I'm Ba-ack!

So, France was very lovely and kind of appallingly expensive. I feel like there's kind of a disconnect with foreign money. I just changed everything into Euro, and then went around handing out those twenty-Euro bills with a sort of crazed enthusiasm, like, "You mean if I give you this piece of blue paper you will give me a ride on a boat? No way! Here!" I handed them over and nice French people gave me presents!

I still don't really understand the deal with restaurants, where an entree costs 17 Euro, but a formule of an appetizer and an entree (en Francais, entree et plat) costs 12 Euro. I kept sort of gritting my teeth for the bill, and then looking at it like, "oh...is that all?" But a pot of tea for 5 Euro ($7.50!) would have hurt, had I had any attachment at all to the pretty 2 Euro coins. But I didn't, really. So I had a lot of tea.

Yet somehow, on the combination of my visit overlapping with my parents', the convenience of staying in a house with a relatively well-stocked refrigerator, the cheapness and deliciousness of baguettes and tea (when consumed at my sister's house, as opposed to at a lovely Salon de The), the Luna bars I brought along, and K's kind agreement to pick me up at the airport in my parents' Volvo, I managed the thing on $300. My sister, generous hostess that she was, also paid for me to take a cooking class with her (in French, but I managed: the combination of French-from-fifth-grade, Latin-from-high-school, and German-on-the-level-of-a-preadolescent being, evidently, a reasonably effective one). The $100 I had sitting in my checking account for spending, then, is on its way to the Freedom Fund, where it will bump the balance above $5,000.

I brought a bunch of stuff back with me, and honestly, was more constrained in my spending by space than money. If I'd thought I could fit five more jars of jam, you can bet I'd've bought them. As it is, I brought home apricot jam, pistou, olive tapenade, fleur de sel, chamomile blossoms for tea, tea for tea, chocolate, and herbs de provence. Perhaps a few items that I can bear to part with will end up as gifts, but...probably not too many.

Anyway, I'm back at home, back at work, back at work on my finances, and rejuvenated for the final push towards the year-end goals. I'll be catching up on my blogroll over the next couple of days. And I learned a couple of new very frugal, very delicious recipes at that cooking class--I'll put 'em up this week!

Tell me something about your week in the comments!