French Customs and French customs

So, French customs. And I don't mean the cultural kind. I got a phone call the other day from a woman speaking very rapid French (which is so difficult to understand, especially over the phone) telling me that I have to pay import taxes on a box of old ski clothes my parents shipped to me from the U.S. I'm sorry, you want me to what? I realize this is a basically socialist country that tries to charge taxes on everything, literally everything, but these are just some old clothes, here. You want me to pay 33% taxes to ship clothes to myself that I have owned for over five years? This just seems downright silly. So I emailed a man in the customs office and explained my predicament. He was really nice at first, until I started asking why I have to pay such high taxes. That's when he stopped responding. But what have we already learned about French bureaucracy, boys and girls? That's right. When you don't get what you want, bombard them with emails and phone calls and make yourself so irritating they do what you want just to get rid of you. So here's hoping this works again.

On another note, I need you to know that in the winter, in Paris, erroneous denim is replaced by erroneous fur. Instead of jurses and j-jackets and jarfs and jhats and joots, we are now seeing furses, fackets, farfs, fhats and foots. I think the fur boots might be my faves. These aren't the "boots with the fur," as popularized by Flo Rida, of the type that you might see on a jersey girl or in the apres-ski form. No no. These are something much more sinister:

I really hope you enjoy these foots as much as I do. I think they're truly a beautiful thing.

Last but certainly not least, today Taryn and I ventured into the unknown: Chinatown Paris (Chinatown actually encompasses Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Thai communities, but I guess people everywhere have a tendency to lump a bunch of entirely different cultures together for the sake of simplicity)! You see, I have this problem in French grocery stores where I can't ever find what I'm looking for. They don't carry very basic things that are available in every American grocery. Whenever I ask Victoria about these things, she says, "you can find that in Chinatown." Even if it's not Chinese or Southeast Asian at all (this has included everything from soymilk to Greek yoghurt to oregano and basil). I've been planning on cooking a delicious feast for tomorrow night, and I couldn't find half of my ingredients in the supermarkets in my neighborhood! Simple things like celery, snap peas and fresh herbs. I was also looking for saffron that didn't cost 12 euros. (At Monoprix, this is what they charge for a TINY amount of saffron. Piracy, people, piracy). So, in lieu of our bi-weekly powerwalk, Taryn and I went to Chinatown. It was awesome. It's one of the only places in this whole city where I've found food that I actually consider inexpensive. Pad Thai in Chinatown = 6 euros. Pad Thai anywhere else = 12 euros. The only thing is that it's in the 13th arrondissement, which is kind of far from me. But the fact that I returned home laden with shopping bags and fresh flowers and didn't even spend 20 euros totally makes the trek worth it.

Upcoming events: Matt comes in town tomorrow, I leave for London December 22, and I head down to Val d'Isere for some Alpine skiing December 26. Hooray for the holidays!