I've been toying with writing a series...it started out (in my mind) as a sort of 10 Things You Never Knew About Dubai, but as the subject ideas were coming, it seemed like there could be an infinite number of topics.
So here goes, first in an indefinite series:
Things I Never Would Have Guessed About Dubai, #1
It's really hard to make friends
In my admittedly limited expat experience, Dubai has proven to be a very hard place to make close friends. To my mind, an expat posting puts a westerner in a foreign land where you quickly find the groups or clubs that allow you to meet the other foreigners posted there. You all band together, relying on each other for English conversation, information on how things work, how best to run your life in your new environment, and especially for an instant social circle. You quickly bond with your fellow strangers-in-a-strange-land, meet loads of new people and forge a few lasting friendships. You meet at coffee mornings, walking groups, book clubs, cultural interest groups, and in my case, knitting groups. You can ask the ones who've been there longer where to find soy milk/peanut butter/English books/yarn, and learn some tricks for navigating in your new milieu. You have a feeling of banding together and facing a complicated or challenging situation with comrades. That was my experience in Moscow, where my new peers showed me around the city and were always up for lunch dates, shopping excursions, park walks, and metro adventures. A year and half after leaving Moscow, I am still in touch with several women I met there and count them among my closest friends. Many of them have also left Moscow, because expats rarely stay there beyond a 2, 3 or five year posting.
Dubai is a different animal. I'd heard that expats far outnumbered locals here, and it's true. What I hadn't anticipated was that unlike with most expat postings, people stay in Dubai. Many for years and years, if not for their entire working lives. Expats buy homes, educate their children, and generally just move in here. Many of the ones who stay are Brits. The weather's great, there's lots of work, it's not far from home, and there's a great party scene (so I've heard). But the South Africans tend to stay for ages too, as do many Europeans. North Americans tend to only stay a few years, but lots of them are here long term as well. I've met lots of people who've married either locals or someone from a nearby Arab country. For them Dubai is either home for their spouse or an easier place to live than their spouses' countries, while still being a Muslim country in which to raise their children.
In terms of making new friends, the result is that when people are settled in a place for many years, they establish their circle of friends in the first year or two and then stick with them. It helps if you are here when your kids are little, since it's easy to make friends from the parent pool at school or at mom and tot groups, while it gets harder to make friends with your kids' parents when your kids are teenagers and never want you around them.
Still, I was surprised to realize that the city with far more expats had far less for expats to DO. There is a wonderful group called Expat Woman (www.expatwoman.com), and they hold coffee mornings around town. This is great, and a perfect place to meet people when you first arrive. I have met lovely people this way, but as a weekly activity, sitting around drinking coffee is not a long-term plan. I joined the American Women's Association (www.awadubai.org), having heard that they have interest groups and bi-monthly meetings. I've met some wonderful ladies through the Stitch Group and the Writer's Group, no complaints. Maybe if I were less of a chicken, I'd have braved more of their super-crowded and busy coffee mornings and possibly met more people. But I have to say, after the Moscow group with literally dozens of interest groups and clubs, the 5 or 6 clubs of the AWA was a bit of a let-down and the coffee mornings are downright scary.
I was thrilled to start working in January this year, it's really staved off the boredom I was sinking into in Dubai. It also helps me not stress about not having found a nice group of girlfriends to shop and explore with. Plus I'm busier, and so simultaneously less bored and less available (ie, less desperate).
All this said, I have made some dear friends here, even though some have already moved on. I've met a great number of interesting, nice women through work, coffee mornings, groups. I've forged a few valued friendships; the process of writing this down has made me realize how many. Maybe Dubai, City of Expats hasn't let me down after all.
Along with vowing to return to regular blog writing, I will also promise myself to take advantage of my few days off & call up a friend for lunch.
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