Happy New Year - with Expat Celebrity Supermodel Gail Elliott

Happy New Year to Everyone, all over the world! It is already 1 January 2008 here in Australia and waking up this morning to the possibility of a sensational new chapter in your life is a wonderful feeling. It is like we all get to wipe the slate clean again every January 1. What an opportunity.

Our January Home Page is now online. We are very excited this month to feature our interview with Celebrity Expat Woman - Gail Elliott. Gail is a British Supermodel who rose to fame in the 1980s. She is a friend to the likes of Cindy Crawford, Yasmin Le Bon, Elle Macpherson and Helena Christensen and has lived the high life - strutting the global catwalks for famous designers such as Gianni Versace, Calvin Klein, John Galliano, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Prada and Marc Jacobs to name just a handful. She has graced magazine covers such as Vogue, Bazaar and Elle, but now spends her time developing her own fashion label and stores for Little Joe NY. I talked to Gail about her first expat experience in Japan - which stands out to me as an example of why we should never give up - despite when it gets tough abroad and people take advantage of you. If Gail had given up when she came across obstacles in Japan, she never would have made it to the top!

For the record, Gail was a truly delightful woman to interview. She always answered her emails personally and was incredibly humble. I wish her every success with her new fashion label. In my opinion, she deserves success.

Other features this month include:

Jill's interview with Rebecca Kousky - the founder of Nest, a nonprofit with a mission of giving micro-finance loans to female artists in developing countries and an online artistic community. Nest’s micro-finance loans allow women to create and/or maintain small arts-and crafts-based businesses. Nest raises funds for loans via its online store. Nest sells clothing, accessories and home merchandise created by successful international artists and designers to discerning customers who want their purchases to make a difference.

My interview with US travel personality, Marybeth Bond, of The Gutsy Traveler, who recounts her experience of being on the Oprah Winfrey show... as well as discussing the book, A Woman's Europe, which she edited for Traveler's Tales (Publisher).

Jill's interview with Hilly van Swol-Ulbrich & Bettina Kaltenhäuser who wrote the great book, 'When Abroad Do As The Local Children Do', aimed at 8-12 year olds who are moving abroad.

And my interview with our Mentor of the Month, Andreea G, in Brussels, Belgium. Andreea moved from Romania to Belgium many years ago to study International Affairs. She loves it so much that she is still there and shows no signs of leaving just yet. Find out why...

Congratulations to Lula, for winning US$100 for her Winning Story of the Month, Pencils and Apples: A Clash of Cultures.

The five winners of the giveaway book, The World Is A Kitchen, will be announced in our Member Newsletter, which will be sent out on January 3 or 4.

If you are not yet a Member, please support our site and sign up now for our monthly newsletter. We would love to welcome you into the ExpatWomen Online Community.

Thanks and Best Wishes for a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous 2008,

Andrea.

Happy Holidays

Dear Expat Women around the world,

Thank you for your support this year. We all know that moving to a new country and even returning home after a long absence can be stressful. We want to thank all the women who have visited our site and found help in our pages.

I especially want to thank the expatriate womens clubs and local expat country websites all over the world who have listed their link in our Country Links section.


I wish you all the very best over the holiday season and may 2008 be incredibly successful for all!


Warmest wishes,


Jill Lengre

End of Year Reflections

As 2007 draws soon to a close, I am feeling very reflective. I read this quote today that I wanted to share with you, to help us all remember that whatever we have been through in 2007, there is still surely something for which we can be grateful. The quote was cited as an anonymous "Old Saying", so maybe you have heard it before:

"I once was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."

And while I'm sharing quotes, here is still my favourite this year, from one of our Expat Women Bloggers:

“At the table of life there are knives in the back, and forks in the road. I keep a spoon handy, in case life dishes up dessert.” In Search Of Dessert

May 2007 conclude for all you with a big plate of dessert!

Warmest wishes Everyone, Andrea.

Glocals, Expat Research & Happy Holidays!

Greetings everyone! Apologies for the lack of blog posts lately. Like you (we are guessing), this whole festive season (if you are in a location and/or culture that considers this a festive/holiday season, of course) is quite mad. Lots of commitments. But lots of good, quality, catch-up time with friends/family.

