I fully believe that anyone who lives in America and cleans their kitchen at least once a week has an immaculate house, and I would be honored to eat dinner off your floor.

The previous sentence is coming from someone that probably borderlines as an obsessive compulsinve handwasher- so you have to believe my sincerity. I give up on keeping anything clean in Kuwait. Seriously. If you like something and want to keep it nice- don’t live here!

The past few days we have endured dust storms where you can’t see anything. It’s like being in fog, only a lot more miserable. Yesterday it was so dark and gloomy that I kept thinking had I been home a huge thunderstorm would have hit at any minute, bringing a ton of rain and wrath. Ha. Since that does not happen here, however, I kept having to tell myself that it was dark out because of the incredible sheild of sand that blocked the sun and everything 10 feet out of my view.

We have these strange, random, and as far as I can tell useless fans in our kitchen and bathrooms. Almost ever house or apartment in Kuwait I’ve seen has them. I have no idea of their purpose because they do not keep things cool. They are built in to our windows and are open on the outside. Does this make sense? Probably not. I’ll have to post a picture sometime.

They are these small little fans in the middle of windows and when they are not blowing you can stick your finger out and literally be outside. The kicker is that you can’t really control it. It blows by the wind outside. You just can’t turn it off or on. You can only reverse it. Okay- this is still confusing! I guess that is why they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Anyway, I think these things were the dumbest invention and I have no idea of their purpose. Actually I do- and I don’t know why contractors would purposeley install a device that is soley made to tick people off and make them a slave to cleaning a place that will never clean. You would have to hire a person just to stand in a room and clean- constantly… around the clock.

The dust storm was so bad yesterday and the wind was blowing so bad,and that stupid kitchen fan sounded like a jet engine getting ready for take off. It was so loud and annoying. I wanted to cringe everytime I heard it, not only because of its deafening “whizzing“ noise that almost seemed to laugh at me, but also because I knew that it was blowing truck loads of dirt into the kitchen. So anyway, it does have this shutter thing that you can close but it still makes these loud noises and lets crap in, but it isn’t as loud. Anyway, we close it and it pops right back open.

Close.

Pop open.

Close.

Pop open.

” I think I’m going to lose my patience!!!!!”

So my sister and I tie a pair of scissors on the cord to weight it down. It is still there now, looking just gloriously tacky as ever.

I cleaned the counters three times yesterday- it was so disgusting. I could smell the dirt as I wiped a think layer of sand off everything each time. It got in our dishers, in the cabinets, on our food that was put away… yes dirt is now a “seasoning“, and I am now a connoisseur. This is a losing battle.

The few people that I have met told me early on, “I don’t even bother keeping up with the cleaning. It will never be clean.” I thought that was totally gross, but now I can understand what they are saying. A lot of them have cheap maids, but after our “robbery” incident I don’t know if Will and I would ever get one.

I am just thankful for tile floors. I see why every hose has these too. How in the world would you keep carpet clean? Yuck! A lot of people have respitory problems ( get this- you can walk in to a pharmacy and get all sorts of interesting things for that stuff- including Sudafed, which US lawmakers are trying to ban because of its use in meth… that is whole other post though!) in Kuwait because of the gunk that is constantly in the air and the fact that the air conditioner is always running and they don’t clean the ducts- I can’t even imagine laying around on your carpet and breathing all that crap in.

This has been quite an interesting experience. If I ever meet some of you we’ll have dinner on the floor sometime. What do you say?

Hope you had a good weekend.