Animal House

This week has been a little bit crazy. First I find out that this used to be the house from H-E-double hockey sticks. (edited for Rydin in case Marta is reading this to him without reading it first) I found out that this house used to have a hole in the air conditioning unit and cats got in and were living in it. There was a bug infestation problem, and the water from the A.C. leaked all over the house and the whole ceiling had to be replaced. So, the day I found out about the house I went home and told Justin about it and when we went into our bedroom we heard a scampering noise in our ceiling. I was a little bit freaked out but there are lots of stray cats here and they climb all over the roof and I didn't want to believe that there was a problem. I just went to bed. The next day we heard more noises. AHHHHHHHHH!! I didn't want to go to bed. I think I was finally exhausted around 2 a.m. and told myself to fall asleep quickly. The next day I put in a call (Thursday) to maintenance to come check it out. Justin looked outside and there is a big hole in our roof where something can get in. Now, I've thought a lot about what it could be, a rat, a cat, or a bird. A rat I can't deal with and a cats freaks me out too. Therefore, until further notice, it's a bird. Turning on the light switch freaks it out though so I do it frequently throught the day and night time to piss it off if it happens to be there. Yesterday I didn't hear it until I went to bed. I called maintenance again yesterday and hopefully the will come tomorrow. In their defense, they can only work on it while I am here and I was gone a few times during the week.

The irony of this story was that earlier that day Danny had been asking about getting a pet and I had to explain to him AGAIN that I am allergic and once he moves out and has his own place he can get a pet. (side note, today he made a potion for me to make it so I'm not allergic anymore)


The next animal story:

Friday after chuch we were home and Danny and I walked into the kitchen and there was a 2-3 inch cockroach on our kitchen floor. Luckily there was just one. This was recently after my "bird" incident and I wasn't too thrilled about it. Justin sprayed it with Raid and he got rid of it. Danny and I ran and hid in the Family Room like a couple of squemish girls.

Third story:

Later that night Justin and I were watching T.V. when I saw something move near the T.V. Justin had fallen asleep in the recliner so I woke him up. He saw it scamper up the wall and went into the kitchen to get a container to catch it. It was a lizzard. It was really tiny but after my animal week I was ready to cry. My comment was, "This is what the hazzard pay is for." We did have a lizzard in our Florida house and Justin caught that one but I didn't get a photo of that. I was lucky this time. The only consulation of my lizzard was that I got a great shot of it. What a memory.

Bubbles, Bubbles everywhere and not a drop to dring

So we have a maid. I know... I'm spoiled. I would love to say it is purely for noble reasons to help her out but that isn't completly true. Ronnie comes and watches Danny for 2 hours and does some cleaning. So the house we live in is a little old. Or does it have character??? Anyway, she loaded the dishwasher and put in dish soap. Our dishwasher is a little bit cantankerous. Sometimes it won't go into the cleaning cycle and just stays in the making noise but no water phase. Ronnie loaded the diswasher and we didn't realize it was in the 1st cycle for a while. Then right before we went to bed we fixed it and woke up to bubbles overflowing onto the floor. It took Justin several rinse cycles to get rid of the bubbles.

Our Vacation

Tonight we booked our vacation. We are going on a Medderteranian cruise. It starts in Barcelona, Rome, Athens, Ephesus (Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), Malta. We are very excited and would love it if any of you want to come with us. November 14-26th.


I don't know if this link will work or not.
http://www.ncl.com/nclweb/booking/cruisedetails.html?packageId=1641809

Signs of Civilization

I guess that no matter where you go there are always signs of civilzation. What you can't see is is that there is graffiti on the Pizza Hut building. The resturant closed yesterday and moved further away. There is also a Burger King inside the building, one glass door away from the Pizza Hut.

Next to the McDonalds is a little grocery/7-11 type store where you can get miscellaneous stuff. Down the road from there, about a 1 minute drive, is a Hardees. We haven't been there yet but that could be due to my childhood trauma.

Sunrise-Sunset

I noticed that there was a beautiful sunset tonight so I had Danny go out and sit on the wall. He thought it woud be fun to move over in front of the plants so he could stick his fingers in the "big" holes. (there are holes in the tops of the bricks)

So I was up at 4:45 this morning. Why??? Justin's alarm went off at 4:30 because he had his first orientation presentation to give at 7:00 a.m. Since I was up I noticed the sunrise and thought I'd get a shot or two before going back to bed. This is the earliest I've been up here and I missed the sun coming up by about 15 minutes. One day we'll have to try to get it.