GLOCALS: We saw the term 'Glocals' on this site recently and we just loved it. Has anyone seen it used before? It sounds so simple, globals and locals, but we confess that we have never seen it used online before. The site was formerly known as GenevaOnline, and they describe the site as "a community of friendly globals (expats) & locals in Switzerland".

EXPAT RESEARCH: Nina Cole, who you may remember had a spot in a newsletter a few months back, has asked us to make a mention that she's now looking for more help please: "You can contribute to improved HR management of expats and their families! Your input as an expatriate is essential to a research study currently being conducted by Dr. Nina Cole from Ryerson University in Toronto Canada. Please go to my website and click (up the top) on ’07-08 Sabbatical in Asia’. If you are the spouse of an expat, then click on ‘Spousal Questionnaire’, and take 5 minutes to complete it. If you are an expat employee, then there are three short ‘Expat’ questionnaires to click on, which will take 15-20 minutes to complete. Please email me completed questionnaires via n2cole@ryerson.ca. Copies of the results of the study, due mid-08, will be available upon request. Thank you for supporting this effort to improve the management of expat employees and their families." Nina Cole

HAPPY HOLIDAYS: For those of you preparing to close that laptop and enjoy some well-deserved time-off this December/January, we wish you all the very best. May you return refreshed and ready to live amazing lives abroad in 2008!

Warmest wishes,

December Home Page - Online Now

Our new Home Page for December is online now. Be sure to check out our interviews and the winning Story of the Month (Congratulations Apple!). The December newsletter should be sent Monday 3 or Tuesday 4 December (US time). Have a great December!

Expat Women December Newsletter

Here's a sneak preview of what's in store for our December Members' Newsletter:

For our December Success Story, Jill interviews Dr Glenda Stone (an Australian) - the incredibly inspiring woman behind AuroraVoice in the UK.

Andrea interviews our Mentor of the Month, Vicel (Filipino) in Afghanistan. Read all about Vicel's first impressions of Afghanistan and why she doesn't want any other women to go through what she went through.

Jill tells us what she learnt in Denver, US, in late October, at the Employee Relocation Council (ERC) Conference which attracted 1,500 people from all around the globe.

Andrea interviews Lucy MacCauley, Editor of our December Book of the Month, 'The Best Women's Travel Writing 2007'.

Jenny Early (a young Brit in The Netherlands) helps us out by interviewing Barbara Rogoski (American) - the "spiritual teacher in a business suit". Barbara relocated to the Netherlands many years ago and now runs her innovative business, 'Authentic Matters'.

Andrew Apps (Goodhealth Worldwide) writes an article for us about what to do when your partner is abroad and you are worried about their medical care (which was raised as an issue by one Member in our Forums recently).

Our Expat Confessions writers serve up their answers to our Party Animal and Holiday Sadness confessions. If either of these scenarios sound like you, you might find some ideas/feedback that will help you feel better about and/or improve your situation.

And that's not all!

We hope to send the newsletter out on December 3 or 4, US time. If you are not already an ExpatWomen.com Member but would like to be, please sign up Here. (If it takes 10 seconds or so to click over, please bear with us. It's hopefully only a 72-hour glitch. Thanks.)

We really appreciate your support and best wishes for this last week in November.

Expat Women in MORE Magazine (U.S.)

Yes, it's true, we just read the article ourselves (thanks to Toni Summers Hargis who kindly sent it to us today). Granted, our three mentions are only small, but all media mentions are very welcome and we thank Michele Marchetti, the freelance writer who contacted us several months ago when researching her article for MORE magazine (a magazine for women aged 40+) about working abroad.

The article is a great read, full of examples of real-life women who took the plunge to work overseas, in various parts of the globe. So if you're contemplating working overseas, or you are already abroad and love reading stories about women like yourselves, you can pick up a copy (if you're in the US) now - it's in MORE Magazine's December/January edition.

Or read it online here...
http://www.more.com/more/story.jsp?storyid=/templatedata/more/story/data/1193846921107.xml

Expat Women -- Want to win $100?

