The new teachers are slowly coming to Kuwait. You can tell the newbies. They are the ones with the"deer in the headlights" looks. They are jet-lagged, they are hot, hot, hot and they are on sensory overload.
We have all been there.
Lucky for them our apartments have been decked out with brand new furniture and appliances. Everything is shiny and new, the flat-screen TV's are hooked up. there is food in the fridge and they have been to a mall. Malls are an important part of Kuwait. Newbies are taken there to minimize culture shock. Malls are very Western. Malls help transition the newbies from the very Western world from which they come to the Arab world in which they now live. One of them has already complained. He wants to go to the real Kuwait. Lucky for him I know where this is. I will take him there.
It is exciting to be a newbie. Everything is new, everything is different and even the ordinary becomes an adventure. I remember my first walk to McDonald's. It was my first walk by myself in a foreign land. Okay, it was only a quarter of a mile, most of which was a straight line, but it was still a first. While I was headed to a restaurant I knew well, the path was vastly different. I walked past stores with signs I could not read. I hears a language I had never heard,. I felt heat like nowhere else I had ever been. Once I got there, I paid with money I had only recently just seen. I felt like I was conquering Everest.
I learned something very important that day. I learned that if you just want to see the sights of a place, you can do that on Google. That little walk to McDonald's is really why I travel at all. I remember the walk from my cousin's house in Greece to the local newspaper stand. Again, an ordinary walk, an extraordinary adventure. I remember shopping in Guam, how the stores there have vastly different foods. With travel, even shopping can be fun. Mostly on Guam, I remember the rice, bags and bags of it piled high in front of the store. I also remember how hard it was to find pasta. Thanks forever to Mom for sending it to us through the mail.
No problem with that here in Kuwait. Now that I think about it, there are more Western foods here than they were there. Considering Guam is an American territory and Kuwait is an Arab country, Hmm.
We have all been there.
Lucky for them our apartments have been decked out with brand new furniture and appliances. Everything is shiny and new, the flat-screen TV's are hooked up. there is food in the fridge and they have been to a mall. Malls are an important part of Kuwait. Newbies are taken there to minimize culture shock. Malls are very Western. Malls help transition the newbies from the very Western world from which they come to the Arab world in which they now live. One of them has already complained. He wants to go to the real Kuwait. Lucky for him I know where this is. I will take him there.
It is exciting to be a newbie. Everything is new, everything is different and even the ordinary becomes an adventure. I remember my first walk to McDonald's. It was my first walk by myself in a foreign land. Okay, it was only a quarter of a mile, most of which was a straight line, but it was still a first. While I was headed to a restaurant I knew well, the path was vastly different. I walked past stores with signs I could not read. I hears a language I had never heard,. I felt heat like nowhere else I had ever been. Once I got there, I paid with money I had only recently just seen. I felt like I was conquering Everest.
I learned something very important that day. I learned that if you just want to see the sights of a place, you can do that on Google. That little walk to McDonald's is really why I travel at all. I remember the walk from my cousin's house in Greece to the local newspaper stand. Again, an ordinary walk, an extraordinary adventure. I remember shopping in Guam, how the stores there have vastly different foods. With travel, even shopping can be fun. Mostly on Guam, I remember the rice, bags and bags of it piled high in front of the store. I also remember how hard it was to find pasta. Thanks forever to Mom for sending it to us through the mail.
No problem with that here in Kuwait. Now that I think about it, there are more Western foods here than they were there. Considering Guam is an American territory and Kuwait is an Arab country, Hmm.
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