Expat Experiences: Brigid - Cairo, Egypt

Who are you?

I am a single British woman living on the south-western outskirts of Cairo in a new development near 6th October City.

Where, when and why did you move abroad?

I moved here just over 2 years ago after visiting for nearly 5 years. I wanted to change my life as I was in the Corporate treadmill and found that for the 3-4 years prior to moving here, I was just existing for work - working, commuting and sleeping - and having no real 'life' at all and actually quite resenting friends and family if they wanted to meet up or something on weekends when I wanted to catch up on precious sleep and just chill out.

I wanted time to kick back, relax, explore new areas of my brain, experience a very different culture (to me Northern European is a homogenous mass - one city indistinguishable from the next), take time out to smell the flowers, and also spend more time on 'people' stuff.

Why Cairo? I fell in love with Cairo right from my first visit - big, brash, noisy, beautiful, ugly, wonderful, chaotic, a surprise round every corner. I'm a big city girl by nature having lived both in rural areas, provincial towns and London in my life I know what I prefer. I missed Cairo every time I left it, and every time I came back, I felt I was home. I met up with an American woman who had been here for a few years on one visit and she said she had had exactly the same feelings about it and whenever she left Cairo she felt 'homesick'. Cairo is somewhere you either love or hate...

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