baby steps...

OK, so the first few days I did NOT leave the apartment… pretty lame, I know. I slept in, watched TV, read and just waited for Peter to come home and feed me. I felt like a little puppy; I’d hear Peter’s keys in the front door and I’d come flying out of the back room… He was the only person I saw for 3 whole days. Not the worst thing in the world, but I’m sure he got super annoyed with all my questions: What did you do today? Oh, just work? What’d you eat for breakfast? What’d you have for lunch? Indian? Was it good? Will you go there again? Will you take ME there???? Poor Peter…

After my 3 days of general solitude, I did venture out to the pool, which is quite nice. I just brought my laptop outside and sent an email and then I took a huge raindrop to the face – back inside!!!! I’ve got to get better about reading the weather around here…

I neglected to mention that on day 2 I saw two ladies out by the pool. They looked American and were listening to their ipods and reading mags. I proceeded to creep them through my window for the next several days. I don’t know why I didn’t go outside, I guess I wasn’t ready… but don’t ask me what I was waiting for, I still don’t know!

OK, my first outing was to the grocery store! ßYAY! Until now I’ve been eating Pizza Hut and Dawat, which is an Indian food restaurant right outside my back door. You would not believe all the American food they have here! I bought Kashi cereal, Hellman’s mayo, Wishbone dressing and even found Dove shampoo and conditioner! Almost everything we bought was from somewhere other than Kuwait. Our tomatoes were from Lebanon, the lettuce was from Saudi and even our “American” items (like Kraft and Hillshire Farms lunch meat) were from Australia. The grocery store that we went to is just up the street and it’s not the largest one, but had everything we needed. It’s two stories and the 2^nd floor is like WalMart, they had futons, dishes, fishing gear, bikes, random stuff... There was a magnetic escalator that you can just push your cart on to and it will ride all the way up with you – I really liked that… ;-) I’m sure everyone else on the ride could tell it was my first time.

The total for our little shopping trip was 90KD, which is 315 American bucks!! WHAAAA?? I mean, we only got sandwich stuff, breakfast items and some chicken and steak for dinners!!!! Our dollar is pretty weak over here and I haven’t adjusted to doing all the quick conversions in my head yet, so I wasn’t shopping with price in mind – just plucking familiar items and loading up the cart… OOPS! I’ll do better next time?

There’s no pork over here, since this is a Muslim country. You can still get sausage and pepperoni, but it’s made out of turkey or beef. NOT the same, but a good substitute.

Everything is different here, the washers and dryers (I JUST figured out how to do laundry, still haven’t learned how to make it dry though), the ovens have the numbers 1-8 – how am I supposed to know when it’s 375 degrees? Oh, and they don’t do Fahrenheit here, it’s Celsius. The metric system is new to me and I know I have to learn it – but I DON’T WANNNNNA! :-P