My name is Mairead Hoey, I am an Irish expat with a husband, three kids and an ancient dog, trying my best to avoid becoming a "lady who lunches".

We moved to Cairo in June 09. My husband was made redundant so I applied online for him to all the places I wanted to visit. Fortunately Cairo popped up as we could just as easily have ended up in India or one of the Stans.

The biggest challenge was the dog and all the associated paperwork. UK bureaucracy dictated that i should fly from N Ireland to the mainland to sort it out. Even the civil servants couldn't believe how ridiculous this was. Luckily I used my Irish passport and went through Dublin instead, and the dog flew out with us on the same plane. On a more personal note, convincing three teenagers it would be a wonderful experience, and not the end of the world was a roller coaster of emotions.   more ...

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

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 got very sick towards the end of my time - combination of gynae problems, stress and so forth and, just before resigning from my job, my blood pressure was 168/120 and my resting heart rate was over 100 and it was skipping and jumping all over the place. I won't bore you with the further details of my condition! Suffice to say - blood pressure was down to 123/80 and resting pulse 68-73 within 2 months of moving here (no diet, no exercise, and no medication!)   more ...