All I own is my story...

Lots of fun things have been going on as I explore my new home over the last month.

I've had bizarre cabbies, expensive apples and awesome bootleg dvds.

Cabs: will pick you up and tell you they know where your going even if they haven't understood a word that has come out of your mouth.

Last week I took a cab to work (I'm not THAT lazy, but I was still weak from being sick). I told him AIS Kuwait, he said "in Hawalii" I said yes...I live in Medan Hawalii district. Ha ha Hawalii and Medan Hawalii are two different districts. I saw parts of the city I'd never seen before and that I haven't seen since. He ended up trying to drop me off at what appeared to be a rather shabby and suspect school of American dentistry...I told him this was not my school and told him, again, where to go. Eventually I got to work (only five minutes late!).

Last week Sarah and I wanted to get home from The Avenues (biggest mall in Kuwait, Jackie will LOVE it!) A cabbie got us and our stuff loaded into his cab and began taking us home.

His English was better than most cabbies you meet on the street (pun intended) so he would talk to us when we were stuck in traffic...he told Sarah she smelled good (I'm sure that wouldn't sound as creepy if he were fluent in English or we spoke Arabic). And later told us that we were "24 hours happy"...apparently we laugh a lot. who me? never.

Friday night a bunch of us were meeting up at the Hardrock Cafe and we tried to flag a cab down in front of my building. The first cabbie was honest enough and fluent enough to say he had no idea where we wanted to go. Okay, fine...here comes another one.

We shoulda stuck with the first guy. This guy spoke no English that I'm aware of and had no idea where the Hardrock was. But we didn't know that until we were off and away in the cab. As we drove downtown I pointed out Mark's and Spencer's to the girls....cabbie thought we wanted to go there...uh no, thanks mate. Eventually, Sarah found a desert card from the Hardrock that had the address on it...we still barely made it. From now on, unless it's to The Avenues and back, we're calling our cabs not picking them up on the side of the road.

On to the expensive apples...a couple weeks ago I went to the little shop behind my building with some friends, but when I went to pay (there are no posted prices) I was the only white person in there. For 125ml of ice cream and 3 apples I paid 7KD...roughly $7CDN and apple....the last couple times I've been in there I've either been visibly sick, had a black eye or both and haven't been overcharged since (yeah, I bought the bloody apples)...perhaps he was being nice to me? Next time I go in I'll let you know how it goes down.

I've seen no straight up dvd stores since I got here (aside from the Virgin Mega Store which I'm sure is deadly expensive), so I've been wondering what to do when I want new dvds. For new dvds there is a solution...every tuesday a guy comes door to door in our building and sells dvds for 1KD ($3CDN) each! Last week I got three and this week he's bringing me the entire 3rd season of CSI NY for 7KD! I'm planning on getting satellite TV soon too. The kiosk dude at The Ave wanted me to pay 6 months at one time (146KD) yeah...no. But Danielle says she got her's from the store itself in the Marina mall and only had to pay 2 months in advance...guess where I'll be going.


BTW if you get the chance to watch the movie Australia, although it's long, do it. It is singularly the best movie I have ever seen...and I've seen a lot of 'em.


Work has been going well, the library is back up on it's feet. Still some stuff to do but the main thing is that books can be checked out and books can be checked in.

Had my first story time today with about seven 5 year olds...they're really good kids. We read Curious George Goes to the Library, the first Madeline book (with the doll sitting at my feet), and half of Arthur's Halloween.

In between stories I let them play with the toys that are in the library...several of which are bug puppets that they "attacked" me with...I've got me some new best friends.


....speaking of new best friends, last week I ended up watching three 3 year olds while their teachers had a meeting for and hour and a quarter. 3 and 4 year olds aren't officially coming to school, by order of the gov't, until December. There are, however, staff's kids here...and I got them.

None of them spoke English, I don't think, but we had a lot of fun. We played with blocks, toy food, dolls, cars, dinosaurs and had a Lilo and Stitch movie playing in the background. I know they like me 'cause by the end of it all 3 were bringing me plates of play food with cutlery and the little girl was pouring me "tea". She was cute! She's hold up some of the play food and, I assume, name it in Arabic and I would tell her the English name.

When Layla came back from her meeting we were playing with castanets...something she couldn't get them to do herself.

Those have been the high points of the last couple weeks, the low points consisted of my being sick with Salmonella and using up my last paid sick day for the year. *shrugs* oh well, what can you do?

I'm going grocery shopping with Sarah tonight....hopefully nothing blog-worthy will happen!


There's a quote I love from Australia that goes something like this:

In the end, all you own is your story. So make it a good one.