Dear Expat Women,

We are looking for your expat stories. Our reader submitted story section is very low on stories this month. One reason is that we switched to a dedicated server and the service was unavailable for a few days, but now you have no excuses!

We all would love an extra $100-- especially now that holiday session is approaching!

If you'd like a chance at winning US$100 US dollars, submit your story on our ExpatWomen website Here.

So, what are we looking for in a story? An Expat Women Story is about a real-life experience that you have had as an expatriate woman. We welcome stories of both positive and negative experiences, because we believe that this is a more accurate reflection of life’s ups and downs. Try not to leave out any of the details – our readers want to re-live the experience exactly how you felt it.

We cannot wait to "read" from you!

Edit of 24 November: It is possible that our story database is still playing up, so to be safe, please copy and paste your story into an email to Jill here. Thanks.

How to ensure you always receive your ExpatWomen Newsletter?

Dear Expat Women Newsletter Subscribers,

We want to ensure that you are able to receive our monthly newsletter and so are requesting that you add newsletters@expatwomen.com to Your White List.

(We recently added our own anti-spam measures on most of our email accounts. If you send us an email, all you will be required to do is hit reply to an email you receive to confirm that you are a real person and not a spam bot!)

Add us to your White List

Unsolicited, unwanted emails, fake newsletters, and lots of advertising emails are commonly known as "Spam". Spam has become a huge problem for those of us with email accounts. It's reached such proportions that most email services and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have put some sort of blocking or filtering system in place or have begun relying on self-proclaimed blacklists to tell try to tell the good guys from the bad and filter out a lot of this "Junk".

This has also caused us a huge problem in that many of you use ISP's or email providers such a Yahoo, who auto send our replies to you, or our newsletters to the junk folder-and you don't see them. Even when we receive an enquiry email from you asking where your newsletter is, when we reply, this also ends up in your junk folder and you don't receive this email either!

But there is a solution. Add newsletters@expatwomen.com to your White List now, before your delivery is interrupted in any way. Of course, every email system is different, so check your email software’s HELP file. You can also contact your ISP's customer service support for their specific instructions. Many provide tutorial that will make life easy for you to achieve the task of White Listing email by providing you with step by step instructions for achieving this.

Many popular email programs, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc., don't provide a convenient way for you to White List the email sources that you want to receive email from. Normally you can go into the SPAM or JUNK folder, find the email, and right mouse click on it to add it to your list of secure emails.

It is best to contact customer service or the Postmaster at the company that provides your email or Internet connection (your ISP). Explain to them that email from ExpatWomen.com is mail that you asked for and value. Ask them if they can White List the email address for you.

They'll probably ask you for some information:

Sending Address: admin@expatwomen.com
Domain: @expatwomen.com

To ensure that your email is delivered to your Yahoo Inbox (not the Bulk/spam Mail folder), you can instruct Yahoo to filter it to your Inbox.

Here's how:
• Open your Yahoo mailbox.
• Click Mail Options.
• Click Filters.
• Next, click Add Filter.
• In the top row, labeled From header: make sure contains is selected in the pull-down menu.
• Click in the text box next to that pull-down menu, then enter the address in the "From" line of your most recent MMEHelp.com.
• At the bottom, where it says Move the message to:, select Inbox from the pull-down menu.
•Click the Add Filter button again.

More info http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/index.html

If you are using Hotmail, you can ensure that email is delivered to your Inbox by adding our "From" address to your Safe List.

Here's how:
• Click the Options tab.
• Select Safe List. (It's under the heading Mail Handling.)
• In the space provided, enter the address in the "From" line of your most recent expatwomen.com email.
• Click Add.
• When you see the address you entered in the Safe List box, click OK.

New Home Page & November Newsletter

Good news, our new and updated November home page is now online. Our November Newsletter should be sent out on Monday 5 November (US time), all going well. We are going through some more server changes behind-the-scenes this week, so we thought it best to wait until next week to send out the Newsletter. Best wishes for a great November!

