Sabbatical in France: Adding a Second Life

Book excerpt: France… The daydream is to live there, not as a tourist, but as one of its people… To immerse yourself in the culture, the stories, the history... To become a local, and participate in local life… But you hesitate to quit your job, leave your friends and family… Yet the daydream will not go away… Then an opportunity arises, to buy not a house, but a share of a house, in a place where you can go to every year and participate in the local life of a village in northern France. What would it actually be like to be there? What experiences would you have? Could you do it? Would you do it? How would your life be different if you did? A couple asks these questions and fi nds themselves in a rural agricultural village they had never heard of, where they knew no one, in a place even the French asked, “Where is that?” There, they found a circus school and a Knights Templar commanderie, took long afternoon picnics, and discovered a way of living now lost to us in our age of electronic screens, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and instant everything.