As Salam Alaykom!

***That is how you say hello in Arabic!  It is pronounced Ahl sah-LAHM ah-LAY-koom and is the typical greeting here.

We’re back to work now, after our awesome 3 day weekend!  As always we jam packed as many things as possible into our weekend.  If we were meeting for a happy hour this week, here’s what I would have to share with you . . . . .

• We booked 2 trips this week!  The first one was for our trip to Jordan in April for Spring Break.  My parents are coming to Kuwait for a few days, then the four of us are heading to Amman, Jordan for a week.  We have been talking about doing this trip for a few months, but we finally purchased our tickets from Kuwait to Jordan.  We are super excited, as it is going to be more of an “adventurous” trip rather than a “chill at the beach” kind of trip.  We are going to rent a car, and traverse the countryside and explore the Dead & Red Seas, visit Petra, camp in the desert, and some other stuff.  It feels good to finally have it booked so that we can start finalizing our itinerary and get our accommodations settled.  This weekend we also booked a trip to Cairo, Egypt!  We are going there for four days at the end of the month with a couple of friends.  We are excited to visit the Egyptian Pyramids, Sphinx, and explore the history of the country that dates back hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years!  We found a nice 5 star resort for super cheap that we’re going to stay at.  We “upgraded” our room (for $12) so we have a view of the pyramids from our balcony. SCORE!

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.famouswonders.com

• On Friday, a group of us piled into our car and headed south towards Saudi Arabia to visit one of our favorite beaches at Al Khiran.  We went earlier this year, and you might remember that Rachel wrote a little blog about it here.  The air temperature was in the 80s, but the water was ice cold!  We just chilled out at the beach, got some sun, tossed the frisbee, and just hung out with friends.  It was a great way to spend our afternoon!

• After last weeks ridiculous round of golf at the local sand course, I had the itch to do some more golfing.  So on Thursday, a buddy and I headed to the Sahara Country Club here in Kuwait City.  It was a BEAUTIFUL course, definitely the nicest one that I ever played on.  The grass wasn’t as lush and green as it was when I was there in August, because apparently the type of grass survives better during the intense heat of the summer months.  I guess it goes dormant during the winter months here (70s-80s) and was a bit brown.  Regardless though, we had a great time and it was so nice.  The course also has lights on all 18 holes, so we are going to try and go again in a few weeks and play at night.  Here is a link to the course we played: Sahara Country Club.

• This weekend I also scored a few freebies!  In our apartment building (all teachers that we work with) I found out that someone had an old dryer they wanted to get rid of it.  Apparently it worked fine a few weeks ago, until it suddenly stopped working for some reason.  They said that they weren’t very handy and didn’t want to bother trying to fix it, and just wanted it gone.  I jumped at the opportunity to tinker on project, so we are the new owners of a broken dryer!  Then about an hour later, one of our friends told us that someone was looking to get rid of a broken treadmill.  They knew I was pretty handy and always looking for a project, and the next thing you know . . . . . .  me and a friend are humping a huge broken treadmill back to our apartment. So for the first time since moving to Kuwait, I have myself a “Honey Do List.”  I bought a few basic tools this weekend, and am going to start tackling my projects during my spare time.  You may think I’m a hoarder for collecting this broken stuff . . . . . but I’m pretty excited to have something to tinker on.  I’ll keep you posted if I’m able to fix them.

That’s all for now folks, we’ll see you next week.