Florida Panhandle Weather
We used to live in Tampa, a long time ago. From Tampa, it took nearly a day to drive to the southern tip of Florida. It took a whole day – a very long day – to drive north and then west toward Alabama. Florida is a long state. And it can have a lot of different weather.
When we arrived most recently in Florida, it was hot, as hot as Kuwait is right now, but with more humidity. We had all the right clothes, thank goodness.
Until the Thursday before Easter, when we stepped outside and suddenly it was 40 degrees (F) and a stiff sea-breeze made it feel even colder. We had to run to the store and buy little sweatshirts with hoods to keep warm!
Now it is back up, even hitting 80 or so in the “heat” to the afternoon. We are reveling in the coolness, knowing what we face upon our return back to Kuwait. Last night we had thunderstorms and much needed heavy rainfall, greening up the grass. Today we went out and played with the in-ground watering system, so we could see which zones were which – 12 different settings!
My husband, Adventure Man, is waiting for me. He wants to go have some breakfast, with real bacon. down at the local diner. Then we will hit the hardware stores again, run a few more errands, mail off some items, do some work around the house and just goof around. Aren’t vacations fun?
My Kind of House Work
The last couple days, I have been in my own personal nirvana. I have spent more time in Home Depot and Lowe’s than in the last two years. We have a new house to work on, need some work contracted, can do some of the work ourselves. It is exciting – and also terrifying. You never really know how an idea will work out.
But this gets my juices going. I love getting my hands on hammers, putting in new closets, figuring out how to upgrade a dated kitchen, painting, even reupholstering. I love the flooring departments, with all the tile samples, wood flooring samples, and carpeting. I love to see what the newest kitchens and baths are using, and to read magazines about what works and what works better. I like a house with a custom feel, something like Susanka’s The Not-So-Big-House, available from Amazon for around $14.46, where quality of space and quality of materials counts for more than square meters.
And I like doing some of it myself. Sometimes in the middle of it all, I stop and think “what am I doing???” but at the end, I usually feel SO satisfied, like I have really accomplished something.
If I had my “druthers”, I would probably buy an older home in good condition and change the floor plans, knock out walls, put in new bathrooms, and have a wonderful time doing it. Meanwhile, I am having a sample of all that “fun” right now. Wooo Hoooooo!
The Kuwait Church Souk
In Kuwait, as in most of the Middle East, in the shopping areas, shops that sell the same kind of goods are grouped together. “Souks” in the traditional shopping areas are small stalls, or open displays, thus all the vegetable vendors are grouped in one area, the perfume dealers in another, the cloth dealers in another. It is handy – when you go looking for something, if one shop doesn’t have it, another surely will.
I remember once looking for masonry screws in Doha; when the first stall didn’t have it, he left his stall – and all his merchandise, unprotected – and took me to his friend, who did have them. Sometimes a stall owner will send a helper to another store, and return with the item you are seeking.
Even some of the large malls seem to group similar vendors in the same spots. In Saudi Arabia, I remember entire floors devoted to shoes, or to abayas, or to accessories, or cloth and tailors.
So it gives me a big grin to go to churchin Kuwait on Fridays.
Friday mornings are sleepy in Kuwait. It’s a day off for the majority of the population, and Moslems go to the mosque for Friday prayers around noon. In the middle of downtown Kuwait, however, even early on a Friday morning, there is a hive of activity – at what we call the “church souk”.
It’s really a very clever concept, and also one that tickes my heart. In one area are many many churches. They are all Christian, and range from congregations of mainly Indian men, to Phillipino families, Nigerians, Chinese, Western, Baptist, Evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox, at least one congregation which has live musicians playing loud, joyful hymns and then more staid and traditional congregations.
I’ve often wondered how all these different congregations manage to work out a schedule – there must be at least 10 – 12 different meeting locations – for sharing the chapels, for managing the time needed to get people seated, and then to clear up and get people out again. It’s exactly these kinds of little bureaucratic quibblings that can stir up a hornet’s next of problems between “like minded” believers. If there are problems, the church leaders seem to work them out without acrimony. I wonder how they do that?
In my heart, I believe this is how we were meant to worship – and although our worship has different styles, it delights me that we all – hundreds of us, if not thousands – meet in the one area, every Friday, and have the freedom, here in Kuwait, to worship each in our own style. That’s a very powerful freedom.
