Ups and Downs

“Sometimes ups outnumber the downs” (name the movie- hint: comes from the lyrics of a song in a Disney movie…. Still don’t know? Perhaps this will help “Coming sire… coming” said by a drunk snake) Did you get it? Okay enough of that… As I was thinking of things I could write about I noticed that some were good and some were sad, but don’t you worry, the good won! Coming home last night I saw a car that was pretty mangled. The car went through the guard rail and ended up in the ditch on the other side of the freeway. In addition, the guard rail went through the car - seriously, the metal guard rail looked as though someone rolled down the windows and placed it in the back seat of the car. I don’t think there is any possible way someone could have survived that. It made me sad. It also made me very grateful for everyone’s prayers and the protection I continue to receive while I am on the roads here.

A group wanted to take up a collection for a gal who found herself in a bit of a predicament. She cleans bathrooms and makes little money doing it. Even still she makes enough here that she is able to send a little back home to help support her young children. We learned that in order to stay here she has to pay approximately $1,400.00 to renew her visa or she will be forced to go home. Well, $1,400.00 is almost a year’s salary for her and there is no way she can pay it. If she goes home she has no job so she is in quite a difficult position. It is sad to think how many others are in this same situation. My thought is this, I am happy to help if she takes the money and goes home so at least she could be with her kids. After all, what kind of a life is it for your kids or for you if you are both scraping by anyway? You would be better off scrapping by and at least being together. Besides I would imagine that $1,400.00 would probably be enough for 3 people to live okay for a year back in India. I don’t want to support the company which is putting people in a position nothing short of slavery. It is all too common here. It makes me sad. I am very grateful that I am a citizen of a country that has laws against slavery and has something called minimum wage. I played in a volleyball tournament yesterday. Yeah, I don’t think “play” is even the right term… more like our names were on the rooster for a v-ball tourney last night. I think we lost in less than 10 minutes… it was pretty pathetic! It made me sad because I wanted to play and I know we are better than that. A teammate summed it up perfectly by saying, “We failed to turn potential into performance!” A co-worker went on vacation back to the States and he returned to work on Friday. He brought me back some raisinets! He brought me 5 bags of delicious raisinets to be exact. I was so happy! I sold my stock on Friday… exactly one month from when I bought it. An $800 return is not bad for a month (could have been $1,000 profit had I sold two days after buying, but hey I still came out on top!) It is quite fun and I can see how playing the stock market can be addicting. It made me happy that my first attempt, as I ventured into the world of stocks, was a success! I started my new woodworking project this week. I am building the flag display case that Mom (and Jared) designed. I am using mahogany wood which will look awesome when it is finished. It is fun to learn the tricks of the trade and to see a project start to take shape. Today marks 5 years exactly of me working for Uncle Sam. I’ve learned a lot over the past 5 years and hopefully have become a better person as I’ve faced the many challenges given to me. I appreciate the trust my bosses have in me and I hope I haven’t fallen short of their expectations. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing people over the past five years, so for that I am truly grateful. I have been richly blessed with wonderful opportunities to grow and learn due to this job. My goal is to continue to learn and strive to meet the challenges ahead for another 5, 10, or 20 years! Well, that is all for this week’s rendition of Julie’s corner. I hope the “ups” have outnumbered the “downs” for you this week. If not, the good news is it is the beginning of a new week, so here is hoping it’s a good one! Love you all!

Rules Are Optional

How is everyone on this fine Easter Sunday? What a great day to have a birthday Eli! Happy 1 Year!

So, I went to make some banana bread the other day and realized I did not have any cinnamon or baking soda. Since the PX does not carry those items I made a point to get off the freeway one exit before my normal exit so I could swing by the store to buy these essential ingredients. I think this was a Tuesday evening, and can I just tell you that traffic is crazy here? I may have mentioned that once or twice, but it is seriously out of control! Picture, if you will, a Costco on a Saturday morning- it’s insane, right? Well, that is the way it is everyday- regardless of the day.

