How to be a happy expat

Because a cloud wall makes you want to take a selfie. 

After 10 years living in the UAE, some of that time happy, some miserable and the rest just about everything in between, I finally feel qualified to write this piece.

The answer to the question "How to be a happy expat"?

Courage + 'when are you coming home'?

I love this Anais Nin quote. This quote always makes me think about my life in two parts: before my mom Christine died of cancer when I was 27 and she was 53, and after.

Not only did it lurch me into adulthood in the three short months she was ill - like so many women, I wasn’t so much an adult who made my own decisions as a person who leaned on my mother in every way - but it brought something else into sharp focus. What if I died? What if I only made it to 53?

What if my mom knew she was going to die then? What would she have done differently? I know one of the paths she didn’t take, using her nursing degree to become a flight attendant, was something she thought often about. I know she was great at living in the moment and getting immense enjoyment from silly things, and lifelong learning and growing, and challenging herself, and that she loved being a mom. What else, I won’t know. But life from that moment changed forever for me, and ordinary became impossible.

Examining the expat: 20 signs you've lived in the UAE a long time

...you only stop to take pictures of the funny things you see about one-third of the time now

...people eating with spoons and forks makes perfect sense

...when you finally understand something after a period of confusion, you nod and say "ahhh, okokokokok"