MY FRENCH ADVENTURE — Chapter 8
Why Move To A Foreign Country If You’re Just Going To Stay Home?
A friend’s e-mail gave me pause for thought
What’s the point of living abroad, a friend from the States e-mailed, if you don’t get out and see things? If she were in my place, she said, she’d do a lot more traveling. A friend from Southern California wrote that she’d be “bored, bored, bored living in a small village.”
Although I didn’t respond that I would be bored, bored, bored with a suburban lifestyle, the comments did start me thinking about my reasons for living in France. By then I’d been in the country for three months, rarely leaving the small winemaking village except to visit the supermarket in the next town.
I wasn’t unhappy. And I certainly wasn’t bored. How could I be? Everything was of interest. French radishes in the supermarket were a different shape, longer than the American variety and oval rather than round. Everyone carried baguettes, under the arm or sticking out of a shopping bag. A young woman couldn’t get hers home before she broke off a piece to eat.
And did French men really wear berets? I’d decided it was probably a cliche until I saw a man wearing a beret, cigarette between his teeth, riding a bicycle! A double cliche; triple…
