life abroad

Living abroad can be challenging, frustrating, and rewarding. Living as a minority, expatriate or foreigner in another country is a fascinating experience and reading about it serves to remind us of what is like for people from other cultures trying to find their way in the United States.

Here are a few suggestions about other peoples experiences in other countries that might make you laugh and scratch your head at the same time.


A Year in Provence
Author: Mayle, Peter

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An advertising executive and his wife flee England for a pastoral life in the Provence region of France. Their romantic notion of buying and renovating an old farmhouse runs into a stonewall of procrastinating local handymen as lovable as they are eccentric. Through all the trials and tribulations of finding their way in this foreign culture Mayle and his wife come to appreciate the joys of the Provencal cuisine that for the locals is everyday fare.


I'm A Stranger Here Myself
Author: Bryson, Bill

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Sometimes coming home is a foreign experience as well. Author Bill Bryson spent almost twenty years living in England. In this collection of columns about his repatriation he reflects on life in England as well America after he returns twenty years later. Humorous, sentimental, and gently critical, Bryson nudges the reader to examine the way we live here and how strange that can sometimes seem to the outsider.