle Jam Recipe. Not only does he give a great explanation of what they are - "tiny cherry-tomato-sized fruits that are sweet, with a rich plum flavor and little acidity" - he follows it up with...

Getting a Cell Phone in France

How we got a cell phone in France. It requires lots of patience and paperwork.

We had gone two and a half weeks without cell phones. We had no way to contact each other besides the internet. We needed a lot of things to be figured out before heading into a mobile store - we needed a bank account, I needed an unlocked iPhone and Steve needed to decide which phone he wanted...

My Visit to the Laverie

It was decided that this week, we needed to get some laundry done. Since I'm not much of a laundromat frequenter (especially in France), I needed a plan. 

On Wednesday, I stopped by the closest laverie on rue Claude Bernard and took a lot of pictures. My intent was to look at them at home along with Google Translate so I could decipher what buttons to push, how to pay and more...