Back to School

I had a great birthday here in Kuwait. Thanks to those both here and at home for the well wishes and making me feel special. Once I upload some photos, you'll be able to see my fabulous birthday cake.

I'm not real organized, yet, with my thougths for blogging even though Kerry got me this great, small journal for the purpose. With the start to the offical first week of school, I now promise to do a better job at structuring my time and keeping organized.

Some highlights from our existence here:

SAND STORMS! You know how you can anticipate a thunderstorm coming? It is NOT the case with sand storms. We experienced our first the other evening while in our apartment. Luckily, we have huge floor-to-ceiling windows to watch it all unfold. Trash flies everywhere and sand slowly seeps into the apartment and leaves a nice film of dust on everything.

Window watching. I now know how my Grandma Casten passed so many hours watching out her window on 8th Street in Quenemo watching the neighbors come and go. It is so addicting! Our apartments have HUGE floor-to-ceiling windows that span the entire length of our living/dining room. A favorite pasttime is watching people and the city change from day to night. The blinking neon palm trees are our favorite. Also, Emily and I couldn't help but watch everyone scramble for the mosque on Friday trying to make it in time to pray.

Food. All we talk about is food. The conversation can start very innocent, but ALWAYS gets around to something tasty we miss from home. It's the scarity principle, I assume. Even though we have plenty of options at the Sultan Center (my bean burritos I made were amazing, BTW) and even the local coop (small grocery), we still dream of food. We managed to make a pretty tasty meal with limited ingredients as "family dinner" night and I did love every minute of eating my birthday cake, too. There is EVERY American fastfood chain imagineable here, but it seems to be quite spendy, not to mention unhealthy. I'd rather just talk about food anyway. However, Emily and I are scheming our first trip to Taco Time. We've eaten out a couple of times. The first was for my birthday. We went to a place that looked eerily like Panera, located at the mall. The second was last night at an Indian/Chinese restaurant where I had my first hummus experience in Kuwait. Next time I'll just order that as my entree with bread. . .it was so good.

Agricultural Education. Starting with our fellow Hokies, Cory and I have had many hours to share the wealth of knowledge we have of agriculture. My personal favorite was informing Emily that sheep really do have tails! "Like dogs or rats?", she asks. Luckily I had a photo of Moroccan sheep with their tails and Cory shared photos from a proficiency award application of a student docking a lambs tail. I think we put her over the edge with talk of artificial insemination. Maybe that's a July conversation.

Taxi cabs are my friend, now. We got a 200KD advance on our pay and have since been taking taxis to/from places. My life seems much happier now that we aren't walking in the heat. It increases my "cost of living" to pay for transportation, but definitely worth every penny/KD.

Oh yeah, we had our first day of school today. I'm teaching the four-week public speaking course for the English department. Cory gets to teach the female section and I the male section. Seems a bit backwards, but I think it will work out fine. Overall, the 13 students seemed pretty attentive and laughed at my attempts of humor. I introduced myself and told them my home was in Kansas. My "favorite" student (as I'll call him from here on out) said, "Manhattan?". I was so surprised to hear that! He went on to tell me his cousin attends Kansas State. I told him that makes us family. Anyway, only 19 more days in the term. First speeches are this Thursday.

Still no Internet at the apartment. That means no Facebook and no attempt at Skype. Email and blogging are it for now.

I promise to have some photos on the next post!