Expat Women May 2011 Home Page & Newsletter

Hi Everyone! I hope you are enjoying a great start to your month! Please take a few minutes to read, enjoy, share and tweet about our new May home page features below. If you are subscribed to our Expat Women newsletters, you will also receive these via newsletter this week. Thanks and enjoy your day/evening! Andrea

Success Story
Shabnam Rezaei
Big Bad Boo Studios, Oznoz Entertainment, and Persian Mirror
Shabnam speaks five languages, is the recipient of Canada's Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award, is the co-founder of both Big Bad Boo Studios (which produces multicultural content for kids) and Oznoz Entertainment (which distributes the content), as well as the creator of PersianMirror.com (an incredibly successful online magazine about Iranian culture)...
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Business Idea
Elana Jade Salon
Elana Schmid
Aspiring to see more of the world, aesthetician and personal trainer Elana Schmid sold her well-established Australia-based beauty business, Elana Jade Essential Beauty, in 2008 and moved to Japan. Two years later, Elana's passion for personal health and wellness led her to re-create Elana Jade, this time as an organic beauty salon in Tokyo...
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Money Matters
7 Financial Tips to Help Expatriates Prepare for When Danger and Disaster Strike Abroad
Lisa R. Mitchell
In Egypt during the civil unrest, the government shut down the Internet. Try conducting banking activities without phone or Internet service. How would you move money, pay bills and conduct other necessary banking transactions if you were stuck in the middle of political unrest or living in a country that experienced a natural disaster....
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Expat Confession
A Lonely Affair
Extract from Expat Women: Confessions
My husband's new regional role is very demanding and he travels a lot. Sadly, my loneliness has led to an affair with my neighbor. I feel guilty about what I am doing because I really do love my husband and want our relationship to get back on track. Ironically, I started the affair to ease my loneliness, but now I feel lonelier than ever...
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Moving Abroad
The Science of Anxiety in New Places
Catherine Transler
Coming to a new place generates mild feelings of oddity in the best case, anxiety for many of us, and for some people, it can induce a panic attack. When I arrived in the Netherlands after one year of living in a hilly and very crowded part of Paris, I was surprised by the immensity of the sky. It felt as if I had never noticed the sky before...
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Just a reminder that our blog is separate from our main site, so if you are reading this blog post online or you are only subscribed to our blog, you will not automatically receive our Expat Women monthly newsletters.

To receive our monthly newsletters and to go in the running to win our monthly prize of a complete set of Explorer Publishing Mini-Guides, please sign up today to our main site, ExpatWomen.com. When you join, you will also receive a link to download our free e-book of Winning Stories. Thanks for your support!

Missed Some Great Expat Links on Twitter?

Hi Everyone, Here are some great expat-related links I have tweeted recently, that might interest you. Enjoy!

"Is There A Perfect Personality For Expats?" Very good article in The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://bit.ly/grMtwT

The Difficulties Of Divorcing Abroad
http://bit.ly/hDGCTg

Expat Women Uncomfortable Driving Abroad Survey Shows
http://bit.ly/hOUBFN

The Trailing Spouse: The Achilles Heal of International Assignments?
http://bit.ly/gUuIDT

True? Nobody Cares About Your Story
http://bit.ly/hyt1yw

Bored in France? Expat Nicky Rowe says never - She defends her adopted home
http://bit.ly/gM0oPn

Most British Expats Don't Want To Go Home?
http://bit.ly/fTmo8q

Shocking Story of an Expat Woman Jailed for 5 Months in the UAE When She Reported Her Rape
http://bit.ly/gqizRY

7 Reasons Not To Become An Expat?
http://bit.ly/g8ElyD

Are You "Escaping" or "Relocating"?
http://bit.ly/gXbQJo

The World: A Classroom and Playground: Lessons from the Study Abroad Cycle
http://t.co/wcjHow2

"An Honest Look At My Life as An Expat” A Loss of Identity Story
http://t.co/MUKdO6p

Tiger Mom, Meet Panda Dad
http://t.co/lAMyKcd

“Have Camera, Will Travel” Interview with an expat filmmaker
http://t.co/62Tf1MV

What Makes A Good Expat?
http://bit.ly/ePS9Yx

How to Stand Out in the Global Marketplace: Part 2 of 5
http://bit.ly/gMsEhJ

Great piece about a Third Culture Kid (TCK) and a Quarter Life Crisis
http://bit.ly/gFTEgP

Talent Mobility 2020: The Next Generation of International Assignments (36 page report by PWC)
http://bit.ly/dGOQ3d

How Does A Third Culture Kid (TCK) Define 'Home'?
http://bit.ly/fxsxy4

"How Becoming an Expat Entrepreneur Changed My Life”
http://bit.ly/gz01pn

What Is Expat Identity? Article on Expatica by Anthropologist Sarah Steeger
http://bit.ly/gWxMZM

