Living Abroad As Fairy Tales, Comedies, Tragedies

Exhibit of globes in the Louvre, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2017 (Photo By Jim Buie).

Living abroad, life seemed so much more dramatic and starker than in my home country. At first, our time abroad seemed like a fairy tale. My family and I escaped the restrictions of life in our native land, the US, during the Great Recession. While our extended family and American friends, it seemed, were suffering through the hardest economic times in the United States since the 1930s, we were safely working in and exploring countries that were thriving economically.

Our fears of living in the Middle East were so exaggerated,