(View of the harbor at marina mall, we call this area the yacht club)Today we visited the Social Security Office in Kuwait. This was probably one of my favorite visits. We first watched a video on Social Security in Kuwait, since they do not have taxes here (yeah I know not fair, but then again the United States is not exactly RICH with oil everywhere) they fund Social Security through a person’s salary and through the treasury. Depending on the person’s salary, the employer takes out an average of 11% (more if you make more, less if you make less) out of an employee’s salary and then the employee takes an additional average of 7% of their salary for social security. The additional funding comes from profits from the oil exports from the Kuwaiti Treasury. The building was beautiful and you take a number then are “served” (yes that’s correct) coffee or tea and have biscuits until your number is called. Wish our social security was not broken right? We learned all about the system and how they can get money back when they need it once they retire. The thing I found most interesting was that about 75% of the people who worked at this specific office, were women. Everywhere you looked there were women working in the building. When I asked them about this, the woman helping us said it’s because women are more calming and men tend to get in fights with other men. I found this really interesting. Afterwards we headed to the scientific center near our hotel and had some delicious ethnic lunch at pizza hut. It was either that or Burger King. Pizza hut here is actually a nice restaurant . After we ordered and were served our delicious pie awhile later, it was so tasty, probably because all of us were starving. The scientific center was pretty cool, we were able to learn about the different animals which inhibited this area in the past and then we saw scorpions and desert animals, I felt like I was in Arizona again. There was a huge aquarium and they had penguins! It made me miss South Africa. :-)
The aquarium was really cool, they had sharks and all kinds of fish. I have no idea why they had penguins, but they were fun to watch. I stayed there for awhile watching the fish, it was calming. I wish I had an aquarium in my apartment. How cool would that be?
Then we explored an old wooden ship in the Radisson hotel on our way back to our hotel. It’s a historic monument here in Kuwait, it has a restaurant and a large reception hall for weddings. It was a blast to explore all the little nooks and be near the bow overlooking the ocean. The ship actually broke the Guinness book of world records for being the largest wooden ship ever built.
(view from the porthole of Kuwait's beachside)I felt like a little kid again exploring and we took a bunch of photos.
That evening for Christmas eve, I quasi-converted everyone and we went out to Chinese food with Mr. Saleen’s son, Ahmed and our professor. It was so yummy and all of squished in this little Chinese restaurant with lamps all over the place. Afterwards we walked around and found a movie theater to see avatar. Traditional Jewish Christmas, eating Chinese food and watching a movie. The movie is awesome by the way, whoever is reading this should definitely go and see it. The movie was in English with Arabic subtitles, but they cut out the “love” scene in which I found interesting.
It was a long, but totally awesome day.
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