When your kids spread their wings.

OK so I can finally share 2 bits of news. It's not been my news to share. But that of 2 of my children. Children 3 and 4. It's been causing me quite a bit of stress in regards to the impact it will have on my life as a mum and the worries I have for my children. But they've now told all the family and their friends about their plans and travels so there is no stopping mum now.

My kids tell me everything (well what they think I need to know and enough to keep me off their backs)

My kids tell me everything before they tell anyone else (after they've told their girlfriends, best mates, cousins, bloke in the pub etc)

My kids tell me everything that will have an impact on my life life (when they need to borrow money)

Child 4 is now 22 and happily settled in Northern Ireland. I'm flying to Belfast on Saturday for 4 days to say goodbye before he goes on his first tour of duty with the British Army for the next 7 months in the Middle East. He actually won't be that far from me in Dubai as the crow flies, but he may as well be on the moon for a while. As a mum it's hard when your child leaves home, he has a new life now, with his girlfriend and her family on a daily basis, but I'm still mum and still a very important part of his life, even if I do say so myself.

My 2nd piece of news is that 3 weeks ago, child 3 who left home in 2010 aged 18, 3 months before we moved to South Africa has announced that on July 31st he is moving with his girlfriend to Australia, initially on a 1 year working visa, but the plan is to extend it and stay out there for a long as they can, if not forever. His first comment upon telling us was that we couldn't complain about the distance as we currently live in Dubai and we left him when he was 18 and moved 6000 miles away to South Africa. He made a fair point.

I see all my children between 2-4 times a year, either through visiting the UK or them coming over to Dubai to visit us. When I'm in the UK, I focus my visits around them, but with child 3 in Leeds and child 4 in Northern Ireland, the last couple of years it's been getting harder to see them together. In fact the last time all 7 of us were together in the same country was in 2007 and the last family photo was in 2003. This Spring we managed to get all 7 of us together in a car park in Cheltenham for half an hour where we took this photo.

I doubt we'll ever get all of us together again, I know we'll all see one another, in various places around the world, but as a family of 7? especially now they have long term girlfriends and are involved in their lives with plans to settle down, holiday plans will change, Christmas and birthday's will be shared, it's just life and with us living in 3 different continents it's going to be virtually impossible from now on.

As for the rest of the kids:

The eldest child, child 1, is in a residential home in the UK, she is now 29 and profoundly disabled, we aren't involved in her day to day life, but every 2 years we are invited to take part in an assessment and are involved in her financial planning and any budget changes and the impacts on the services provided. When this process takes place it is a full time job for around 4-6 weeks, form filling and negotiating back and forth to ensure there is no disruption in the care she receives.

Child 2 left home at 18 and joined the British Army also, he was based in Germany for 4 years and now lives with his girlfriend and works in the Forest of Dean, he is 27.

Child 5 left home aged 13 and returned to boarding school in the UK in 2013 aged 14, he leaves school in 2 weeks time and he is currently applying for apprenticeships. I'm back in the UK to support him through this process and assist with housing and moving and attending interviews. We have no idea at this point in time where abouts in the UK he'll end up, but for now we're looking at Gloucestershire.

For the foreseeable future our family visits will be as a family of 5 as that's all we will be able to manage to get together, but we'll make the most of of it and carry on making memories and adding photo's to our wall. I'll just need to learn to photo shop.

My Sunday Photo - Week 115. F is for future.

A big part of who I am is what I do. Although it sounds dramatic my identity was taken from me the day we became expats, living in a country where I wasn't permitted to work. This wasn't something I was prepared for and we trusted the relocation company when they said that once we'd settled the children into school, found a house and our container arrived, that they would then assist with the job market. They hadn't checked the law on foreigners working other than organising the inter company transfer for Peter. I did eventually find volunteer work and as satisfying as it was, there was an assumption that I baked cakes and fund raised at the local golf club, or read to a primary school class once a week, when I said I volunteered in Education for charity.

So on moving to Dubai, just after 2 years ago, my focus after settling into our new home was to find work. It took 10 months before I started teaching in FS. In hindsight, I took the first (and only) job offered to me and as much as I loved the job, the environment wasn't for me, so I left 3 months ago.

My visa for the past 6 years has read 'housewife' I'm not even a SAHM, since the kids have left home, I'm just a SAH and I'm bored, lonely and at 45, life is now passing me by.

We're staying in Dubai another 2-3 years, at 60 this year, Peter is looking forward to retirement in a couple of years time and despite having our finances sorted, I will need to work as we want to continue living this life style of travel and having nice things, so the reality is I need to find a job that will enhance my opportunities when we return to the UK.

I've applied for 2 positions. 1 in Dubai and 1 in the UK. The Dubai job is teaching life skills to 15-18 year old in several school across the UAE. The UK job is with The Football Association and in Child Welfare. The UK job is probably out of my area of expertise these days, as things in Child Welfare have moved on so quickly. It will throw up huge problems as I will need to live in London and Peter will remain in Dubai.

The job in Dubai has offered me an interview, the beginning of May. I need the time to get my disclosure processed from the Disclosure and Barring Service, a police check for my time in both Dubai and South Africa and a variety of other documents that need collating. I also need to do a first aid course.

Both jobs leave me with several dilemmas:

I really want The FA job in London, but although I'd be closer to my family, the kids and be able to see them on weekends, I'd be using my 4 weeks annual leave for long weekends in Dubai to see Peter and he'd have to use his to make trips to see me. My salary would be spent on my cost of living and flights, but it may encourage Peter to make an earlier return to the UK as we could rent out both our UK properties and live off the rent as well as my salary.