Okay, so I am in the store and I find the baking aisle. I could not find the baking soda or the cinnamon, so I wait for a female to come by (it is not appropriate to go up to a man and start a conversation) so I could ask her where these items were located. The women I asked must not have spoken English, because she looked at me with the deer in the headlights look. The gentleman she was with did answer me, so I was grateful for that. I did find my cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda and was able to make some delicious banana bread!

While at the store I also bought a small box of clementines. I took it to work to share since I knew I couldn’t eat them all by myself. I was amazed that no one seemed to know what a clemintine was, but everyone seemed to love them. How can you not know what a clemintine is- they are the best!

Okay, I haven’t written about the culture for awhile, so here are a couple new crazy driving stories and some other cultural differences about Kuwait:

1. When the road is narrowed to one lane for construction purposes there typically is a good reason for that other than to cause annoyance to those driving in the area. Well, I’m here to tell you that the orange cones mean absolutely nothing here. As I was heading home the other day there was construction which made a 3 lane highway become a one lane highway… or not??? There were people that completely disregarded the orange cones and were flying down the road in the restricted construction side- Nice! I have a feeling the construction company was expecting that to happen, because about two miles up the road they parked a big truck sideways which forced the crazy drivers to merge back to the one lane that they should have been in all along. Merging is a simple enough concept, but the people in this country don’t seem to grasp it- pure chaos! Oh, and I may add that while people were going down the construction side of the cones, there were other people passing on the shoulder, so it really was still a 3 lane highway. I’m telling you, I DO NOT make this stuff up, nor am I exaggerating!!!

2. It cracked me up to find one of the impatient cars that went down the construction side decided that they weren’t in such a big hurry after the construction ended. Here they were going 80KPH (50 MPH) in a 120KPH (75 MPH) zone after the construction ended… go figure!

3. The other day I saw a vehicle parked in the traffic circle (aka round-a-bout)- nice!

4. Kids do not use car seats or wear seatbelts

5. The Potholes here will swallow your car whole

6. I feel like I am playing reverse Frogger when I drive home. There are people everywhere and they just walk across the street wherever and whenever they want. Perhaps you can think of it as the people getting across the street play real-life Frogger!

7. The other day as I was on the street just before the street I live on there was a guy driving straight at me- kind of scary. So I came to a complete stop since I had no idea what direction he was going to go. He wasn’t going fast, so it wouldn’t have caused much damage, but still why are you driving on the wrong side of the road? He ended up going to my right and drove around me and then cut off the car behind me by driving in front of that car to get on the correct side of the road. Again, I’m really not creative enough to make this stuff up!

8. The eggs are on the shelf rather than in the refrigerated section in a grocery store.

9. An employee of the store weighs and stickers your fruit and vegetables for you before you leave the Produce Section. It is much like when you buy fabric in stores in the US. It is kind of nice actually.

10. I’ve discovered long-life milk and it is fabulous. I don’t like drinking a glass of milk anyway, so it has a good enough flavor to use on cereal and for baking.

11. Websites often come up for me in all Arabic. I have to leave a comment on someone’s blog using my user name and password so I can then edit my own blog, since the blog site is all in Arabic and I don’t know where the login link is!

12. It is still a bit weird to not understand what people are saying while at the grocery store or out and about. Then again, the majority of people here speak English, so I am able to understand when I need to!

Last night a group of co-workers went to an all-you-can-eat (which are never really great deals for me) Japanese restaurant, Sakatura. They had fabulous teriyaki chicken! Here are some pictures from the evening.

Lastly, I discovered my new favorite ice-cream flavor from Baskin Robbins- Love Potion #31 (yes, that really is the name)! It is sooo good! White chocolate and raspberry… does it get any better than that? I submit it does not! Well, enjoy your week and go have some yummy ice cream!

