For the past couple weeks I've been staring at the letter printed across my mirror to blog, but have been very busy, and also too sick to attempt the daunting task. So much to write about, yet there never seems to be the time! I am finally recovering from being sick from some bronchitis and another bug that really wore me down. We spent the past week rushing around seeing doctors to try and cure me before my dream trip. One of my Egyptian doctors claims that I am sick often because of allergies due to some ions in the air. I have no idea what he is talking about, but hopefully the French and German drugs he gave me will cure me regardless of the fact that they are not FDA approved
During the time we spent in the hospital I had lots of time to people watch. The thing that made me sadly shake my head is that NONE of the mothers with newborn children bothered to put them in a car seat. They just sat on the unbuckled mothers lap in the front seat. So sad! For some odd reason they don't make appointments to see doctors here, instead everything is "Inshallah" (by the will of Allah.) We had a referral to see a doctor and went down to his office to inquire about an appointment. "I'm sorry, but he's not here now, however, inshallah he will be back by 4." "Can we please book an appointment?" "Why? You come back at 4, and inshallah you will be seen." I am so sick of the word inshallah!!
The hospital here is arranged in an odd way. When I was getting my blood drawn I swear I was being led to some odd looking igloo in the center of the room. It was a tiny circular room whose walls were made of glass bricks and had a domed roof. There was no traditional nasty hospital food cafeteria, instead there was Starbucks, an ice cream shop, a sandwich shop, and several other restaurants that were closed. The gift shop had very ornate balloons, and instead of teddy bears there were Ipods and PSPs.
I'm not the only one whose been the doctor lately; we took our cat Pebuh up to Camp Arafjan to see the vet and get his shots. We were amazed that the service was free. Next time we will have to get him microchipped, and we only have to pay the $20 for chip. Pebuh was not very happy with his shots, and very clingy afterwards so I decided to tuck him in my purse while we went shopping. All of the soldiers thought he was the cutest thing and were smiling, petting him, and some even asked if they could hold him. It was great having people along because he seemed to really brighten people's day and everyone wanted to stop and chat. I felt so sorry for the young ladies there that were on their 2nd tour to Kuwait and 8 month into it and missing their families during the holidays.
In all of my spare time I have been babysitting like crazy. On Sunday I had fun with two boys, we spent about 5 hours making salt dough ornaments and then painting them. I had Christmas music playing and we were all dancing and singing along while making adorable little ornaments. Amazingly babysitting pays pretty well and its actually quite fun. I can't wait though till I turn 18 and can finally apply for jobs on the economy. We'll wait and see what opportunities arise.
Operation Hope has also kept me very busy. As their Student Ambassador I have been occupied with coordinating with schools who are doing drives during the Christmas season. I also have a group of students who meet each Friday to work in the Operation Hope tent. Some weeks we prepare for distributions, one week we had to dig around to find women's clothes to send to the Deportation center, and most weeks we spend time trying to bring some organization to the utter chaos of the tent.
As it is the holiday season I have also been busy preparing for Christmas. I got creative and made a ton of beautiful handmade cards, and was so very mad at my cat when he decided to eat some of them. Yesterday I spent the entire day baking for my brother's English class, and also goodies for my dad to take to work, and plenty to freeze and enjoy on Christmas day when we return. With the holiday music blazing I danced and sang around the kitchen and made: brownies, blueberry muffins, chocolate fudge, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and no bake fudge cookies. Consequently the kitchen was a mess, but I had fun. It's rather hard to bake here with the lack of traditional ingredients. I have to ration my vanilla, because it's not sold in Kuwait because it contains alcohol. Brown sugar is also quite a pain, I have yet to find a way for it to not become rock solid. Even microwaving it doesn't seem to help much. I also miss corn syrup, and found that their odd sticky syrup does not work the same. I had to ask my aunt to send me some pudding mix, because I always use this for filling in my cakes. There's none to be found here and when I tried to make my own with random bits of what they claimed was pudding mix and various custards and creams I was very disappointed. Cooking here may be a challenge, and everything may turn out totally different, but I still have fun doing it
Well, we leave for the airport in less than 12 hours. I suppose I should probably double check my bags and stock up on some sleep, because with the 3 and 4 am mornings planned I doubt I'll be getting much on the trip!
Happy Holidays!!
