Real housewives of the Maghreb

From my own experiences living in the Middle East, I have noticed the quality of life in terms of social, political and economic terms can only be judged by how the expat chooses to take that experience. An expat is a person temporarily or permanently residing, in a country other than that of their citizenship. The word comes from the Latin terms ex (out of) and patria (country, fatherland). In this blog, I will talk about what to expect as an expat in the Middle East. Relocating to the Middle East There are many reasons for relocating and when it comes to the Middle East I have found that the following are some of the primary reasons: Career Cultural Experience Travel Western expats typically choose to relocate to the Middle East to experience an exciting and challenging new culture and lifestyle, while Arab expats tend to move around a lot in the Middle East looking for better opportunities. Depending on where you are fro...

It seems only fair, after writing earlier this week about  the joys of being an expat wife , that I should give equal time to the dark side. Here, then, are the 10 worst things about being an expat wife: 1. Frankly, the “wife” part.  Being a permanent “plus one” becomes wearying at times, and that feeling of being dismissed as an afterthought seems to intensify in expat circles. It was especially frustrating in Singapore, where I couldn’t get a single utility company to talk to me because my name wasn’t on the contract. Whenever something needed fixing, Chef Boyardee was invariably off in a different time zone — either on a plane, in a meeting, fast asleep, or otherwise unreachable. I never once managed to breach the inviolable wall of “so sorry, Mrs. Michael, but Mr. Michael needs to call us.” Asking politely, wheedling, threatening, crying hysterically — nothing worked. 2. Forced career break.  This wasn’t an issue for me, but it certainly is for many women and men...

  Salam Alaikum/Hello,  Welcome, I'm an American expat wife residing in Morocco within a small village with my husband, and his immediate family. I left America on Election day, and have been here approximately five months. My intention for this page/blog is to put together a list of relevant articles and resources to not only educate the world about Morocco and what it's like to be an expat wife here, but to provide resources and education to other expat wives such as myself. Despite Morocco being an amazing country, it gets exceptionally lonely at times. There's a wonderfully close knit group of expat wives here, and this makes adapting a little easier, though it's still incredibly difficult at times, no matter how much I love Morocco.

A  country  in  Africa  which borders:  Algeria , two cities administered by  Spain , the  Atlantic Ocean , a bit of the  Mediterranean Sea , and and  Western Sahara  (which Morocco also administers, and on many maps the two are shown as one country, but Morocco's  sovereignty  over the area is not recognized by the  UN ). The history of Morocco is complex. The tribes known collectively as  Berber s (a name applied to them by  Arab s) have been in the area since long before the start of recorded history. In the 12th century BC, Morocco along with most of Africa's Mediterranean coast was colonized by  Phoenician s. These colonies stayed close to the sea, but there was some cultural exchange with the tribespeople inland, especially after  Rome  sacked  Carthage , the largest Phoenician colony, in 146 BC as Carthaginians fled westward. Eventually, the Romans conquered the North African coast, ...