The lengths I go for Bargain Shopping

So my mexican dinner the other night turned out amazing! I found cilantro! and a bunch of avocados!

You can't really tell but theres chicken, tomatos, rice, corn, and bunch of spices in there! To top it off, I sliced up some tortillas for everyone to grab and drop in their soup. Everyone loved it! And before we ate, I played a spanish song for them to set the mood...not sure if George Strait counts as "mexican music", but that's all I had on my iPod that was close enough.

They used their pre packaged guacamole seasoning to make guac, and I made my homemade guac! it's the chuncky one on the bottom! For dessert, since soup is filling, I cut up some kiwi! It was perfect!

I promise I wont do anymore cooking blogs lol

So my adventure today was to go shopping! I wanted so badly to find a Forever 21 because I know they have cheap but cute stuff. There is one if France, but it's in another town kind of south-west of Paris. I'm north of Paris so I kinda had to travel a while to get there. I took 2 trains, a metro and a bus to get there. Since I knew I wouldn't go out there probably ever again, I went ahead and bought all the girls in the family their christmas gifts and birthday gifts! I bought most of their gifts from H&M, and a lot of it was on sale.

I calculated how much I was spending before I checked out and decided to stop at 50 euros. Once I got to the cashier, everything somehow came out to 15 euros. I was so confused. I was expecting her to say 50 and I was about to hand her 60 but stopped because something was just weird. I asked her "what? how much?" and she repeated it was 15. Even she was a little shocked at how much I bought for only 15. After I left, I counted up how much It all should have cost, and it came out to 57,60 euros. With things being on sale, it marked the total down to 39,85 euros. How 24,85 got chopped off the total is beyond me. I think she hit a wrong button, but it was my lucky day for sure.

Unfortunately, I left all my luck at the mall because after that, It was downhill fast. I left the mall at 5pm, and It was raining just a little bit. I got on the bus to go back to the metro station. As I'm on the bus, I am really convinced that it's not going the direction I need to go. I silently panic for about 10 minutes. Turns out, it was going the right way, and I am a genius after all.

I got on the metro to take me to the middle of Paris. Since I was so far out, it too a while. Almost 40 minutes. I got off at a station to get on another metro to take me to a major train station in north Paris. That metro was SO PACKED. Literally, I took one step onto the train and I couldn't move. I could only stand there and hope the doors will close before I fall back out. It was nuts. I hate taking to metro on Saturdays. 

Once I got to the major station, something was a little strange. There were more people standing around than usual. There was a change in the trains, and all the trains that normally go north of Paris weren't running. Only the trains that run east were running. That doesn't help me get home... So I took a train back down to the center of Paris where I can take a different train home, but by that time I was hungry. I got off and found a tiny Italian pizza restutant in the Latin Quarter to have dinner at. I was pretty cheap, and I was the only person there. Check out my awesome low quality phone pictures.

 Theres my pizza as I was eating it. It was super good!

 Here's the skinny, empty restaurant and my view of the street out there that was full of people walking around.

This was the street. It was so cool! So alive!

So that made me feel a little better since I got some italian food. I missed my Italian food. But things went sour again after that. I was going to take a train home and I thought I knew what train to take. The track splits and the train can either go north or south, and of course I got on the one that goes south. I got off that train at some random stop and decided to just walk to the previous train stop because I thought it would be faster than to wait for another train. I was wrong; It totally took longer. And it was raining pretty hard now. But I made it to the previous stop after maybe 20 minutes of walking in the rain. I walked right up to the Eiffel Tower. Duh. Where else would I be?

So that brought a little happiness into my crappy evening. 

But it went back down again. After I took this photo, It was like a scene from a movie where the poor girl thats having a bad day is standing on the sidewalk when a HUGE bus drives through a giant puddle and splashes water all over her...yeahhh I was already soaked, but that made my pants all sticky. I was officially over it after that. I just wanted to go home. 

So I got on the train to take me home, and some gangster dude comes in and sits maybe 4 rows in front of me playing his thug life french rap music really loud. The whole bus is staring at him like "uhh dude, nobody wants to listen to your french gangster rap", but that went on for 20 minutes. I liked it better in Texas when you only heard people's loud rap music for maybe 2 seconds as they drove by in their car. Playing music out loud for everyone to here is just the "cool" thing to do here.

After that train ride, I had to get on another train and go up one more stop in order to get closer to the house.

Total I took 2 bus rides, 3 metro rides, and 6 train in one day. I am getting so sick of city transportation. I'm wondering if it would be cheaper to just rent a car. It might be about the same price. It could help with my sanity because I didn't get home till 9. Minus a 30 min break for food, thats spending 3 and a half hours trying to get home. Ridiculous.