Losing our sense of time

Our month here in Kuwait has been a blur. One day is indistinguishable from the next and it is hard to think of the date and day of the week. What changes is that on Friday and Saturday we are completely unstructured, which is absolutely blissful.

Last Friday, Maria and I spent six hours at the Avenues mall, which is maybe the nicest mall I have been to. We did not want to rush and see what was available there. While there is a more high-end mall nearby, this was a nice mix of boutiques and everyday American mall stores like Gap, Payless, and American Eagle. The building itself is aesthetically pleasing with natural light and sparkling floors. We did some window shopping and also picked up a few work clothes on the sale racks at H&M and some household items from Ikea. Brunch at Le Pain Quotidien, an organic French cafe, was the highlight of the day with omelets, mesculen, fresh bread, and delicious preserves. Shopping is a major pasttime for Kuwaitis; for us it was enjoyable to take our time doing not much of anything.

There were a couple of parties Friday night that we attended. The one by the pool resembled a college frat party with poor-tasting homebrews. The one upstairs in our building was at Cheryl and Brent's apartment. Cheryl is a science colleague of Russ'. Nice music, great mix of people, tasty eats and surprisingly good wine and date rum punch. They also had the Rugby World Cup on. I met a guy from Bloemfontein, South Africa who is attached to one of the teachers here; both of us did not expect to be speaking Afrikaans in Kuwait which was a pretty wild concept. We are blessed by working and living with some amazing people who are also a lot of fun.

We can't help but sleep in to 6:30 or 7:00 on these more carefree weekend mornings, and then putter around for a couple of hours. Our school week is so busy. Traffic has been bad in the mornings and afternoons so our commute is often stretched to 45 minutes each way some days. The school days pass quickly as there is much to be done.

The grass is not always greener (especially when there isn't any growing). I have come to realize that I had a pretty good gig at Lenox High School. At ASK, it is becoming more and more apparent that we are working for the machine. I am a body to fill an office, expected to do my job well, but there is a sense in the high school that no one much cares who we are or how we are doing. That being said, I do enjoy the students and I appreciate our free time away from the school. We are blessed by working and living with some amazing people who are also a lot of fun. It is certainly an interesting place to live, and we will be able to start saving.