PS. If you missed any of our previous Newsletters (jam-packed with interviews and interesting features), you can read them all Here.

Personal Branding Summit - 8 November 2007

We want to return favour to Megan Fitzgerald and mention an upcoming event at her request. Megan is an American expat in Italy. She is also a Career & Branding Coach who helped us out with an Expat Confession recently about A Portable Career. If you are interested in a free telesummit on Personal Branding, with a big list of guest speakers, please see Megan's blog entry for a further explanation of the event and some details of all of the guest speakers. Thanks.

PS. Megan tells us that the entire event is completely volunteer and that their goal is to raise 100,000 USD for their social cause partner KIVA (who facilitates small loans to entrepreneurs from developing countries to help them aspire to economic independence).

Final day at the Worldwide ERC Conference

Friday was the final day at the conference. I met many workforce mobility professionals from around the globe as well as real estate professionals from the United States.

I attended many interesting sessions (Ask the Experts on Critical Global Mobility Issues and Ensuring Consistent and Professional Destination Services in Every Corner of the World) on global mobility, providing an opportunity to learn and network.

I also visited the exhibition hall where many companies where marketing their services to companies to help them areas such as tax and immigration, housing, destination service, relocation amoung others.

The final speaker at the conference, Scott Friedman who is a humorist, made us laugh about the events and speeches that took place over the two-day event. And made us think about not taking ourselves so seriously.

Things to think about as I wait for my plane back to Mexico.

Jill at the Worldwide ERC Conference

I spent a very interesting day at the Worldwide ERC Conference taking place in Denver, Colorado. There are about 1500 professionals here from corporate relocation managers to destination service providers from real estate agents to relocation companies. The two-day conference is full of interesting sessions with speakers from all over the world. In fact there are people from over 60 different countries.

The day started with keynote speaker Marshall Goldsmith PhD, a well known executive coach. He told us to focus on changing only one thing about ourselves at a time and really make that happen. One area he said everyone can improve (even the CEOs he has coached) is sending negative messages. How many times do we say "No, that is a great idea!, "But I agree with you." Why do we use these negative words when we really mean to send a positive message? These are small "transactional flaws" performed by one person against the other, which can lead to negative perceptions that can hold any executive or person back.

I spent the day going to interesting sessions such as "Next Best Practices in Global Mobility", "Managing Multi-national Teams in a Global World--Can we Get it Right?", and "Make a Wish--Blue Sky Service Delivery Models." I promise to tell you all I have learned in my write up for the December newsletter.

My goal at the conference is to meet as many corporate relocation managers as possible and spread the news about our website. Another goal is to learn what everyone views as the main issues from their expatriates (before, during and after assignments) so Andrea and I can address those issues in our articles and interviews to help women expatriates like you.

Tomorrow is the final day of the conference with many interesting sessions to listen to! I will write again Friday.

Did You Email Us?

If anyone emailed one of our expatwomen email addresses last week, sadly, the emails (most likely) did not get through due to a technical hitch at our end. If you tried to contact us in the last seven days, please re-send your email. Thanks for understanding - and best wishes to you, Andrea & Jill.

Expat Women November Newsletter

A very warm hello to everyone. We're just putting the finishing touches on our Member newsletter for November (which we'll send out on 1 or 2 November). If you haven't signed up to be an ExpatWomen.com Member, there's still time to sign up so you can receive it!

Highlights for November's issue include:

Jill's interview with Jo Parfitt - one of our heroes. Jo has lived as an expat in several countries and always manages to carve a portable career for herself, wherever she goes as a trailing spouse. Jo has written more than 20 books on subjects ranging from careers, through computers to cookery. She helps others to achieve their publishing dreams, is founder of The Book Cooks, speaks at conferences about life on the Expat Rollercoaster, owns her own publishing company (Summertime Publishing) and is in charge of publishing for the Outpost Archive in The Hague in The Netherlands.

My interview with Leslie G - our Mentor of the Month for November, who packed up her husband and headed to Asia for her dream job!

