Extraordinarily Ordinary

Ever since arriving in Lyon in September, I've wanted to post these pictures of commonplace items that are so standard and ordinary that we take them for granted. It's not until we encounter a culture that interprets them differently that they suddenly become original, fun, and extraordinary.

While our family has been in France long enough that most of the originality has worn off for us, we hope you enjoy the pictures anyway.

Boxes
In France, we discovered that milk comes in boxes. Even the drawing of the cow is square!

As you can see, Brooklyn loves this milk, as do we. Pasteurized at high-temperature yet still tasty, it has a shelf-life of several months and doesn't hog up all the room in the fridge.

While milk may be square, cereal doesn't have to be. It had never occurred to me that there was more than one way to close a cereal box!

Textures
Our apartment has quite the unusual assortment of wall textures. We'll call this one "bubbles."

Our remaining walls are actually covered in fabric. While this isn't very typical, it's interesting nonetheless, albeit nearly impossible to clean. A French friend suggested that the fabric's likely covering up something really terrible underneath. :)


Circles
This circular electric outlet produces twice the juice. A recent visitor recently forgot to switch her blow dryer from 110V to 220V--talk about hot air!

Any guesses as to this pretty little circle? It's the toilet flusher! Just remember to pull up instead of push down.

And last but not least, my favorite circle--fromage! This brie makes me chuckle because it's labeled as "petit." Makes you wonder what a big brie would look like...