The Cats and the Water Bottles

Life in a French Village "Like any new immigrants, we arrived with many anxieties. How would we live here, so far from the familiar culture and comforts of Long Island? Would we be able to manage life's basic survival tasks like understanding the TV schedule, making friends with the neighborhood cats, and finding a bakery that had really good croissants? This is a good example of how we always worry about the wrong things. Croissants were not a problem: there was a bakery at each end of our street. The TV was so exceptionally bad that the schedule was irrelevant, and the local cats were rather more friendly than was strictly necessary." From: The Cats and the Water Bottles David and his wife Diane spent their sabbatical in a small village in the south of France. In this book, which he describes as "An antidote to Peter Mayle," recounts stories of their encounters with the villagers, village cats and village culture. Language problems, travels in France at Italy and reflections on French life make up this entertaining collection of essays about how it feels to become a foreigner.