Jill's interview with Sarah Takesh - an Iranian-born American, who is passionately helping Afghan women improve their livelihoods. From her office in Kabul, she hires hundreds of Afghan women to make the beautiful clothing that she distributes in Europe, North America, and the Pacific rim. Thus helping the Afghan economy and improving the lives of Afghan people. What an amazing woman!

The second and final instalment of my WIN Forum Norway 2007 Report... and much, much more!

Wishing you a fabulous ending to your week,

Andrea.

Worldwide ERC Conference in Denver, October 2007

Dear All,

I will be heading to Denver, Colorado on October 24th to the Worldwide ERC Conference. This conference is for HR professionals.

I hope to learn about what the new trends in supporting expatriates and their families and spreading the news about our website.

If you will be attending, I would love to try and meet up with you!

Jill

Mexico Accueil REVista Magazine and ExpatWomen.com

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the French ladies group in Mexico City, Mexico Accueil, about ExpatWomen.com. It was a great honor to have an article appear in the October 2007 edition of theír club's magazine, REVista.

Mexico Acceuil is a member of the FIAFE (Féderation Internationale des Accueils Francais et Francophones a l'Étranger) and has about 400 active members. This very well organized and friendly group plans trips around the city and activities for children. Their magazine REVista is a monthly color printed magazine full of interesting articles about the city of Mexico and life there. They also have a very useful color printed, spiral bound book called, le guide, which is full of addresses and telephone numbers to help French speakers settle in faster.

Our goal is to spread the word about ExpatWomen.com by talking to expatriate women's organizations worldwide and hopefully getting some press in their printed or online newsletters-- so this was a great step in the right direction!

Until I blog again,

Jill

The Final Word on WIN 2007 in Norway

Hi Everyone,

I wrote a long post a few days ago about WIN and my trip home, but I must have walked under a ladder that day, as just as I was signing off, I got what those in the computer industry often refer to as the "blue-kiss-of-death-screen" that said that my computer was starting to purge all of its memory! Needless to say that the "off" button was pressed immediately and I've been half-scared to log-in ever since. (True story.)

Anyway, if you're looking for more news from WIN, please just visit our website. The Part-One report is up now. Part-Two will be there when we re-do our homepage for November. If you were at WIN and happily smiled when I took your photo there last week but you cannot find your photo in Part-One, it will be in Part-Two in November, so please check our site again then.

And to all of the fabulous women that I met at WIN - thanks for your kindness and great energy last week. I wish you all amazing success - both your work lives and in your personal lives. x

In terms of the trip home, thankfully it was relatively uneventful, if you don't count the dash for the gate for the first flight, due to the airline keeping us standing in the Oslo check-in queue for 2 hours and issuing us boarding passes that said the gate had closed prior to the ticket being issued. (No joke)

The trip was just very, very, very long. Anyone who has travelled that far (Norway to Australia, with 4 flights plus buses at either end) will know that whilst you certainly feel like back-replacement surgery at the end... a few days later all is semi-forgotten and you start thinking about where you'd like to travel next. True? ;-)

I wish everyone a wonderful weekend!

Andrea

WIN Conference - The Highlights

It's true that time flies. It's already Sunday and the WIN Conference for 2007 is nearly all wrapped-up. There are some optional workshops running this morning, but the bulk of the 700 women here for the core 2.5-day program have either left or are now in their rooms packing their bags for room check-out.

It was a weird site just now at breakfast... a hotel completely overrun by women over the last 3-4 days, now had lots of men in the breakfast buffet room. It's funny how the eye became so familiar looking around and only seeing women, that the men at breakfast became "an unusual sight"!

Even though I wasn't able to blog about the conference on a daily basis, I still have lots to fill you in on, so probably the best way to do that is via our normal website. I'll write up a two-part report - posting part one October 1 (US time) and part two when we update our home page again on November 1 (that will give me time to write a part two!). It will be easy to find the reports, as we'll put a photo and prominent link on our home page, for both October and November.

Amongst all of the speakers who really inspired me, I'd have to say that my favourite was definitely Norwegian Explorer, Lecturer and Educator - Liv Arnesen.

This lady was amazing, yet so incredibly humble. Since the age of 8, Liv had dreamed of skiing to the South Pole. At 41, she realised her dream and became the 1st woman in the world to ski solo to the South Pole.

