Friday, September 23rd, 2011
A great day! I Skyped with Robin for 3 hours! It was my first Skype from Kuwait, and it was great to catch up with her! It’s an interesting thing Skyping with her. I live 13 hours ahead of her. It was Thursday night for her, and early Friday morning for me. She yelled at me for being late (it was 7:30 in the morning for me), but she soon forgave me…mostly. I was still tired from fingerprinting day! I think one of my favorite parts of that conversation was when she was telling me that she had installed an App on her iPhone that told her what the temperature was here. She wanted to know if I knew it was over 100 every day. I told her I was well aware of that. And then she noticed that it said 84. She was very excited for me! Hell, I was excited for me! Of course, it was morning and the ‘coolness’ didn’t last long, but still!
When she finally caved to go to bed, I graded papers for a few hours.
I met up with Maddie around 12:30 to catch a cab to go to Fahaheel to get groceries. There’s a little mall and a Starbucks there. We ate in the foodcourt in the mall. They had Subway, Burger King and KFC (that I remember…). Maddie ate at a Thai place, and I have no idea what I ate. It was rice, then this mushroom sauce stuff and a cucumber and tomato salad of some sort. It was good! The food court eating area looks out on the Persian Gulf. It was the closest to the Gulf I’d been since getting here!
Boats in the Gulf by the shopping center in Fahaheel.
There are numerous class systems here. People from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Asian countries are mostly low-class citizens, the working poor, so to speak. These people are nannies, cleaners, forced prostitutes, and, in today’s case, workers in the food court area.
When you’re finished eating, you leave your tray on the table and they clean it up for you. It was a little awkward. It’s their job, but being someone who is used to cleaning up after myself, it was an odd feeling.
We then walked around Fahaheel for a bit. We stopped by a bank to get some cash. I was taking a picture of the sign and there were two women in their burka’s with the face veils. They must have thought I was taking their picture. They flashed Maddie and I peace signs, but I missed it. I was so bummed!
The Sultan Center (one of the places we get groceries at) is on the left, and that's a mall off to the center, and right.
The more 'authentic' Kuwait...
There is also a small mall connected to the Sultan Center. This fountain is in the middle. It plays music and the water has a show. A few of us affectionately refer to it as the Vegas of Kuwait. Definitely not quite as fun, but still entertaining!
We then went to Starbucks so I could get a traveling coffee mug. Mine was one of the casualties of fast and furious packing. I wasn’t sure how much my bags weighed, and I had no idea where I could put it, because they were stuffed to the gills!
One of many Kuwait Starbucks. It has Starbucks in English on the left, and Arabic on the right (if you can see it).
After that was grocery shopping. We were both there “for a few things.” We even had lists. And then we totally picked up other stuff. We had decided to take our time, and it’s amazing how you think about stuff when you see it on the shelf. Impulse buying is still alive in well in my world. I need to work on that – but those Ritz crackers are freaking delicious!
We were gone for over 4 hours. While we were gone, Maddie had received a text from Colleen asking us if we wanted to go to The Chocolate Bar. It had bar and chocolate in the same phrase. I was sold! Yes, I knew there would be no alcohol there!
It was a really fun (and expensive) place. The inside was decorated in black and hot pink. It was very striking!
I had a wonderful pesto, mozzarella and tomato sandwich. Maddie and I then shared the Flavoured Fondue. I had never had Fondue before, and I was stoked! The flavors were: S’mores, Toblerone, and Caramel. It came with chocolate chip cookies, pound cake, strawberries and bananas to dip in it. We asked if we could have extra strawberries instead of bananas and the waiter said yes. Hooray!
The deliciousness!
Chuckles and a few of his ‘forces’ buddies met us there. Of course, the guy who was old enough to be my grandfather asked for my e-mail. I ignored his request. What else was I supposed to do? Gross! I think I have, “If you are completely inappropriate for me, please hit on me” written on my forehead.
It was Mary Ann's birthday. For real!
When we left we went out to the main road to catch some cabs back to the apartments. It’s not very far away, but you have to go through a huge pile of sand to get there. A taxi is a much better idea.
Four of the girls got into a cab while the rest of us were trying to get across the road. We watched as a police officer pulled up behind the cab with his lights flashing. We still couldn’t cross, and we watched as he leaned in the back window to talk to the girls. He eventually backed away and held up traffic so we could cross the road. Then he let the cab go. Needless to say, we walked a little further down before trying to catch another one!
When we got back to the apartments for the ASK/BSK get together (American School of Kuwait / British School of Kuwait) at our pool, we asked what had happened. Apparently he wanted to see their passports. None of us have our passports right now. The school has them. I’m not going to lie, it was weird handing my passport over, but it’s needed in every step of the visa process along with a pile of papers.
They had no idea why he pulled up behind them and asked for their passports, but at least he let them go!
The pool party was fun. A few people swam. The rest of us mingled and drank. I really didn’t meet very many of the BSK people, but I did end up meeting more people from ASK. That’s alright. It sounds like there will be more festive get-togethers as the year progresses. I left around 12:30 because my pants were wet. And no, not in a gross way. I was sitting on the ledge outside of the pool, and a person who had been swimming got out and was sitting a short distance from me. We were passing the ‘common’ bottle of wine that he had made. Why were my pants wet, then? Because I was sitting on the freaking drain and all the water ran right towards me! Stupid date rum, wine and some sort of delicious punch!
I heard that the party was still going strong until after 3.
Chuckles also came. He only brought one of the guys from The Chocolate Bar with him. I don’t remember his name, but he knows someone that does the scuba diving certification here. Apparently if you have a certain number of people you can charter a boat. I’ll be needing to find out more on this! I would love to get my scuba certification!
No comments:
Post a Comment