Tuesday, March 30, 2010

My Quest for Matzah

This morning, I woke up and realized I couldn't eat breakfast. Even though I'm obviously not going to observe Passover (in French, Jewish Easter) this weekend in Italy (because I am not going to go to Italy and starve - that's not the point of Passover), I figured I'd keep it during the week. So, les cornflakes are out, as well as bread, toast, cookies, the rest of my pain d'épice. It feels like there's been a death in the family. So, I got dressed - I decided to wear a skirt, since the fact that my pants are continually falling down is starting to annoy me - and Mme De La Taille told me she was going to the grocery store, so I volunteered to go with her. She took her little caddy to roll to the grocery store and back, we got in the elevator, and when we got to floor 0 (rez-de-chaussée), there was a guy washing the floor. Nice timing Monsieur! So, we had to go to the basement, then climb the stairs to get out. Okay, c'est pas grave. We got to the Franprix (supermarket, kind of like a small Wegmans) and I asked everyone where to get "the flat bread for the Jewish Easter." Eventually, I found le pain azyme. If it looks like matzah, is packaged like matzah, and tastes like matzah, I assume it's probably matzah. Besides, I don't really feel like looking any more. We bought a ton of food and walked back, carried the very heavy caddy into the basement, then waited for the elevator, only to realize that the guy was cleaning the elevator! Mme De La Taille went up to yell at him and he told her to take the stairs. What stairs? The stairs are right where you're cleaning! Eventually, he decided to let us use those stairs and Pierre came down to help us carry the caddy up what was now three flights of stairs since we were in the basement. Way to go cleaning staff...and now, Mme De La Taille is concerned about not getting the mail. All that for some lousy flat bread. And by the way, you'd think that, since French people are so into bread, they'd have found a way by now to make matzah taste good. Well, think again!

I just figured I'd write that now before I forgot it all. Now, I'm going to get ready for my trip to Pere Lachaise cemetery for my literature class!

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