What is Your Greatest Fear?
Reach down deep. Take your time. Think about this.
A friend sent one of those “getting to know you” e-mails, and this question was on it: What is your greatest fear?
(Photo from Acclaim images)
My first reaction is – whoa! That is a VERY personal question! But I shared my answer with her.
One of the reasons we share when we blog, I think, is to connect with one another, to make this world a less lonely place. When we are going through a hard time – and don’t be fooled, no matter how good, how together, we look on the outside, we ALL go through hard times – it helps to know that we are not the only person in the world who has ever gone through this, whatever this may be.
There are things we don’t talk about. From time to time, you find a friend you can really really trust, and you take a chance. What a relief! You discover, if you are lucky, that maybe he or she has been there, too. At the very worst, you have someone who knows what you have suffered. It can be years down the road that they come back to you and say “I’m there now – can you help me through it?” And two people are less alone, and your suffering has not been for nothing; it has equipped you to walk this path with your friend, and lighten the load a little.
So here is is: my greatest fear is to die a meaningless, stupid death.
I don’t want to die on a Kuwait highway saying “oh sh$t” as I see some doped up, testerone-loaded, out-of-control driver barreling straight into me.
I don’t want to die as a random, unchosen victim of terrorist attack, like 9/11, or Pan Am 103.
I don’t want to trip over my high heels and break my neck falling down the stairs. (My own stupidity!)
I wouldn’t mind dying a heroic death, but my preference is to die quietly, prepared, even eager to meet my Creator. But my terror is to die too soon, for no good reason, as the result of someone’s stupidity.
So. I’ve taken the risk, early on this Thursday morning. Step up to the plate. Take a deep breath. Even if you’ve never commented before, take a risk, here, now. (Regular commenters, welcome!) Share your greatest fear.
What is your greatest fear?
“Woh ist der bahnhof?”
One of our family jokes is about how when you go to live in Germany, for some reason, one of the first phrases you learn isn’t “guten tag” or “Wiegehts” (hello! / how are you?) but “where is the train station?” And it is particularly hilarious because even if you ever say it exactly right (or so you think) no one can understand what you are saying. And if they DO understand – they start giving you directions with elaborate hand signals.
Germans are very precise. They won’t just point in a general direction, they will use all kinds of words for left, right, straight ahead, and my personal favorite “gegenuber” which means catty-corner, or diagonally across from something, all words that the beginner doesn’t have a clue. So even if you successfully ask for directions, you can’t understand the answer.
Most of the time, however, you will ask “woh ist der bahnhof” several times, as the response is continually “wie, bitte?”, the polite way of sayinh “WHAT??” and then finally they will get this “aha!” and they will say “Oh! Woh ist der bahnhof?!” and it sounds exactly like what you have been saying for the last five minutes.
I had a “woh is der bahnhof” experience here in Kuwait. I was searching for a souk I had heard about. I asked some of my friends – where is the souk Watiniya? I experienced that two seconds of total blank non-response that always feels like two days, and then one of them laughed and said “oh, she means the souk Watiya” and they told me where it was.
But I’m getting smarter. It wasn’t the part where I added the extra syllable that confused them. It was the fact that I used the soft “t” and not the hard “t”. It’s a small thing, but enough to make me dance for joy – I can hear the difference!
Peeking Inside
You are a blessing in my life.
You think you are just blogging, but for me, you allow me to get a little bit beneath the surface of what your lives are like here in Kuwait.
I have to assume that most of you, like me, protect a lot of realities in your life, and that I am just getting the surface, just getting what you feel comfortable sharing with me.
And yet . . .no matter how superficial the “peek,” it is better than nothing.
Over time, we build a body of work. No matter how discreet we are ( Little Diamond I almost wrote “discrete,” and thinking of your pet peeve, checked it, thank God!) we reveal how we think, and what is important to us.
I love having some Kuwaiti friends. You teach me things I could never learn in a million years, just looking from the outside.
True story: I am having breakfast with my Kuwait friend at the Al-Kout Mall and she shivers. This friend is very special to me; it’s as if a flame burns inside her, keeping her pure and true from the inside out.
“I feel so out of place here!” she says.
I am truly bewildered.
