At this time of year in America, every store would have windows displaying Christmas decorations and amazing Christmas sales; almost every street would have wreaths or bells or lights hanging from their light posts; the air would be chilly with the promise of snow; almost every house would have a Christmas tree decorated to the nines; everywhere you go you could hear Christmas music playing over sound systems or through the radio in your car; every weekend there would be some sort of party (from the ugly Christmas sweater party to the chic office party) along your street or in your apartment building. This is the wonderful, joyful, bring-a-smile-to-your-face Christmas scene in America…..
At this time of year in Kuwait, no Christmas decorations in stores (except at the local grocery store where you can purchase overpriced items for your home); the streets are dusted with sand, not snow; the sun blasts the early morning chill away by 10 o’clock; you can sometimes spot one Christmas tree in an entire apartment complex; no Christmas music….ever; and lastly, no Christmas parties…..
Needless to say, it has been a bit difficult trying to get into the Christmas spirit. I have made efforts though. That local grocery store I mentioned earlier with overpriced Christmas decorations? Yea, I bought them. It was really out of necessity because it was driving me crazy that nothing Christmas-y was happening around me; just no bring-a-smile-to-your-face Christmas scene at all. So I bought a bunch of decorations and made some myself and it turned out alright wouldn’t you say?
We got snowflakes and garland and a mini Christmas tree and candles and a poinsettia plant. Not only that but I also baked some peanut butter blossom cookies, which is a bit of a Christmas tradition that I have with my mom (and I guess my dad too, but he just eats the cookies).
So I have tried my best to do as many Christmas-y things as possible while I have been here, given what I am up against. All these things, with the added boost from various Christmas movies that I have recently watched and the Christmas music that I have listened to, has really made me feel like Christmas is just around the corner….
My Humble, Yet Lovely Home
Not to brag or anything but this is the view that I woke up to on my first full day in Kuwait
In addition to the great view of the Arabian Sea, my apartment is quite spacious with a large TV and comfy queen-size bed. I don’t know what I was expecting but I was pleasantly surprised by everything that the apartment offered (even the pint-sized washer and dryer once I figured out how it worked). I have two roommates as well, but I don’t see much of them. One is a tall, lanky Russian and she is one of the most independent women I have ever met. It seems like she cannot only survive in any environment but thrive. The other roommate is from Trinidad and Tobago, and she is a petite spitfire based on what I learned from my few interactions with her. Over the next few months it will be interesting to see how our relationship progresses since we share a tiny bathroom….
Every week, maids come and tidy things up a bit for us, which I know I should never get used to. But, it is super nice that on top of everything else I don’t ever have to worry about vacuuming or dusting. I have done plenty of that already and I will relish this current hiatus of certain household chores.
As I have already hinted at early, the apartment building is pretty well located. There is the beach just across the street and within a two block radius there are literally dozens of Western restaurants, from McDonalds to Dunkin’ Donuts to Chili’s. While sometimes it is really nice to have these food places so close, they can also serve as horrible temptresses that wish you to gain five pounds in just one week. Therefore, I am doing my best to make my own food with the cooking skills I learned from my dad and also just wigging it and hope the food turns out eatable. So far, I have had pretty good luck…
All around I really like my apartment and I wouldn’t want anything to be different, except maybe a properly working four-burner stove (until then I will have to make due with only two working burners).
Settling In and Procrastinating Like Crazy
First and foremost, I am terribly sorry for what little entertainment I have given my readers over the past three weeks, a.k.a nothing. I could give you plenty of excuses but none of them seem good enough AND are also the truth. For example, if I said I was working on a secret mission for the last three weeks after being recruited by the CIA, it would be awesome but alas a lie. Second, where to begin? So much has happened, but I guess I will start where I last left off….Okay, here we go.
