Going from Familiar to Foreign: U.S. Embassy to a Kuwaiti Home

So since I updated last my laptop’s hard drive has crashed and luckily people in the Middle-East know someone who know someone who can help other people out. The contact our professor had in Kuwait and old friend, Mr. Saleen who helped arrange all our visits for the trip has a son who owns a technology business or does work with computers. Either way, I am not really sure the details, but I gave him my laptop and got back basically a brand new hard-drive and now have basically a brand-new computer (almost). There are a few glitches, such as some of the programs in Arabic and having none of my past documents on it. But, hey, it’ll work just fine for my time here and I will probably be getting a new computer when I return to the states. If you have any suggestions on hp, Sony, (I am not buying Mac unless you can convince me otherwise) on what to get, I would love to hear them. Lesson learned: Go buy an external hard drive at Costco or somewhere (they’re pretty reasonable) and back up your computer. Just do it.
Anyways, back to Kuwait. The last two days have still been filled with getting over jetlag and adjusting to the time difference of the ten hours between here and Colorado/Arizona time. My second day here I went downstairs to meet up with some of the students here and we all ate breakfast together in the hotel reception. This hotel is very modern and I found out was brand new! The breakfast we enjoy every morning is very international and has my roommate’s and I (okay mostly Chelsea)’s ultimate weakness. Nutella. They come in mini-baby one portion form and are completely addictive. I need to avoid it if I do not want to return gaining a bilzillion pounds. Any who, we met up with our professor and talked for awhile and then John (there’s two John’s on our trip, one is my age and one is much older and goes to Metro in Denver) the younger one along with Jaris who’s an ROTC sophomore International Affairs major and is from Georgia and I went to walk around the hotel. Jaris by far knows the most Arabic out of all of us. Pamela also came with us, she’s older and a student at CU (she’s married and has two or three kids, I believe?), all of us went out to check out the grocery store and walk around a bit. There are SO many malls here. I am talking very high end malls with lots of Western/International companies. We walked all over and eventually Pamela headed back to the hotel but the two boys and I walked to the Marina Mall, which was similar to Cherry Creek Mall or Fashion Square equivalent. There was a bridge that went over the highway that runs along the coast and we checked out the hotel there. It was beautiful, as in level of a Ritz Carlton but more modern. We even saw an Alfra Romeo sitting all by itself in the parking lot. There are A LOT of very expensive cars here.
We had some food and headed back to the hotel. Upon returning, I was exhausted and took a nap until my roommate finally arrived! Her name is Anupama or Anu for short, she’s from Indian but her and her parents live in Broomfield, CO. She’s a sophomore and an International Affairs major. I think we will get along just fine, but then again I have always been lucky with roommates. By that time it was evening and we called up a few of the other students and all walked around and found some shwarma place to eat. Nothing like street food which was next to McDonalds, Johnny Rockets and Coffee bean. We headed back to the hotel and meet up with the professor and talked for awhile. Eventually, Anu and I went upstairs and passed out before the next day.
We slept pretty late (6 a.m.) and showered, had some breakfast and chilled out before meeting at 12 with the group to head to the United States Embassy. Jessica, another student who is from Taiwan (our group is SO diverse, it’s insane) but was born in Colorado had arrived early that morning (3 am) and we were able to meet her. All of us piled into the van and headed to the U.S. Embassy. We are still waiting for one more student named Maria. But because of the storms on the East coast she could not even fly out till December 23rd and will arrive on the 24th. The U.S. Embassy did not allow us to bring in cameras or bags but we did need our passports and Kuwaiti visas. The Embassy was beautiful and we learned that it was the Kuwaiti government that paid the $10 million to build it and gave the land and the building to the U.S. in 1996. We met with two Foreign Service officers’ and they told us all about what they did and we asked a ton of questions. They talked about all the services and programs they do for Kuwaitis from scholarship programs, bringing speakers in for different organizations, to student exchange programs. There are currently 3,000 Kuwaitis in United States studying at our Universities. They told us about the Foreign Service and the more I hear about it, the more I know that is truly what I want to do more than anything else. It’s perfect besides getting paid to do policy and work in politics, I would be able to work the government and get paid to travel and live in countries all over the world. Now, I just need to pass the exam, ugg.
Afterwards all of us headed to the marina and realized our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and had some delicious Indian food. The food here was not as expensive as I thought it would be which is reassuring. I still have about 35 dinar (it’s about 3 to 1 US) from when I exchanged money in Boulder before I left. We went back to the hotel and discussed our visit and what we thought about it. We discussed that about visiting the Arab Fund for Economical Social Development tomorrow and the readings on foreign aid which would go with it. We were assigned four books for this class and readings online and I was really worried we would be reading more than I would be learning and exploring about Kuwait. But, the reading was really great and hopefully our professor will not overload us with reading. Afterwards I was exhausted and took a two hour nap, which felt like five minutes. Then all of us were invited to Mr. Saleen’s house for dinner that night at his house with his family. We left at around 7:45 but did not even start eating till 9 pm. The house was beautiful. It was three levels, where his son and daughter each had a level so they all sort of lived together but just on different floors. Of course, there was enough food for an army. Lots of rice and vegetable dishes, sort of similar to Indian food. It was all delicious. It was so nice to be in a Kuwaiti home and eat Kuwaiti food. His family was so sweet and all of them grew up traveling to Colorado. Mr. Saleen went to School of Mines, his sons and daughter went to DU, Metro and CSU. So they all felt that Colorado was their second home and loved everything about Colorado.
We continued to talk about living in Kuwait, the life they have here and continued to be offered little delicious tea cookies and English tea until I felt like I would burst. Seriously, we had three rounds of tea and dessert. They were pushier than Jews. That is an ultimate accomplishment. We ended up going home at 11ish and returned to the hotel a little before midnight. It was a long day and a wonderful evening. Today we went to the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, but that will be in the next blog update. I really am enjoying Kuwait and the trip keeps getting better.

Peace in the Middle-East,

Kara