I enjoyed the description of that country as well as the ...
594086
A very interesting story with history of  Peru .  Paul Evans, who started the Sunflower orphanage is a gifted writer.  He starts almost every chapter in the books he writes with a journal entry.  I enjoyed the description of that country as well as the romantic story.  I would reommend this book without any hesitation.
2063321
I liked that it had different events, for lack of a better word, so, it kept me interested. Also, the way the author describes people and places, it's like I could picture each like I was there.
158740
This was an enjoyable book set in an area that isn't often written about. I enjoyed the characters as they were familiar and believable. I thought it was a good exploration on what someone may be going through when deciding, as a young adult, to study abroad. Good gift idea as well for someone setting off on that adventure!
3308863
I really enjoyed this book.  Because I travel a great deal in third world countries with Black majorities, it gave me some good perspective to take with me.  It also just emphasized my experience that despite its many shortcomings and how we got here America has a lot to recommend itself.  I am choosing stable third world countries for the human experience and America for the economic and developed infrastructure experience.  I'm splitting my time about equally in both.
83133
To be fair, I'm only about 1/3rd into this book. It's rewarding to me to read about what it's like to live in another culture for a time. The author really showcases many of the differences between Denmark and her native county, England. The only drawback for me are the nicknames she gives to people in her book, including her husband. I kind of cringe every time I come to one of the names. I really wish she'd just played it straight with the names.
1596326
Zealand and find me a rugby player.  I enjoyed learning about the history and the culture. It's really well written.
442670
What a fun travelogue about England! I thoroughly enjoyed reading Clarissa's descriptions of England. Its an informal, anecdotal account of her accounts of the country. Its the type of book that you can pick up and put down at random. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style.
1104470
Some aspects of this book were very fine. I enjoyed reading it on the whole. The author provides wonderful, almost poetic description of this part of the country. As the book progressed, there were some descriptions that became redundant. One resolution of characters was satisfying, but farfetched.
431506
Very interesting, especially since I just visited some of the East European countries and saw some of the areas that were involved in conflicts with Germany and Russia.  It gave me more understanding when I visited these countries and found out more about this area of Europe.
895639
With his parents winning a trip to Australia, their dream vacation unfortunately does not include a ticket for their teenage boy, who, when given a choice between the USA and Scotland with grandparents, elects to visit the USA. Besides the obvious language differences, which are wonderfully described in the book, this book presents an interesting look at American culture and lifestyle through the eyes of a teenage boy from across the pond. Shipped off the Phil's place, a friend of his parents, Fred, our teenage hero, soon encounters Brit, a teenage girl, and together with the foreign culture, his relationship with Brit is not necessarily easy either. Together they experience baseball (who would have thought that Chipper Evans could remind someone of fish and chips and Wales) and malls and American appetite. The book is divided into easy to read chapters that nicely flow and provide entertaining reading material for teenagers, but also for their parents. As a European expatriate in the USA, I can sympathize with Fred and his difficulties with US language, but also trying to grasp baseball, the American past-time.
This is a book for the whole family and a really interesting read for a high-school or college student about to start study abroad since it will provide some insights as to how that student will feel when being exposed to a new culture. Sometimes lost, sometimes scared, but always interesting and entertaining.
1651147
Most of what we know about life in other countries has been filtered, alas, though the mouths of pundits and politicians. It would be nice if you could spend a month living in every country in the world to find out what's actually going on, but life is too short. Fortunately, there are authors like O'Neill, who gives us a vivid picture of just what things are like, by spending about a month in each of four places in the Arab world. It was especially interesting to read about her stay in Egypt, which took place in the period just after the "Arab Spring," when disillusionment was beginning to set it. She also went to Dubai and other Gulf countries (where it was hard to find an Arabic speaker!), Lebanon (where it's impolite to ask what somebody's home town is, lest sectarianism raise its ugly head), and Morocco (so far off the Arab mainstream that you shouldn't be surprised at anything).

As she points out, Arabic is a language of paradoxes, and one of the paradoxes is that it's both a unifying and a dividing influence. Unifying, because of Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha), that's the same all over, but which nobody speaks except newscasters (and foreign students). Dividing because people actually speak a bewilderingly divergent variety of dialects and can hardly understand each other. O'Neill guides us through all this, showing how the use of language illustrates attitudes and events in all these places (and how the converse is true). And her droll witticisms add to the enjoyment of reading about her adventures. I've put her other travel books on my reading bucket list.
4301834
This was a very interesting, entertaining and educational book about a Russian woman who marries an American and immigrates to the USA, specifically Texas.  Between Russia and the US during the Communist period, there were many differences, and I appreciated the author showing and telling us some of these.  .The choices of food or clothes or freedoms that we take for granted are a shock for someone who was not raised here.  I enjoyed the author's description of how she managed to survive, find a job, deal with her marriage, and start a family.

Reading the book is proof that Communism and Socialism do not work, and the United States is really a fantastic place to live in!
4501123
It gave me a prospective of experiences a friend had there.
3495276
This was a great read. I especially enjoyed the cultural introit to a people and a land I had not read about very much before. I was entirely charmed by them as described by this author, and was sorry when the book came to an end. It was interesting to walk with these characters through the changes that moved them from a relatively primitive culture into one with most aspects of what first-world cultures consider 'normal.'

I would recommend this book to others.
3802304
Well worth the read. I enjoyed learning about the country and the history.  Would love to read more by thhe authors.
3263683
I have a big interest in central and eastern Europe's post-communist transition so really enjoyed A Country Lost, Then Found.
I particlarly enjoyed the book's sections on the birth and early growth of the Slovak Spectator newspaper: I worked at the Sofia Echo in Bulgaria in 1998-1999, and was struck by the number of Zednik's tales that chimed with my recollections of my time grafting for a similarly nascent English-language paper.
Structurally I liked how Zednik's narrative jumped about  a welcome change from the usually chronological ordering of similar tomes  and blended seamlessly the personal with the political.
Zednik's arrival (from the USA) in Bratislava and then day-to-day living with his elderly grandparents, Babka and Dedko, are particularly vividly/colourfully recalled: a particular triumph given the spartan/thrifty (grey) nature of Bratislava during this period.
4906487
Having lived in that part of the country and in that environment, I enjoyed a story that was pretty true to its surroundings and people.