But as if that was not enough, she later went on to ski on a trip with Ann Bancroft (American) - the 1st woman in the world to ski to the North Pole. Together, they skiied across the Antarctic continent (in reaction to her critics who said that skiing to the South Pole, a 1200km trek that reached 3000 meter elevation, was "too short" a journey!).

Equally impressive, was that Liv and Ann, who had designed their Antarctic trip as an educational trip for children - both to empower them and to encourage them to dream - reported on their website each day what they were up to. By the end of their trip, with the help of a lot of US media, they had 10 million children registered on their site to track their journey online. That's just phenomenal. What an empowering experience for all who were involved.

You can check our their website here. Their stated shared mission is "to inspire people, particularly women and girls, to follow their dreams".

Here's cheers to Liv (& Ann). I take my hat off to you and wish you all the best for every adventure you embark on in the future.

Andrea

WIN - Network President's Workshop

Hi Everyone,

A little late, but I want to fill you in on the Network President's Workshop (explained in the previous mail) that I attended on the first night here, Wed 26 Sept.

Some of the issues/themes discussed were:

• The challenges of operating women's professional or social organisations on a volunteer basis (eg. women regularly moving in and out of town, women dealing with other life issues [such as pregnancy, children, relationships, work issues, work/life balance issues etc.], and some women not carrying the responsibility through its full term, perhaps due a "too-casual" sense of responsiblity towards the organisation (eg. once the honeymoon phase of being on the board of the organistion wears off). One group talked about how they transformed their group into a legal entity, to try to increase the sense of legal responsiblity for at least a few of the board members, and how this approach had seemed to work to date.
• Ideas about how different women's organisations can better collaborate (to share ideas, resources, networks etc.) The group were talking about not just organisations in your area, but organisations across borders.
• What processes in the organisation can be automated, so that board members' time can be focussed more on valuable strategic contributions, rather than spending lots of time on admin and the taking of membership monies etc. Ideas included using a website (to disseminate information and to link members) and using PayPal (and/or similar applications) on websites, to accept member money.
• Thinking seriously about employing an administrative assistant (full-time or part-time), to again alleviate some of the burden of the mundane admin tasks, so that the board members' volunteer time could be used in other ways.

Stephanie MacKendrick (talking about the Canadian Women in Communications organisation) stressed how funding and focus were key elements to grow an organisation. She speaks from experience - as their organisation has 1400 members, 9 chapters across Canada and very healthy corporate support/sponsorship.

Food for thought, if you are involved in a professional and/or social organisation....

Andrea

Made it to Norway!

Finally, after a 40-hour transit from Australia, a race through Heathrow, lost luggage, lost plane meal, a fall over someone's legs in the plane aisle and an agressive physical and verbal attack by a woman (to her husband!) in the row behind me on board.... I'm very happy that I made it to the WIN conference in Norway!

The official conference starts in about 30 minutes (cue that I better shower and get dressed quick smart!), but last night, I was fortunate to attend three pre-conference gatherings:

(1) Network President's Meeting.

This was a meeting of about 12 women from around the world, who led local and/or international women's organisations. The women in attendance included:

Stephanie MacKendrick (Canadian, based in Canada)
President of The International Alliance for Women (TIAW)
President of the Canadian Women in Communication (CWC) network

Diane Morris (British, based in Britain)
First VP and President Elect, The International Alliance for Women (TIAW)

Ania Jakubowski (Polish/Canadian, based in Switzerland)
President of the Geneva Women in International Trade (GWIT)

Patience Allen (American, based in Norway)
President of the Association of International Professional & Business Women (AIPBW)

Kristin Engvig (Norwegian, based in Switzerland)
Founder and CEO of Women's International Networking (WIN)

(2) VIP Cocktail Session

Not sure how I made the VIP list, but I must have smiled at the right person online at some point. ;-)

(3) Pre-Conference Networking Dinner
(open to all conference attendees)

For now, I better down tools and get ready to start the conference. So I'll jump online again later and fill you in more.

