Decent Days and Nights

Wow. Its about day four here, depending on whether you count days as time after I go to sleep and ake up or time when it passes midnight. Technically its day 5. Either way, Ihad to ask what day of the week it was this morning because I'd honestly lost track.

Woudl you like an update?

so far I can say I have:

Met with an NGO [I think I told you that] It was brilliant, and speaking of brilliant, Brilliant Babmbi saved our asses by speaking a beautiful and eloquent bit about the time it takes for progress to be made in women's movements and how the women of Kuwait should be proud of their new found rights and press on and keep up the hard work. It was a relief because *someone* in our group [not me] in essence told the women that the reason they didn't have parlimentary officials who were women elected was because they didn't try hard enough and that their parliment needed to set quotas for women bcause they would not get elected otehrwise *rolls eyes* please. Its their first GD election! We were irate and BB saved the day. I love her. She's so well spoken, she makes me feel stupid when I listen to her. She's brilliant. Really.

Been to a library dedicated solely to the preservation of Arabic Poetry and literary artifacts. It was awesome. I cant even express how cool it was. Incidentally, I think this is funny:I blend in really well. most of the girls wear their scarves, just not on their heads, because they feel too "odd" and old fashioned. I personally like it, I don't have to do my hair, which is good since Ive not got a straitening iron, not to mention I look like everyone else, which is comfortable, you know? Anyhow, we were in the car to go to the Poetry Library and it was just me and Professor O and our driver because we have so many cars we dont have to cram in and we rotate who sits where, although normally I sit with BB and Jared, and I was short stick and rode with Dr. O. So our driver made a wrong turn and we had to pull in later. Well, they had closed the libary to the public for our tour [you wouldn't believe how many places they've closed just for us!] and we tried to pull in and they wouldn't let us in! The security guards kept looking in the car at me and telling Dr. O in Arabic there was no way we were with the other group because we were both arabs and they others we a bunch of foreign students, american he thought, and we werent going to trick our way into the library, we didn't match. Our ministry leaison eventually came down and told him off and he smiled at me and told me it was lovely to see such a modest and lovely American woman, who was so respectful of his culture. Dr. O told me the man had thought I was a family memeber of his - a neice or a daughter! Isnt that a scream? Anyway, the peotry was good.

Tomorrow we're going here:

The Kuwait Towers. We're having lunch with the Minister of Higher Education there. Today we toured American University Kuwait and tomorrow we are touring Kuwait University herself. We got to sit in on aclass today and listen to the discussion, I really enjoyed it. Today was a liberal university, tomorrow is a liberal university.

We also get to go ride the camels in the desert tomorrow, and as stereotypical as that might sound, we've all really been looking forward to it. Oh! And I don't know if I mentioned this, its cold here! Cold. cold! Today it only got to 14 C and we were all bundled up. I bought a leather jacket at the market. But, we are all bundled up for the cold, apparently this is the coldest its been in a few years. It even rained yesterday and they had 25% of what is their normally yearly rainfall. It was crazy. We're taking clothes to bundle up into when we go tomorrow, because we have to go uber dressy for the lunch tomorrow. But, you know, its still really nice, and we're having as good a time as we can.

This morning at the radio station was a lot of fun, and we got to be on air. But the big suprise was the paper, which I found laying on my bed, apparently my maid [well, what do you call a male maid, because I know mine's a male, I see him every day] saw the article and took the liberty of delivering one to me. On the second page of the paper in the special news section there was a half page article and huge picture of our group meeting with the womens group. We hadn't even realized the press was there! They had quotes from us and were really nice and informative about it. I was so uprised, so we're all taking home a copy of the paper.

Speaking of crud to take home, I have no idea where I am going to fit all the souvenirs. We're going sword shopping tomorrow, and if there's a good one I dont know what I'll do. I may need to buy extra luggage.

Oh, and I'd like to say, I'm one of the cool kids for a change I may have mentioned the other night BB and Jard and Looks Like Sam came to my room and we watched TV and talked politics and I taught them how to play "6 Steps to Nuclear War" [I told you didn't I??] Anyhow, point is, I felt cool because all my life I've been the kid whos been told the party is on the 13th floor and its a 12 story hotel, you know? Well, last night we listened to Dane Cook, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, and then the News, and we played Phase 10 [a card game] and ran our mouths until 230 [we were so tired when we drug ass out of bed at 6 to go to the radio station. Actually Jared and Looks Like Sam are like me, they were up by 530...] Tonight they came over again and we watched the movie Anchorman and talked. they left at about 12 or so, we are all wearing down from lack of sleep, jetlag and the massive amount of sugar we keep pumping into our systems. Seriously. Jared drinks more tea than me, and I didnt think that was possible. Oooh! And they all drink their tea with milk, the proper way, and I love it! We had to theive some milk and tea bags from the hotel restaurant, but I figure since we're paying 3.50 US for a "dinner beverage" then we have right to hork a few teabags and a cup of warm milk for heavens sake. Oh, and maybe some brown sugar for me...heh heh. Either way, the point is we had another night together, and its really nice. I feel loved, heh. Its a plesant change.

I'll post some more pics as soon as I manage to get the computer here to stop being stupid, and Jared and BB get more pics uploaded, because I've not had a chance to steal any pics from them recently.

Some links to pics of places we have been or are going: [because blogger sucks and wont let me pirate more of Jared's pics]

Kuwait Towers

Grand Mosque Outside

Grand Mosque Inside

Well, questions? Cmments?

xx
AG