Yea boat trip! We rented a boat today and went out with all the Saleem’s for about three hours on a little boat. It was a nice morning off to be on the water and just relax. Latifa, who has become our adopted mother, brought tea for us along with snacks, sandwiches and sodas. We just walked around the boat and laid in the sun, it was pretty chilly out with the wind, but it was SO nice to be on the water again. I promise we are doing work here. Mom, I told your baloney sandwich story which everyone loved. If anyone has not heard it, just e-mail her or I will tell you one day. I am pretty sure I have convinced three of the girls I have became closest with on this trip to do Semester at Sea. I mean I know I talk about it, but they kept asking me about the program and then I realized in class all of them were on the website searching about the spring 2011 voyage. Maybe I will be making enough money I can come and visit them. Sure would be fun. The boat trip was a blast, we just went out to this old ship which was stuck near the coastline of a small island but we did not have time to visit the island.
After the trip we went back to the hotel and I met with my professor about my paper. We have a few small paper assignments in this class and then one VERY LARGE research paper that are supposed to be 20-25 pages on a topic relative to the class. It’s not due till spring break, which is nice but I am going to hopefully have this sucker done mid-February, I have the rest of my senior year to enjoy thank you very much. I am writing on the influence of women being educated and having higher level positions in government, and how this affects the economic and social issues in society. I am really looking forward to writing it and relating it to the four newly elected women in Kuwait’s Parliament to other Arab countries in the Middle-East.
We had class for two hours which was really draining. Some of us added up the number of hours and realized we could petition when we get back to Boulder for having this class count for four credits instead of three. It will not make a difference for me, but it’ll be nice for the younger students on our trip. After class all of us went to this Lebanese place at 6 pm because we were going to the Saleen’s at 8 before attending another diwaniya. People usually eat here between 8:30 and 11 pm, so we were the only ones in the restaurant. It was really cheap and delicious. We have a few meals covered by study abroad (basically that we pre-paid), and this was one of them. We had ordered deliciously creamy and yummy hummus with babaganoush and they kept bringing out basket and baskets of warm, fresh and fluffy pita bread. If Jews believed in heaven, I was there (at least a food heaven). Seriously, I have never been so spoiled with such delicious hummus.
I promise to upload photos of the food. I am definitely not looking forward to grocery store bought hummus again. Maybe I’ll start making my own. Anyone have a good recipe? ;-)
Once we were finishing up eating, I realized how much fun I have with this group. Seriously we are always laughing, joking, making fun of one another or just goofing around. I feel so comfortable around them and I really hope we continue to hang out once returning to Boulder. We went over the Saleem’s to quickly congratulate Latifa and Brahim’s daughter and her husband’s 15th wedding anniversary. Latifa basically forcing - feed us some cake and tea wisped all 10 of us out the door to the diwaniya. This was a little different setting than our first one, it was in this artist’s home and there was a bunch of food (I was NOT hungry after our feast-like dinner) and some couches, along with some chairs too. They showed us her “gallery”, which was beautiful. The colors were amazing and each was inspired by somewhere she had traveled in the past. They then gave us a tour of their elaborate house with living room, her studio and her husband’s studio. I have never seen SO much death in two small rooms before. He was clearly a hunter. There was every type of animal head on the wall, including a shark, swordfish, a stuffed crocodile, kangaroo, a buffalo head and smaller rodents. It was overwhelming and though it was cool to see accomplishments of a skilled hunter, I strongly believe if you are going to kill something, you should do so to eat it and not by showing it off to dinner guests. The best apart about the night was that the other people at the house were a bunch of people from the United States who worked for the Air Force. They were at the base in Kuwait and some had been there a month, to three months, some were heading home soon and some had just arrived. It was really interesting and fun to talk to some of them. I had a great conversation with a woman about if the military educates people when they are given a new assignment in a country. Americans are assigned a place and given no information on the country including culture norms, travel restrictions or possibly issues with the culture on respect and interacting with the people. Nothing. I was shocked. She said they were only educated once they arrived at the base and usually it’s not always pertaining to the country’s issues. Well I guess I just created a job for myself. Now I just need to present it to the United States Military. :-)
It was a great evening, but all of us were exhausted from a long day so we headed home, I literally walked into our hotel room, changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth and passed out.
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