Expat Life and Alcohol Addiction
http://bit.ly/e0mdC3

Interesting Article in Guardian UK: Should We Stop Using the Term Expat?
http://bit.ly/eSHRpI

Expat Time Travel: The Positive Side of Putting a Career on Hold
http://bit.ly/gFe8AX

Delayed Grieving Abroad: An Expat's Tale of Coping with Death Back Home
http://bit.ly/dWKLHS

The Great Expat Party: Bars, Clubs, Drinks: One Perspective

http://bit.ly/fWr2cF

How To Earn A Living Online From A Foreign Country
http://bit.ly/fQnpFN

10 Tips To Grow Your Career Overseas
http://bit.ly/eg4LEx

10 Step Plan to Career Change
http://bit.ly/dXF4Na

Helping Expat Children Adjust To Life Abroad
http://bit.ly/fPYPYC

Living in an Expat Bubble? 2 Bloggers Have Their Say: Patryk Kujawski on http://bit.ly/h57GQd and Anne Egros on http://bit.ly/dGquKS


To follow me in 'real time' and keep up with even more great expat links on Twitter, please click here.


If you are not already an Expat Women member, please support us and sign up here to receive our monthly, motivational newsletters.

Thanks for your support and I wish you a wonderful day/evening! Andrea @andreaexpat

Robin Pascoe's Expat Blogella:The Rest of My Life

Hi Everyone, If you have ever read books written specifically for expats, there is a good chance that you have read one of Robin Pascoe's books.  Robin is well-known for her witty expat books and I know many of you enjoy reading what Robin gets up to. Many of you have also met Robin when she was on the international speaking circuit, championing 'the expat family' for so many years.

Trying to retire from the speaking circuit, last year Robin launched a Successful Living Abroad series of 20 online video lectures, that you can enjoy for free here. And now, Robin has taken a leap of faith and launched her own Expat Blogella: The Rest of My Life.

Robin's new blogella is expat fiction (although when you read the characters, you realize that Robin has based her fiction on people you have probably met in your expat travels, so whilst it is fiction in terms of Robin's family life, it is quite close to the truth for many expats who have either survived or witnessed the heartbreak of infidelity and/or divorce abroad - and for that reason, it certainly makes a good read).

So far, Robin has posted six installments on The Rest of My Life - the blog of her new fictional character, Joelly Schuster. If you are interested, you can read them all here, or if you'd just like a sample, you can read the first installment below. (Thanks Robin for granting us permission to re-post it.)

Happy Friday/weekend reading! Andrea


Installment One

"I have to begin somewhere, so why not today when I have been 53-years-old for just over twenty-four hours? Yesterday wasn’t the greatest birthday I have ever celebrated but it wasn’t the worst either. My lovely daughter took me out to a fancy restaurant because she didn’t want me to be alone.

She’s worried about her old mother in this new life which no longer includes her father since he recently ditched me, in Beijing of all places. Naturally, it was for a woman half his age and younger than our daughter.

There is a reason clichés were invented. Bumper stickers too, like “Shit Happens”. They can be incredibly useful for summing up one’s life.

Maybe I could write bumper stickers instead of a taking a job as a barista at the Starbucks in the market. God knows I have served enough coffee in my life. I keep threatening to become a professional milk whipper because I’m now completely broke and it would seem, unemployable because of my age and a blank CV.

My daughter isn’t the only one fretting about what I am going to do now with the rest of my life (yes, it is the perfect title for this blog if I do say so myself). My son Brian isn’t exactly thrilled about his mother’s new and extremely reduced circumstances.

Barely out of college, the poor guy has his whole working life ahead of him (once he figures out what he wants to work at) but already he’s been offering his mother the money he has been saving up for a car. What a good son I raised. But I’ll crawl to the supermarket before I will let him give me his hard-earned money. 

Brian is so angry with his father right now, but what else is new? He’s been mad at him his entire life because he was simply never there. He was always on a business trip or working late for whatever oil company was controlling our lives at the time, always too tired if he was home on a weekend to coach any of Brian’s school teams.

I suppose I’ll have to get to that story at some point in this cyber diary with its clever title chosen precisely because I haven’t got a ******* clue what to do with the rest of my sorry little life.

Am I even allowed swearing on a blog? Too damn bad if I’m not supposed to since I’ve already been at it. My son isn’t the only one with anger issues obviously or so says the shrink I lined up before I even arrived in Ottawa.

Wait, am I supposed to even say where I’m living? Is there an instruction manual anywhere other than Blogging for Dummies which I saw in the bookstore? And does there happen to be a version for menopausal idiots who can barely remember to finish a sentence?

Please leave a comment and a link, dear reader. All one of you and that does not include you, Deborah (that’s my daughter). You don’t count. It’s your fault for even talking me into this in the first place."