The sarcastic journey of a diplomat's wife, mom of 2, who used to be an economist
Dear Belgium, Happy birthday! You are 190 today! To compare, the UAE is 48, I think you’re looking pretty good for an oldie. Let’s face it, Us, Belgian citizens aren’t used to celebrate you properly. We don’t plan a fancy reunion weekend for you. We don’t bake a black yellow and red cake. We don’t […]
Read MoreIf there is one weird topic that only expats can understand, it’s the mixed feelings you get when you have visitors. Depending on where you expatriate, you will get more or less attraction of people to come and visit. We were doing pretty ok when we left. A vast majority of people hated the idea of traveling in […]
Read MoreIn my country, language is a touchy topic. We officially have 3: Dutch, French and German. But it’s not like in Luxembourg or Switzerland, we don’t have to learn them all. As a result, even if we are a super tiny country (30.000 sq meters, but diplomats will say “a country of modest size”), there […]
Read MoreToday, December 30th marks the 6 months of my blog. Why did I do it? I won’t lie to you, I did it mainly to justify myself. To explain to the people in my homeland what I was really going through. To open eyes on our position. To break some walls. I had no clue where […]
Read MoreSeeing my daughter write her letter to Santa made me think about who I would write and what I would ask if I had the chance. In my situation, very realistically speaking, Santa, is my husband’s employer. He’s the almighty. He decides WHEN we go, WHERE we go, if they approve our choice of house we’ll […]
Read MoreIn case you haven’t (over) heard about it, Christmas is coming. When you are an expat, this period can be tricky. In a warm climate country, even more. You are far from your family and all you can see in the (very fake) advertisements is a happy reunited family laughing in the snow. Then a […]
Read MoreIt is time I tell you a little bit about who I was before this move. Because I haven’t been a diplomatic housewife all my life. I used to have a job, probably like you, except I kind of hated it. It all started when I was about 8 years old. I was convinced that […]
Read MoreI’m not going to lie. I came here with some misconceptions of Islam. Like a lot of Europeans, I think, the face of Islam that I usually saw [and was presented with] in my country wasn’t always lovely. Walking to work I was sometimes confronted with Islamic men and women that made remarks for the […]
Read MoreYou have to forgive me. I haven’t written in over a month. I went back to my country. Well, not really though… I guess now the UAE is my country. I mean I went back to Belgium. People were thinking I was going back home, but it was more of a holiday in a country […]
Read MoreI want to talk about a very important topic in this job: the diplomatic receptions. People often think this is our only job, because it’s what they can see of the job. But also, because it takes a lot of our time to be honest. I didn’t think it was going to be so busy. […]
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