Home Clean Home

You know you’re turning into your mother when…

You walk around the kitchen with a dish towel draped over your shoulder.

You go out to dinner and spend half of the time eating the food and the other half talking about how great it tastes.

You clean your apartment/house/living space top to bottom before leaving for a trip so that you have something nice to come back to.

While I could continue this fun game about how my sister and I are slowly taking on many of our mothers idiosyncrasies (perhaps another post), the third one rang true about four weeks ago as I was preparing for my winter break back in Connecticut. Although at the time it was a lot of work I cannot describe how wonderful it was to be able to walk into a clean apartment after a long 12 hour flight. No clutter on the counters, no laundry in the hamper, also *sigh* no food in the refrigerator.

Current refrigerator contents: one jar of raspberry jelly, tub of butter/olive oil spread, half a bottle of water, olive oil, lemon juice and shake cheese. Needless to say, the first thing on my list of things to do tomorrow is grocery shopping.

My trip back to Kuwait went very smoothly, Alhamdulillah. My original flight on Wednesday was delayed which meant that I would not have been able to make my connection to Kuwait. Rather than spend the night and day in the Washington Dulles airport, my parents picked me up from the airport and brought me back again the following day.

My friend Marisol, who lives in DC and works here in Kuwait, was also on today’s flight. Not only was I greeted with a familiar face in Dulles and had someone to talk to while waiting for my luggage, I was also able to get a ride home from her friend rather than take a taxi.

The 12 hour flight passed by quickly. I dosed after taking off until dinner which was served around 11 PM. After that I read the book Twilight, my Eid present from Heather and her family, for a little while. I’d say about two hours into the flight I fell asleep. While I didn’t sleep straight through, I managed some naps in between my tossing from side to side in my seat. When I realized my neck was no longer going to allow me to stay propped against the window any longer, I turned on my personal tv screen to see that the plane was just crossing into Turkey. I had somehow managed to sleep off and on for a good 8 hours! The rest of the two hour flight passed by quickly, finishing Twilight and being served another questionable meal of airplane food.

It’s incredible how much less scary Kuwait is second time around. I still find the signs in Arabic intriguing and do my best to sound them out, not knowing their meanings. I felt comfortable navigating through the airport, this time without tears or thoughts of “WHAT WAS I THINKING?” running through my head. Sure, I almost got taken out by a taxi while momentarily forgetting that pedestrians do NOT have the right of way here but in some strange way, I felt like I was coming back to someplace familiar. While I am already starting to miss my family and friends, I am excited to see those that I have made here, as well as my students. Oh.. students. School starts back on Sunday which means I have tomorrow to do my lesson planning… I better get on that.