Happy New Year! On New Year’s Eve we spent the day visiting National Bank of Kuwait again (NBK) and we visited the Central Bank of Kuwait. First we visited NBK and were escorted to a beautiful board room where an entire wall was a window overlooking the coast and Kuwait City. It was magnificent. We met with the tri-executive team of the CEO’s of the largest bank with Kuwait. It was awesome. There was an older man in a suit, a middle-aged man in a traditional Arab robe and a woman. I found that pretty diverse. We asked a bunch of questions and received gift bags, each of us with something different. I was given a nice case with two pens, one wrote like butter. Yea free stuff! After we visited the Central Bank, we had four speakers, and the last speaker was by far the best; he was older and seemed wiser too. He just gave it to us straight about the problems in the country and what needed to change in Kuwait’s future. We received free lunch here which was YUMMY. All kinds of little finger food and they gave us the same little-mini fruit tarts which they had at the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce. Yum, yum, yum.
I am so glad I am not diabetic. This is because I am pretty sure after the three I ate I would be dead. A dead Jew in Kuwait by fruit-tart sugar overload sounds like a GREAT new story.
Anyways afterward we headed to the old Souk (marketplace) because everyone wanted to buy stuff to bring home. It turned out we showed up at 2:30, when they close for lunch from 2 to 4 pm. So, it was a little disappointing but some of the stores were open which was nice. It was not nearly as cheap as it was in some of the other places I had been on Semester at Sea (which I knew) and a bunch of the things said, “Made in India, China” or other places. We had already received so many random free things from all the places we had been, I had little desire to buy stuff anyways. This market was by far the cleanest I had ever been in.
It was paved, concrete structure with little marked off enclosed places for stores, along with water fountains and bathrooms. It was incredible, I was shocked. I am sure Kuwait probably has the least amount of tourist problems with stealing and other issues like having passport stolen. Honestly their life is better here than in the United States, why would they want to go there? If they did want to, it’s very easy to do! Anyways, I ended up getting a black scarf which is beautiful and I am really happy about it because it was very cheap too. We found a little open area with tables and sat at a restaurant amongst the few other tourists with cameras and locals who were smoking shisha.
We ordered some chicken rice dish, some delicious fresh and yummy naan bread along with hummus and vegetables. It was so “local”. I loved not being in a restaurant enclosed place, we were outside with the birds and the sewer pump 100 yards away and people smoking shisha in the Middle-East. I was happy, plus the food was delicious. Afterward we all shared a pot of tea (soooo yummy!) and headed back to the hotel. We changed and had a little bit of time to chill before our guest lecturer from Sudan come to talk to us. He spoke to us about Sudan and our professor and him had been friends for over twenty years and met at a conference.
He was the adorable little man and though he spoke a little loudly, the lecture was awesome and all of us asked a bunch of questions. Then we just chilled and hung out before almost all of us went out around 9:30 pm for something to do for the holiday. Nothing was open at Marina Mall, but A TON of younger people were there hanging out. Where is the youth bulge? They are all at Marina Mall.
We ended up walking into a restaurant and had to take turns using the elevator because it was so small. Somehow between the elevator and sitting down at our table, this random guy started talking to us. He said he was a Kuwaiti and spoke some English, but after awhile he would not leave and he kept asking if Jamie and I had boyfriends in Arabic and we were all getting a little concerned. Eventually we told him to leave several times and finally all of us just stood up and left. It was a little weird, but we just moved on to another place which was awesome. We had shisha and food, good hummus and smoked while chilling, talking and eventually counting down from 2010. It was so much fun. So I was not at home, drinking champagne with people in Arizona or out of the bars in Boulder with Colorado people. I was not watching the ball drop in New Year City among thousands while confetti flew everywhere. But, I was in the Middle-East, with a bunch of people from different backgrounds and from different places. We were in a country that did not celebrate New Years and between the conversations on politics, families and traditions as well as the highlights of 2009 and talked about the changes we would like to do see in 2010. I realized something I would not have changed one thing about how I welcomed in the New Year. I hope all of us had a good New Years and if not, let’s make the next years truly unforgettable, because as we all know, life is simply too short.
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