Cold Spell

Here we are to Sunday again. It is a fabulous Sunday, since it is Conference weekend. I always enjoy hearing from our amazing church leaders. I am extremely grateful for technology which allows me to watch conference halfway around the world! Due to the time difference I was only able to see Saturday’s sessions, and will have to watch Sunday’s sessions in a couple weeks. Anyway, I hope you all got to enjoy it, but if not, no worries since it is on-line and you can watch it anytime! :^) This week was rather cold…. It was very rainy and cold. It was only like a high of 60 degrees, which may not seem cold to you, but after it has hit 100 degrees, 60 felt pretty chilly! This cold spell made me crave a nice cup of caramel apple cider from Starbucks… so I went, and was very disappointed when they did not have any caramel apple cider. Sad day! Not a whole lot of excitement happening this week. I went running on Thursday with a friend that plays volleyball with us. Yeah, she is in shape while I’m not so much. I think we only ran like 1-1/2 miles (granted it was at a pretty good pace), but I thought I was going to pass out I was so tired! Oh, the joy of running… why do I always struggle so much with running? Well, hope you all enjoy your Spring Break and that it is not too cold, snowy, and bad weather for you! Love you all!

Desert SUV

This week was pretty fun and I had something going on every night. Monday I worked out with a couple co-workers. I always appreciate the extra motivation to work out and it makes it a little easier when you have someone to visit with! On Tuesday I played some volleyball. Tuesday and Thursdays have become our standard 'lets play volleyball' nights. Wednesday I played some racquetball against two co-workers. They both eventually found their game, but I still beat them. I hope they will want to play with me again! It was a lot of fun to play and I was definitely feeling it on Friday (it takes me two days to feel sore after using muscles I haven’t used in a while!). Starting on Thursday there was a 4 vs 4 volleyball tournament that I was asked to play in. Our team consisted of two guys and two girls. We got there on Thursday and learned that we didn’t even have a game. We had a bye that day, so we made the trek for nothing. Friday night we headed out to play again and this time we did get to play. We lost the first game which meant our second game (double elimination) wasn’t until 10:30pm! We also lost the second game (it was super close though) so we were out of the tournament. I didn’t get home until Midnight and by the time I went to bed I had a nice 4 hour nap before it was time to get up and head to work. Saturday after work the same people I played in the volleyball tournament with invited me to join them for a movie. We watched Pink Panther 2- what a dumb movie! That is one I will definitely not waste my time on again, but is was really nice to simply relax. Okay, so I did some research and found the perfect desert SUV:

It is an automatic...

It has leather seats.... Power steering.... A/C.... All terrain... Great horsepower... and Gets great milage... What do you think? They had camel rides the other day, but the line to ride was super long. I got my picture with the camel, but its not the cutest of pictures, so just picture me standing near it. They are pretty ornery creatures and this one really did not want to be sitting … he got a bit feisty at one point and the caretaker had to do a little convincing to get it settled down again… I wish I had taken a video - it would have been awesome! Oh, and speaking of video… the parade video is way too huge, so I have given up on trying to post that. SORRY! Hope everyone has a great week! Laters

Week Review

My life is starting to be busy again… just what I am used to! This week I played some pool, played some volleyball, played some tennis, and played the stock market- Good times! Work is still busy, but I prefer it that way… makes the days fly by. Anyway, a group of us from work have gotten together a couple times to play some sand volleyball. Now you would think that there would be some good sand here, but oh no, it is like playing on gravel, so I definitely play with my shoes on! I got to play some tennis yesterday with a co-worker- it was nice to be on a court, but it was not much of a game. I’m just happy someone plays! I also ventured into the world of the stock market this week- it is pretty fun actually! I had a goal, and I would have reached that goal had I known how to set it up to automatically sell when it hits the specified dollar value. I would have doubled my money in two days… if only, if only!

I discovered that I can watch Music and the Spoken Word here on TV. I find that kind of ironic actually considering that I could not watch it while in Denver, but one of the networks I get here allows me to see it. I also find it ironic that Utah reducing their strict liquor laws is big time news. I heard it on BBC while I was driving to work.

Perhaps the most exciting thing of the week was the opportunity to meet a General and to be presented with a medal and a coin. All the civilians got recognized for their service and support of the war effort. Not very often does something like that happen, so it was pretty special.

