Before we moved to Kuwait, we made sure to fill up our Nook and Kindle with as many eBooks as possible, because we had read online that bookstores were hard to find. However a few weeks ago, one of the parents at our school was telling us about a new bookstore that had just opened here, and they had a great selection, especially for kids. Rachel was looking for a specific book that she wanted for school, so after work one day, a bunch of us went on a little adventure to find it.
The crazy adventure all started AFTER we arrived at the bookstore! It was located in a mall, and super easy to find. We got there at about 2:30pm and found this sign, stating that the store hours were from 2-11pm:
Open Hours: 2-11pm
However, the store was CLOSED! It wasn’t all that unusual that it was closed, because most places here in Kuwait close for “lunch” between about 2-5pm, then reopen from 5pm-11pm. However we were bummed, because we drove all across the city, and the hours were posted! After peeking through the glass windows, we saw the worker sleeping inside, in the children’s reading nook. So . . . . . we politely began knocking on the window until she woke up!
She finally came to, and gave us a nasty look. You could tell that she wanted 10 more minutes of sleep, however there was a bunch of teachers outside ready to spend money! She meticulously (and dreadfully slowly) put the children’s nook back in order before she greeted us with a warm welcome and let us in.
Once inside, we were super excited to see the nice selection of books they had for all ages! You could even get a Ronald Regan book:
Anyone looking for a Ronald Reagan book?
About half of the books were in English and the other half were in Arabic. Here’s a few of the Arabic children’s books I found:
Notice the book spines are on the right side? That is because in Arabic, they read from right-to-left, opposite of English.
Rachel was trying to find her book, but soon realized that they were not in any sort of organized order! She asked the worker if they had the book she was looking for, and after a quick search of their inventory on their computer, the worker confirmed that they had a few copies. So the search for the book (more like a needle in a haystack) began. After about 30 minutes of looking through hundreds of books, the search was called off. Bummer, we didn’t find it!
So many books, but none of them were organized!
One of our friend’s bought a bunch of books he was looking for, so the trip was definitely worth while. We might try to go back in a couple of months after they get more organized. The worker said they had just opened a couple of days prior, so they just kind of tossed the books on the shelves without organizing them. Regardless though, it was a nice little outing after school.
It was fun to see the different variety of books they had!
They even had Barack Obama’s book Uncle Dougie!
The Might as Wellers 