Amelie's Neighbor

A much overdue update. Yes, I ended up in Montmartre, in the outskirts of Paris where Utrillo, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Seurat and others once painted! (And where the film "Amelie" was shot. We share the same Metro stop!)
Once I put the call out for a wonderful landlord, I found one. R., the landlord's manager, adores cats and is clearly one of Samantha's favorite visitors. She will be thrilled to welcome him home when he returns from India in February. So will I.
Our home is a tiny, charming place, a ground-floor apartment with hardwood floors and a stunning an old stone wall (pierre de taille). Smaller than my bedroom in Seattle, it lacks an oven, a washer and a bathtub and features, just outside my front door, a telephone-booth sized "cabine" with a communal toilet, a relic from earlier days when plumbing was a luxury in Paris.
I remind myself that appliances and convenience are highly overrated and make myself focus on what I love: The mezzanine -- my aerie with a loft bed; the rugged texture of my ancient wall of mismatched stone; the small, communal cobblestone courtyard that -- in addition to the toilet "cabine", is also just beyond my front door.
The first quarter of LCB is over. I learned a lot, and I became inspired to learn more. (Also discovered that I am more food-obsessed than most of my fellow students! Well, Julia Child was food-obsessed, too!) At the start of the year, I'll return for the final six months. The last three months will be taught only in French (no translators). So I'm anxiously boning up on my French and on metrics and spending my break transcribing my recipes and translating them into French. And yes, I'd rather be eating my way across Paris! But most of my eating will occur in my own kitchen, where I'll be experimenting with French and fusions, like kabocha beignets and grapefruit marmalade with harissa. Au revoir!