BG Nichols and LTC Kiser

We hit 100 degrees here last week and I didn’t even know it! In my mind it was still the beautiful 70 degree weather that I would expect had I still been in Denver. That is one way to beat the heat I guess, by convincing yourself that it is only 70 degrees year round!!! Well, that was about the extent of my week. I keep trying to post video to the previous Blog entry, but it is still not cooperating- sorry!

Parade

Okay, I have a video... a really long video....about 7 minutes long which blogger will not let me post. It shows the parade (definitely a different type of parade then we are used to) and the craziness surrounding the Independence Day here (25 February). It is a big thing to get foam and spray everyone you see and if your car windows are down... yep, you're going to get foamed! It is all in good fun, I guess, but I'm definitely glad I didn't have to be a part of that. I don't live anywhere near all the craziness so, it didn't effect me at all. I love how people are dancing in the middle of the street- too funny! Well, the long video would not post, so I tried posting another shorter video, but that wouldn't post either- SORRY! I'll keep trying so you will have an idea of what a "Parade" is like here! Its been a good week. I got to play volleyball twice this week. We played on the sand, but it is more like playing on gravel. So, the second night we played, I wore my shoes! It was nice to be outside and enjoy the beautiful weather here! Last night I got to enjoy some good pizza from the restaurant Peppes Pizza. I also found a Cinnamonster so I was able to finally get my cinnamon roll which I enjoyed for breakfast this morning. I've only been craving a good cinnamon roll since December. It was delicious!

Almost Lost -Twice!

Well, another week gone by. My blog is not going to be nearly as exciting as last week’s recap, but hopefully I can get you to smile with a couple stories… So, a couple weeks ago I had to drive a co-worker to the dentist which happens to be near my house. This worked out well for me since I got to go home and relax for a couple hours during the middle of the work day- Nice! Anyway, the dentist office told me to take an exit that was past the exit I take to get home. No worries, we’ll find it. Well, the more I am here the more I appreciate signs and well marked exits that you find in the U.S. As I passed an unmarked exit and several bus stops I knew we must be getting close to the exit we needed to take. So, the next exit we came to I took a chance and exited and I guessed right! The funny thing is you can’t see the exit number until you actually exit! It made me laugh so as I was heading past this same exit to go to Karina’s I took a couple pictures.

The exit number is on the second sign way up on the hill!

The exit # is on the far blue sign

Every day heading home I have to do a U-Turn on the freeway to get heading in the right direction. Well, coming home one night this past week I discovered some construction on freeway. This normally would be no big deal, except for the construction blocked me from doing the U-turn in my usual spot. Again, no big deal since a figured there would be another U-Turn in a couple hundred feet down the road. Well, about 5 minutes later there was a spot to turn around- great! Now I was heading in the right direction and on my merry way. Well, in about 5 minutes I was expecting to see the construction and to my surprise there was no construction… what road am I on? Come to find out the two main freeways, that run parallel here, actually merge and when I did my U-Turn I ended up on the freeway that I wasn’t at all familiar with. An adventure! I knew I was heading in the right direction, but I didn’t know which exit to take from that freeway. I took an exit that I recognized the number and hoped for the best (hoped that it let me go the direction I needed to, hoped it went through to the road I needed, and I hoped it put me in a place where I recognized where I was). Traffic was pretty slow moving, but it did get me to a semi-familiar area and I was able to get home with no other mishaps. It took me an extra 30 minutes to get home that night, but everything worked out! Blogger would not let me post a couple videos last week, but it worked today. One is of crazy traffic that you see a van off-roadin' and the other is of the baby camel who gave it’s Mom a hug!

People like to go camping here, but it is not like going camping in the mountains! They like to stay in these tents during the cooler months. You'll see these type tents dotting the countryside. Doesn't really look too appealing to me, but to each their own, right?

Other then filing my taxes… nothing too exciting is going on. I did go running outside the other day and enjoyed the absolutely gorgeous weather here, but other than that, I am just trying to keep my head above water with the amount of work I have to do! I can tell you that the days and weeks absolutely fly by when you stay busy!

Here’s hoping everyone has a great week! Love ya!