First day of work

Today I started my very first day of work at the American Embassy in Kuwait, working for the State Department! So, technically I guess I am working for Hilary Clinton! I don’t exactly know what to think about that… but it’s cool to say anyways.

I had to force myself to roll out of bed at 6:30 this morning. So early! By 7:40 I was in the Human Resources Department signing forms and getting ready for my job. I think they forgot about me for a while, but eventually someone took me down to shipping. They introduced me to my Bassam who is in charge of shipping, and Hamza who takes care of transportation for the Embassy. They both wanted to make me feel at home, and the first thing Bassam said is “we are all a big family here. Now you are my daughter, and Hamza is your big brother okay? Okay!” He wanted to know if I my stuff had arrived yet, and when he realized we had no clue what was going on with our household goods he immediately started making phone calls. I think Bassam knows everyone, Kuwaiti and American. Eventually he tracked down our stuff, and rolled his eyes when someone said it only arrived yesterday. So Bassam wanted to take care of me and made someone fax him all of the information for me to give to my dad so that he could return with me tomorrow and expedite it. I was so appreciative for this random act of kindness.

Bassam and Hamaza showed me around the office, and I just started smiling and laughing at the endless stacks of paperwork everywhere. It was apparent that they had been delaying filing or organizing anything because they knew I would soon take care of it all. So, I got to work filing stacks of random papers. Turned out a lot of what I was filing was the General’s paperwork for his Household Goods, car, house… It was interesting to see all of the names on the paperwork and match it with people I had met. I laughed as I read some of the paperwork I was filing. Several times it had to deal with pets being quarantined and eventually shipped over here. I don’t think my dad would ever pay to have a pet shipped over to a foreign country.

After I completed several stacks of filing and could actually see a small bit of surface on my desk Hamza wanted my help renewing the insurance on the Ambassador’s vehicles. He told me what to do, gave me a huge heap of paperwork and started to leave when I protested that I had no earthly idea what the Arabic squiggles meant on the paperwork! So, Hamza sat down and gave me a ten minute Arabic lesson on the numbers. I soon could distinguish them and convert them to English, so began translating the Arabic numbers on the insurance renewal paperwork, matching them with the license plates of the Embassy cars, and filling in the cost and vehicle description. This took a very long time, not only because there was so much to do, but I had to keep guessing around at all of the Arabic forms. Eventually I had renewed the Ambassador’s fleet, and when Hamza saw my progress he gave me another stack and said “here, these people will be happy not to make a trip and come to it themselves, so do these Embassy workers.” So, I completed more of the endless forms and I’m sure a bunch of Marines will be happy that I renewed the insurance on their vehicles for them.

Bassam then stole me for a while and had me fill out more paperwork and forms and ship a bunch of documents to the US Ambassadors in the Netherlands and London. I kinda enjoyed seeing all the behind the scenes stuff that makes everything run so smoothly. Around 10:00 I found a Kit Kat and a falafel sandwich on my desk. Hamza had brought me a snack. I left it there for a while and figured I’d eat it for lunch. When he saw I had ignored the sandwich he became inquisitive and wondered if I wanted a different type or something and why I hadn’t eaten it. I realized he wanted me to sit down, take a break, enjoy the sandwich and talk to him. So, I took a brake and admired his entire wall full of photos.

The day moved on slowly with me listening to Bassam play Celine Dion and Mariah Carey as I filed paperwork. Bassam gave me an errand at one point, and I had to go in search of the cashier to get a receipt for a check for him. I looked down at the check and paperwork, to see that he left me in charge of $3,500. Whew! I was quite happy to hand over the check to the cashier and leave it all in her hands.
The rest of the day was spent on an endless project the men gave me. There were stacks of paperwork several feet deep that they wanted me to sort through. They also wanted me to add 2 enormous stacks of papers to the pile. I saw what a problem it would be matching up the names and files as nothing was organized, and spent over an hour alphabetizing it.

At noon I asked if I could go to the cafeteria to meet some friends and they replied yes, yes, I could do whatever I wanted. So I eventually meandered my way to the cafeteria and caught a couple of the guys I meet at Happy Hour. They had already finished lunch, so we all just sat and chatted together. I was delighted to hear that Nathan went to one of the sister churches for The Lighthouse Church we visited earlier. He said that he really enjoyed it, so maybe we will visit it this Friday. The guys tried to orient me a bit and Nathan invited me to his house on Saturday to help out with his project on the roof. He explained that “you can take a boy away from the South, but you can’t take the South outta the boy.” Nathan bought 15 ducks and 10 chickens this weekend, and plans on adding plants and making a garden up on his roof. I can’t wait to see this!

The guys only had a short 30 minute lunch break, but Nathan walked me back to shipping and showed me a short cut so I didn’t have to rely on the Marines to let me in. I went back to sorting the endless files and continued doing that till about 3:00. At 1:45 Bassam left for the day. Things were slow after that. Hamza was bored and spent most of the afternoon on the phone out of the office. I kept sorting until my desk was finally clean and read my book until 4:00. Hamza decided to leave at 4 and told me to answer his phone if it rang, and to shut off the lights and lock up after I left. So, I did just that when I left at 4:30 to go meet my dad.

He and Nathan were swimming, but he got out to take me home while I chatted some more with Nathan. On the way home dad and I stopped off at the Embassy’s “Tearoom” so that he could purchase some wine.

We came home and I soon crashed since I missed my afternoon nap. It was nice to sleep while the others were out, the house was so peaceful! It’s 10pm here and I am never ever this tired in the evenings, but I guess the whole waking up early and working all day may be making me tired. Hopefully it will help kick the jetlag out of my system!