If I take the job in Dubai, I'd earn far more money than I could ever dream of in the UK, although if I hadn't left the UK, I'm fairly positive my career would've developed to earning around the same amount now, but then Peter wouldn't have earn such a high salary staying in the UK as he does from working abroad. And I'd be back in a similar situation as to when I was working as a teacher here, bound by the school holidays, and restricted visits to see the family and adult kids in the UK.

At the end of the day, attending interviews won't do me any harm, I can always turn the job down, money isn't really a factor while we're living here, especially now we are free of boarding school fees.

But I do need to be doing something other than travelling back and forth to the UK, the months in-between drive me mad, I do the same things over and over and it's boring, my brain is turning to mush, although I do several study courses online to keep up to date with things. I'm 46 in a couple of months and in 2-3 years I'll be approaching 50, I'm not sure after 8-9 years of doing nothing I'll actually be that employable to do a job, have a career that I can excel in.

So watch this space, who knows I might not got offered either job and I'll be no worse off than I am now.

How much does it cost to live in Dubai?

This is a question I get asked a lot. There is an expectation that expats around the world are living the life of riley with over inflated salaries and benefits.

There are two types of expats, those on a local contract and those being paid from their country of origin. For those on local contracts, especially in Dubai, they pay no tax on their salaries, but they are also not allowed to make investments in their home country and pensions aren't available in the UAE. My hubby is on a local contract and makes his pension payments to the company in the UK, but as he isn't employed in the UK he has to make the company contribution also. For others they have to deal with the fluctuating exchange rates, transfer fees and the delay in their salary reaching them.

Salaries may be higher than the UK, but for my husband his salary is based on 30 years service to his employers, stems from him having a degree and just being damned good at his job. There are also housing benefits and a car allowance plus 1 return flight for him, myself and the teen to the UK, but when you're paying school fees, which is the only option in both Dubai and in South Africa where we lived previously, or in our case boarding school fees, it doesn't actually stretch that far, we also pay a mortgage in the UK and although the house is rented out, it is often empty. Don't forget the exchange rate and the cost of transferring the money. We also make more than one trip a year to the UK and the teen comes out 3-4 times a year. We can only afford to buy and run 1 vehicle as we don't do credit cards and loans, never have and never will. Throw into the mix I haven't worked for the past 5 years, we are more than 1 salary down every year.

Being on a local contract has more benefits, mainly being there is no need to keep converting the currencies to work out how much things are going to cost. Although we do have to do that when we travel to the UK as we have no income over there.

It is an automatic response to want to convert and especially coming from South Africa we were in for an initial shock as for the first month we were spending Rand and not Dirhams.

Basically there is no way we can compare our income in South Africa to our income in Dubai. Everything is just 3 times as expensive here as it is over there. When we visited the UK we found it to be twice as expensive as South Africa especially as we were still spending the Rand.

Waitrose is everywhere over here and like the UK very expensive. I picked up a lettuce for AED25/£4.50. it was just an ordinary lettuce. I've now found that if I shop at Carrefour I can buy lettuce for AED10/£1.77

A Starbucks coffee is AED17/£3 a full tank of fuel for a BMW 5 Series was AED100/£17 fuel has increased by 25% since we arrived.

A taxi fare from Dubai Mall to home, through the city, at any time of the day or night is AED35/£6

The train or bus from the mall is AED10.50/£1.95. A pint of beer or glass of wine is AED55/£9. An average meal out is AED400/£70. A Big Mac will cost you AED12/£2.10. Cigarettes cost AED20/£3.40 a packet.

We pay AED17,500/£3,100 per month to rent our villa, there is little difference between living out in the suburbs or in an apartment in the Marina. Rent is also payable a year in advance and we are responsible for all utilities and municipality fees.

We have to pay road tolls, a fee to register the cat and dog. Oh don't forget the Medical Aid, it's not provided free by my husbands employers although they do contribute towards it. The Doctors charge AED100/£17 for a consolation which is not refundable and most practitioners take payment after each treatment and theres a slow and painful process to go through to claim your money back.

It is very difficult to make comparisons when you're paid on a local contract, you spend money differently when you live as an expat. We have relatively low electricity and water bills in the winter, yet the costs are huge in the summer with the air con running all day, around AED2,800/£500

Of course there are plenty of bargains to be found and many offers and deals available especially in the summer when there are less tourists and with the outside attractions, such as 2 for 1 deals with water parks and meals out.
Knock off designer gear is available throughout Satwa and Kamara, but that is off little interest to us. In the Creek and surrounding areas you can find the souks which are wonderful to visit if you want to buy kitchen items, material and have a dress made, a variety of souvenir shops, do your food and clothes shopping, visit the markets for fresh fruit and vegetables at more than half the price but with it being so hot in the summer, we haven't been down those places since the middle of June.
There are the equivalent Pound Stores such as Daiso found in the local and larger malls the AED7 stores, where you can buy stationery, party goods, make ups, cleaning chemicals and equipment, toys.

It just takes some time to find these places, through exploring or word of mouth, it takes time to get used to the new currency and it's actual value, the spending power of the Dirham.

The main thing to remember in Dubai and South Africa is that prices are pretty much standardised when it comes to global products that are manufactured locally and under licence. A bottle of Coke for example is AED9 regardless of wherever you buy it, unlike the UK where the price varies depending on location. i.e service station, cinema, garage, corner shop or supermarket where prices fluctuate greatly.

i'm not complaining about the cost or standard of living in Dubai, I'm merely answering some questions that are put to me on a regular basis.