Warm wishes,

Andrea.

Country Links and Settling In Information

Ladies,

Did you know that we list links relating to expat websites and expat clubs for over 194 countries? Find the country you are interested in by using this webpage... http://www.expatwomen.com/countries.php

We are constantly searching for new links, so if you have an expat club or website that is not listed, send us the link!

We also work with local expat website to create a page we call, Settling In Tips. This is a page of summary information supplied by our local country expat web partner explaining issues such as what visas you need, how to get a drivers license, where to buy food, how to pay your bills, etc. Look for the Settling In Tips banner on the top of our Country pages.

If you a local expat web site and would like to partipate, please send us a link!


We just recently launched our City Experiences section. This is where women like you tell other women how it is living in your city, giving them tips or how to settle in faster. No matter where you are living, there are sure to be other expats who have just arrived or who are about to move and would love to hear what you have to say! Send your experiences via our online form. We will start to posts these experiences in October.

Stories of Your Expat Experiences Overseas

We love to read about what is happening in the lifes of expat women worldwide. Sharing your experiences is one way of helping women about to debark overseas understand what life is really like. These stories also help women already abroad know that feeling they way they do (good or bad) is completely normal!

Submitting your story is very easy. But you maybe hesitating because you think, who is interested in my life!? Thousands of people are! This is evidenced by the 300 expat women blogs listed in our directory - and the fact that these womens' blogs are viewed by many people around the world (not just from our site) daily. These women are chronicling their lives everyday on their own blogs about their lives overseas.

If you'd like a chance at winning US$100 US dollars, submit your story on our ExpatWomen website Here.

So, what are we looking for in a story? An Expat Women Story is about a real-life experience that you have had as an expatriate woman. We are looking for people-oriented stories that make the reader say things like:
“I’m so glad that terrible experience did not happen to me”; “I cannot believe they do that in that country”;
“They were so lucky to survive that”;
“I wish I could do that”; and
“She has inspired me!”

Some topic ideas to get you started: Culture shock; Funny incidents; Scary situations; Scandals; Communication issues; Relationship struggles; Adjustment issues; Children and family; Misunderstandings; Hospital and Health incidents; Food; Work; Travel; and Any other topic!

We welcome stories of both positive and negative experiences, because we believe that this is a more accurate reflection of life’s ups and downs. Try not to leave out any of the details – our readers want to re-live the experience exactly how you felt it. Remember to give your story a beginning, a middle and a great ending.

Thanks and good luck!

What type of Expat Woman are you?

Women move overseas for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you are heading off to study abroad, or taking a year long trip around the world. Perhaps you have decided to volunteer overseas, or you are moving to a new country because of your partner and/or family. You might be planning to work overseas or have decided to retire in another country.

Whatever the reason, we want to help you adjust quickly, make friends and live the best possible life abroad - be that for only one year or for the rest of your life!

We are constantly looking for interesting links and articles to add to these sections of our website. If you know of an interesting link, please send it along. If you wish to contribute an article, please send this along also, with your bio (and website details, if applicable).

Thanks!
Jill

WIN Conference in Norway, September 27 - 29

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that I feel very privileged to be getting ready to fly to Norway later this month, for the 10th anniversary WIN (Women's International Networking) conference in Oslo. The theme this year is "Taking The Next Step: Fearless, Graceful and Together."

It will be my first-time both at the conference and in Oslo. Anyone wanting to meet up at the conference, please do not hesitate to email me.

If you're thinking of attending, but have not yet registered, please remember that you'll receive a 100 Euro discount just by mentioning ExpatWomen.com. By all reports, the conference is reportedly a wonderful experience, so do consider coming along!

Warm wishes,
Andrea.

Welcome to our new Expat Women Blog

Hi Everyone and Welcome!

If you haven't heard already, we've set up this new blog to share a little more about what's happenning behind-the-scenes at ExpatWomen.com, our main site.

We'd love your participation, so if there is something you would like to see here, that you cannot find on ExpatWomen.com, please just leave us a comment or drop us a line.

Thanks in advance for your support and here's wishing you success overseas!

Andrea & Jill