In Abu Dhabi, the last few days of orientation could be described in two words, spontaneous and blah (Yes that is an actual word in the Oxford dictionary I checked. Now you can’t say that I tried to spice up my diction with unorthodox words). The “blah” portions were the six hour classes where I occasionally paid attention, but mainly wrote lyrics from my favorite songs that I had memorized. In my defense, most of the information I had already heard because I did the internship where we took the exact same classes. They were even the same Powerpoints for goodness sake. So can you really blame me? Anyways, the “spontaneous” parts were the trips some of us in the class would take at the end of the day. Nothing like walking around the richest parts of the city with our backpacks. These areas included the Viceroy Hotel next to the Formula One race track, Yas Marina with the biggest yachts I have ever seen (except maybe in the James Bond films), Marina Mall, and the Emirates Palace. That last place was a five-star hotel literally built like a palace, complete with gilded moldings, crystal chandeliers, and a picture of the sheikh (leader) of UAE wrapped in a velvet picture frame bejeweled with diamonds….Those adventures were fun and I really got to know some of my classmates. Unfortunately, just as quickly as we were thrown together, we were dispersed across the Middle East. I still keep in touch with a few of them, but I sometimes wish I didn’t have to leave and essentially start all over again in the making-friends-department.
But it was alright. I said my goodbyes (for now) and left on the last day of orientation after classes were over.
It was a short flight to Kuwait and it was overall a smooth transition from the hotel in Abu Dhabi to my new apartment in Kuwait. A fellow co-worker picked me up in Kuwait City and then drove me to my apartment located in a town called Mahboula. I had a few days to settle in after which I started work. And I have been working five days a week for about ten to twelve hours each day for three full weeks now. In my next post I will be going into much greater detail don’t you worry.
Orientation Day 1
It is 4 am on the dot and my body feels like to has slept for 12 hours when in reality….it was 5. There wasn’t much I could do about it except make the most of it. I read my book and checked emails. Then at around 5:30 I heard a noise outside my window. I open it up and step out onto my balcony – oh by the way…i have a balcony on my third floor room. jealous? – In the distance I hear the call for prayer from a local mosque that was close by to the hotel – after asking around I discovered that it is called “Adhan”. Ya’ll should definitely take the time to listen to it; it has this sort of haunting beauty to it. After a short while it was over and I went back inside to get ready for my first day of orientation but not before I noticed pigeons flying around the hotel. This made sound ridiculous, but I thought the Middle East was exempt from the presence of those pesky birds. It was actually kind of comforting to see something that I am so used to seeing in America. Those silly, rather insignificant bids make the Middle East not so scary and different as I thought. Also a took a picture of the view from my window….
At around 7:45 am I make my way down to the lobby to see where the bus is that will shuttle all us trainees to the training center. Thankfully, I bummed into an American man and fellow trainee who had already scoped it out and pointed the bus out to me. On the bus I had the chance to talk to the American and also met a man from England. With each minute talking to them, my anxiety that had been sitting in the pit of my stomach slowly began to ease. I mean of course I was going to make friends. I don’t know why I thought it would be different in this situation. I just needed evidence and essentially be reminded of that fact. Because once that happened, I had no qualms meeting other people and connecting with them. At the end of the day I had met about a fifth of the class – there are about 60 of us new trainees.
The classes were nothing too special. Much of it was common sense or something I had learned through my internship a year before. That being said it was just so nice to finally start using my brain again. Over the summer I didn’t really use that many brain cells while I was relaxing.
After class, I hung out with 2 out of the 6 other girls that are in the class while waiting for the bus to take us back to the hotel. One is from France and the other from Saudi Arabia. In just a short while, I learned so much about both their areas and its cultures; it was really quite fun. We took a break from our conversation though to watch the sunset over the horizon. It was so beautiful. I had never seen anything like it. The sun had this blood red orange color to it and you could actually look directly at it without your eyes hurting. It was like something I had seen in a dozen movies that were set in the Middle East. It is one thing to see it in a movie and quite another to see it in real life. Unfortunately I completely goofed and didn’t take a photo….so be patient with me; I should get another opportunity soon.
I finally finished my long first day with a nice dinner in the company of other trainees and with some fun Skype conversations with my parents and boyfriend.
Traveling to the Middle East
My first thought when I woke up at 5 in the morning on Friday was ‘Oh man….today is the day isn’t it?’ Of course I didn’t need to be awake that early since my first flights wasn’t until the afternoon. When you can’t shut off your brain and you keep tossing and turning in bed though, you might as well just get up and face the day. And now I am just going to skip ahead past the emotional goodbyes to my parents and my first flight to get to the part where I am sitting in JFK airport in New York and eating my last true American. I decided to go with Buffalo Wild Wings and beer while watching American football, which is about as American as you can get. I flew to New York from Atlanta and now I was waiting for my flight to Abu Dhabi. The plane – a Boeing 777 – was massive and had ten seats in each row for economy. I was real bummed at first to find out that I was in the middle of the middle of my row, but as luck would have it no one took the seat to the left of me! So when the time came for me to sleep – and you have to sleep since it is a 12.5 hour flight – I popped some drowsy allergy medicine and passed out across the two seats. For the two in-flight meals, I ate with the woman sitting to my right. She was a nice, petite woman from Nepal of all places. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to hound her with questions about her home country – she was the first person I ever met from Nepal – because her English wasn’t the best.