Culture Shock

Our plane trip from D.C. to Kuwait was a long one. Justin's company paid for us to fly business class. That is equal to first class on a domestic flight. I never want to go in coach again. Our seats were big and cushy, they reclined almost all the way back and for our dinner choice we were offered filet minion. They even gave us one of those hot towels like you see in the movies. Danny slept for about 4 hours so he was really tired when we got here. We got here at night time so he went right to sleep and woke up with no jet lag. He was up the first night from 12-2 with Justin and since then he hasn't had any time change problems. I am tired but I am able to use my CPAP and am slowly catching up on my beauty sleep. My wisdom tooth hole is healing but now my upper right molar is becoming sensitive to cold. The last thing I want to do is go to the dentist again.

People keep asking me if how I am dealing with the culture shock. It doesn't seem that differnt to me. It seems the older I get the less things surprise me. Going from Chicago to Utah was a little bit differnt just like going from Utah to California was differnt. Here it is the same way. The people are very gracious and thoughtful. There is a branch here which is wonderful. Today we had a pot luck after church. Last night Justin made some cookies. We had no baking soda so he substituted 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and he had no vanilla either. We don't have measuring cups or teaspoons so he eyeballed it. They turned out great. I think cookie making is in his genes.

There are about 100 members in the branch and I would guess that there were about 50 there today. Justin thinks there were more. One thing that is differnt is that the Sabbeth is on Friday not Sunday. Saturday is still Saturday and a day off work but Sunday starts the work week, kinda like Monday starts it in the US. Our first week here they asked us to speak in church and asked Justin to teach Gospel Doctrine. Our records aren't even here yet. Primary has 4 children including Danny. 3 girls ages 10,8,6 and Danny. There are 2 kids in the nursery too. He is having trouble sitting still so today I went up there to be with him and found out that their pianist is out with tendonitis and they were singing accapella. So I played for them. I only used the right hand and my playing was pretty pathetic. Hopefully this week our air shipment will come in and I will get my keyboard.

We have a host family that took care of us, picking us up at the airport and showing us around, having us over for a play day and just being wonderful. Their names are Julio and Karen and they have 2 boys, Caesar, 4, and Julian, 2. Dany has had so much fun playing with them. Caesar lent us some of his toys until Danny's come. We also met another family with a 4 year old, the Rankins who will be moving to Indonesia in September. At the SAC (Saudi Arabian Chevron) camp there is a yahoo group and I joined it so I know what is going on. Once I said, "hi" everyone started coming over and bringing us treats.

Some things are differnt here. Last week on our way home from town we saw a pick up truck with 4 camels in it. We found out today that they were probably the main course for a wedding celebration. We see camels every day when we go to the city. Usually they are far away from the road but we have seen them up pretty close.

Everything is expensive here. The conversion rate is $1 American dollar equals $3.5 KD (Kuwaiti Denar). 2/3 of the population here are not from Kuwait. Many are from the middle east trying to earn money to send back to their families. The middle east is very poor. Some people only make 1KD per hour and food is very expensive since it needs to be imported. They don't grow anything here. There is lots of American food here. There is a McDonalds 10 minutes from our house and a Hardees 9 minutes away. We ate at Ruby Tuesdays in a huge mall, bigger than Woodfield, and it has an IKEA attached to one end. There is also a Pizza Hut nearby that Justin has gone to in the resort town next to ours. We wanted to make Hamburger Caserole but Beef was $10 lb. so we got lamb. The Cream of Chicken here has herbs in it and we didn't get Kikomen soy sauce. However, all of the changes complimented each other and we had a great Lamberger Caserole. It still makes me smile just saying it.


Because Justin has a company car I cannot drive so if I need to go somewhere I can request a driver and car to come and get us. We get 2 trips to the city in a surburban a month. Once Justin gets his car we can go into the city as much as we want. The nice thing about having the Surburban is that it is good for picking up larger things and grocery shopping. One funny thing is that we were shopping in the Sultan Center, similar to Wallmart but 1/10th the size and a much smaller selection, and he found Blue Bell ice cream. That is his favorite and you can only get it in Texas and some parts of the South.

So far this has been a terrific adventure. We are keeping our UT phone number so you can call us and it will cost the same as making a call to UT. The time difference is inconvient. We are 8 hours ahead of Chicago and 10 hours ahead of CA. When I want to talk to someone during the day, everyone is sleeping.

We miss you all and look forward to hearing from you.

Our Kitchen

Here's our kitchen. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the picture you will notice a bunch of switches. It took us forever to figure out which switches go to which things. The plugs here are different and Justin had to buy some transformers and some adapters. The other thing about the switches is that if you want to turn something on you push down.

One thing I really like about the kitchen is the amount of counter space. Even with all of the stuff on it there is still room to prepare food.