“You are Kuwaiti! This is a Kuwaiti Mall!” I cry. “What is it that makes you so uncomfortable?”
“It’s like another world,” she says. “I’m not dressed conservatively enough.”
She is dressed in jeans – not tight. A t-shirt – not tight. And has a long sleeved shirt to go over it tied around her shoulders. She is entirely modest.
“I don’t see it,” I say. “Please, let me see through your eyes. What are you seeing, how is it different, why are you uncomfortable?”
“You’ve been to Marina Mall,” she responded. “You can see the difference?”
Of course. But Marina Mall . . . it is kind of a la la land to me, sort of bizarre. It almost looks Western, but there are things that are just not quite right . . .
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve got it.”
I still don’t know what I’ve got. So she starts explaining . . .”Look, you can see how the thobes are cut differently down here, tighter around the chest.”
(Uh . . . no, I can’t see!)
“. . . and the cuffs, the way they button. And the shoes are different, less . . . . ”
all of a sudden, I am thinking of my friend who taught Arabic, and the hours she labored, trying to get me to hear the difference between the light “t” and the hard “t”, I am trying and trying, but I don’t get it and then one day – I do!
I thank God for you, my friends, letting me see through your eyes, helping me understand, giving me new ways of seeing the world.
You All Look the Same to Us
“Which one is Noriko?” my instructor asked me.
“She’s Japanese, ” I responded, “She sits between Katrina and Joyce.”
She looked up at me and grinned.
“We can’t tell you apart, you know,” she laughed. “You all look the same to us. It takes us weeks, even months, to be able to tell you apart.”
Maybe I should have been offended, but I wasn’t. My class was made up of Europeans, Americans, Asians – people from all over the world who wanted to learn Arabic. It was funny to me that she couldn’t tell us apart, but I often have the same problem – I’m bad with faces. When you’re the teacher, looking out at a sea of faces – it takes a while.
But it has become a family tag-line, a joke – “You all look the same to us”.
Internet Phone Blockage
So far, my internet phone is still working. But I can no longer pick up messages; I had a work-around and the work-around is now blocked, too. I still have the connection, but I can’t connect with my internet phone service provider. Hmmmmm.
In Qatar, the problem was solved in less than a week, when ambassadors went to the Emir and protested that the ban on internet phones hurt the entire population. Does the government here understand that Kuwaitis have kids at school in the UK, the US, and are relying on these phone services, too?
My sense is that with the government currently in chaos, no one has the time to focus on this “small” problem. Nor the problem of increasing population and buildings vs. limited infrastructure – roads. water. electricity.
My Kuwaiti friends say that even 20 short years ago, Kuwait was paradise. I believe it, there is so much beauty here, so much natural richness. They say Kuwait was more free twenty years ago.
I know my focus on the internet phone service is selfish; there are bigger problems to be solved. Right now – it’s the one that affects ME!
This Little Eggy
I was with my sweet friend and many of her 12 children, and I was goofing off with the younger ones, running, chasing. With tiny Abdulaziz, I started playing with his toes.
“This little . . . ” I started, and then caught myself in horror. The next word is “piggy” and my friends are devout Muslims.
She just laughed.
She said “Oh we do this too! We say ‘this little eggy went to market and this little eggy stayed home'”.
Oh! Thank goodness! Every child around the world loves that game; I’m so glad I can continue to play it here!
Outside My Window
I live a busy life. To bring some order into the enormous potential for chaos, I have routines. Not inviolable routines; I can be flexible when I need to be, but routines that help me take care of the important things so that they don’t get lost in the pressure of other demands.
I start each day with coffee, and sit at my laptop and check all my e-mail. I read my daily readings in the Lectionary (see blogroll). Then I check the blog and respond to comments. Sometimes I write an entry, sometimes I don’t.
So this morning I have just sat down with my coffee, just opened my first e-mail, and suddenly, three men are outside my window, washing the windows. I am still in my nightgown, and had NO warning.
The Qatteri Cat was fascinated, and thought I had arranged this for his special entertainment. I was aghast, and rushed to the back rooms, away from the prying eyes.
I needn’t have worried. As you can see, just as I grabbed my camera, another traffic accident happened and they were very taken with the loud argument that ensued. My friends, the Kuwaiti police showed up about an hour later to sort things out.
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