Kuwait! Oh visa, where are you?

Let’s start this entry out from leaving London.
My flight was delayed from the snow in London, the de-icing and then not being de-iced, the wait to leave, etc. Basically an hour or so later, everyone on the plane was chilling on the floor and having a good time. The flight wasn’t full and I had an entire row to myself…until about half way through waiting a girl, her head covered sat down. “I’m going to sit next to you, if that’s okay”. I was kind of annoyed at first, but then we started talking. Her name was Aise (pronounced I-e-she) and she was heading back to Saudi Arabia. We clicked right away and I found out she was my age, went to SUNY (in New York) Albany and was a senior about to graduate in May. She was an American citizen, but her family lives in Saudi Arabia. I had a horrible headache from not sleeping, not having enough water and traveling and she let me lay my legs across her lap. Sweetest girl ever. Besides people on Semester at Sea, I think she was one of the only people I know whose passport is filled with stamps and visas. It was as if I found my best friend soul mate. We talked and she asked me about being Jewish and I learned so much about Saudi Arabia. Everything I had thought was true was not and I love having someone changing a stereotype. For example, I had no idea that women in Saudi Arabia could drive. She said that in some cities it’s very strictly enforced, but it depends where you live. Her community and other “compounds” as she stated women can walk around the street without a male escort and can drive. It made me feel a lot better about possibly going there in the future. Towards the end of the flight her legs were stretched out on my seat and visa versa, it looked like we had been friends for years. :-)
I hope to keep in contact with her and possibly travel with her someday somewhere else. I love people that just completely open your eyes to something new, it doesn’t happen very often unfortunately.

Once arriving, I said goodbye to Aise and went to the visa pick up office.
Well, they did not have my visa. At all. What-so-ever.
I called the hotel (thank goodness my mom activated my international plan in London, thanks mom!) and they thought I was arriving yesterday, so they took the visa back. An hour and half later my visa was dropped off by the hotel and I eventually get through immigration and pick up my bag.
For all of you who were worried about being Jewish and the Israel stamp on my passport. Guess where they stamped my passport going into Kuwait? RIGHT NEXT TO MY BEN GURION BORDER CONTROL stamp. Yes, after all the trouble and worry it was fine. I was picked up by a nice guy from the hotel who was a student studying in Kuwait. He just finished his bachelor’s in business (I told him Melissa and Chelsea were business students and gave him props for studying such a subject…not for me).
He was saving up money to get his MBA and was from Pakistan. I do not think I had ever met some from there before and he knew FIVE languages. This is impressive and makes me sad that most Americans know one…if that. I wish we had bilingual or even trilingual schools. I taught him some Spanish and how to say hello in Hebrew and he taught me some Urdu. We had a great cab ride and it was a lot fun. We talked about the pressure from our families to get married even though we both wanted to do so many other things (including traveling, he went to Thailand we talked about that for awhile) before we settled down. It is nice to talk to people from other cultures and see that they are dealing with the same issues as I do.
Once arriving at the hotel, I checked in and the manager came in and welcomed me asking about my flight if I needed anything, gave me his card and was so welcoming and friendly. I am so glad we picked this hotel. It was absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much Sarah! There are two restaurants here (looked at the menu and ran upstairs…SO expensive) and a café that are very modernly decorated. Anu, who’s a student at CU, is my roommate for the program, but I have not met her yet. She has been in Kuwait for a day or two and was staying with family and supposed to check in tonight, but she has not arrived yet. The room is simple and a large desk which I am sure will come in handy. There are two twin beds next to each other, a lovely bathroom and shower, an open closet and a little bench. It’ll be perfect. It is definitely bigger than my cabin on Semester at Sea and probably bigger than my room in Boulder, actually-definitely bigger than the one at CU. I came into my room, showered and was starving but I decided to try to sleep first. Six and half hours later, I woke up at about 5:30 pm time here. I guess I really needed the sleep.
Once dressed, I went downstairs and asked what was around to get something to eat and also asked if it was okay to walk around at night by myself. She said of course, this area is very safe and if I had any concerns, just call or come back to the hotel. So, I took a deep breath and walked outside. There was some people walking around, I followed someone crossing the street, and it’s REALLY hard to cross the street here. Vietnam was crazy, but people do not drive very fast or very slow, you really cannot tell if they will stop for you or not, oh and there’s cross walks but no signals at them, so I do not see the point of those at all. I passed a Burger King, Starbucks, and a Ruby Tuesdays. It’s pretty westernized here. Eventually I decided to walk around a nearby mall to find something to eat. There are a lot of malls here. There was a coffee shop and on the third floor was a pizza hut. This is like an upscale-pretty nice restaurant in other countries in comparison to the Pizza Hut’s in the United States. The décor was very modern, with black and white chairs, white titling and leather read booths. I decided to go for it. The waitress was so sweet; she kept coming over and asking me all kinds of questions. She wondered why I was studying there and why I was alone and if I needed anything. Then a guy comes over and says, “So you’re from Arizona?” he was from New York! After eating, he came back over and told me to join him and his buddy for a bit. His name was David and his friend was Kenny and they were Americans and worked for the military. They could not tell me what they were doing there and David was your typical New Yorker, he was shocked they even let me into the country as a Jew and told me I should probably not tell anyone about it. That was encouraging. We sat and chatted for awhile, they were very friendly and worried about being alone, but they felt better after I told them I literally walked a block to get to the restaurant. It as an interesting perspective to talk to them, Kenny was from Peoria, AZ and both had a very interesting view on Middle-East, though they did not seem to trust anyone.

It definitely was the opposite vibe I had felt from everyone else I had met. Eventually I decided to head back to the hotel (discovered a Baskin Robbins on the way which was exciting). I was still exhausted and decided to stay in my room and just take it easy. I updated my blog on London and loaded up photos. Hopefully tomorrow I plan to meet up with my classmates, catch up on my reading and discover the city a bit.
Peace out from possibly the only Jew (according to my New Yorker friend) in the country of Kuwait.