Now some of you may think that a 10+ hour flight is grueling, but there is so much to entertain you that the time goes by pretty quick. The trick is to get up occasionally and find a place to stretch, usually this is in the front or back areas of economy class where the restrooms are located. If you are self-conscious, then you should probably head to the back of the plane. But if you are like me and don’t care, then go right on ahead and stretch out for all to see in the front area. More power to you.
Once we landed, everyone was sent through this maze of long corridors and up and then down escalators until we got through immigration and customs and then finally get spit out at baggage claim. Baggage claim was a bit hectic even though it was late in the evening, but I managed to snag a cart for my bags which I collected and then made my way to the taxi stand.
My taxi driver had recently emigrated from Pakistan to work in Abu Dhabi and he was able to teach me a little Arabic, which was nice and helped past the time since my hotel that I was staying at for orientation was a 25 minute drive from the airport.
Needless to say that as soon as I got into my hotel room I immediately grabbed a shower and passed out face first into bed. Thus finally ending my long, emotionally-draining day of traveling.
Saying Goodbye to America
This past Thursday was my last night in America and marked the end of my long stay at my parents’ place. I was originally supposed to start my job back in July. There were numerous delays with paperwork and for some reason Kuwait needs a bunch of paperwork. After months and months of waiting, I get a call from Demetrius, the man from the visa company that I was on a first-name basis with, saying that my visa is ready. My flights were booked that very same day, giving me a week to get everything in order. A quick side note….I really wish I could have met Demetrius but since all communication was either over the phone or through email, I never had the chance. From the sound of his voice I imagined him to be this adorable, caring old Greek man who wears his shirts unbuttoned to proudly show off his chest hair and gold necklaces, and I wished I could have seen if I was right….Okay now we can get back to the storyline. During those final days in America, time seemed to both slow down and speed up. It became such a weird paradox because I was trying my best to not freak out about leaving – even though it has been something I wanted since July. As many of you know, jumping out of my comfort zone is nothing unusual for me. Some of you may think that I am a bit of a junkie about it since I have done it so often these past four years. But traveling and essentially moving to the Middle East by myself as a female without really knowing anyone there or the language is just such another level even for me. And this anxiety was constantly at war with the tiny little voice in my head – in a completely non-psychotic kind of way – saying that I am strong enough to do this and that I can handle this no problem. So thanks to this weird paradox, within a blink of an eye it seemed, it was the night before I was supposed to leave. My mom had the brilliant idea of celebrating Thanksgiving early since I wasn’t going to be home this year for it. It was the most comforting thing we could have done and I am so glad we did it. (For your viewing I have attached a photo of our lovely 10-pound turkey)
How I Got to This Point
So for those of you who don’t know in September 2013 at the start of my college senior year I received a job offer from the company I interned with the summer of that year. I am not too sure if I can mention specifics so I am just going to be vague and I hope my readers can follow along. What I can tell you is that my new company is a well services company for oil and natural gas fields, which essentially means that my company is the one that gets hired for a job when an oil company purchases land that has high potential for oil and natural gas. So we come in, drill and set up the wells. Then the oil company comes in, extracts the goods, refine it and then sell it on the market. That is about it in a nutshell.
Back to the day that I received my job offer….it was a Friday, and I was constantly checking my email because I knew would be coming, good or bad. Finally at 6pm, I got some good news. It was a job offer and my job location was in Kuwait! Three days later, I sent them back my signed offer letter.
Hello and Welcome!
Hello to all my readers who happen upon this blog! Fair warning I am no Bridget Jones or Ernest Hemingway so please excuse my writing style, but over these next couple of months I hope to give as accurate and as funny an account I can of my life as an ex-pat in the Middle East and wherever else life takes me. So find your favorite spot in your house, get comfortable, and enjoy reading all about my misadventures!
Living the Ex-pat Life 