Quite a journey
I am sitting in bed in our new apartment having finished our first full day in Kuwait. I will try to capture the journey from leaving Belgrade at 4pm on Monday, August 19 to being here(I believe it is 12:21 afternoon on Wednesday, August 21.
Travel to Boston was smooth, other than the torrential downpours along the way. The storms had all cleared out and on our approach to Logan, there was a rainbow at the end of the runway which was, of course a sign of good things to come :)
The flight was long but smooth on Qatar Airways. I knew that coming to a Muslim country was going to be different, but I didn't expect the changes evident with Qatar Airlines.
There was the direction to Mecca on the compass, there were the signs about where and when to pray, and a few other clear indications that you were on a plane to the middle east.
We arrived at Doha International airport and what had originally been a tight but manageable transfer of under an hour turned into 20 minutes. We had to run through what looked to be a fantastic airport to just get on board before they closed the gates.
This flight was super short 60 minutes and we arrived in Kuwait around 8:20 local time. We had met a few other co-workers who were also arriving so we all weaved our way through the immigration and baggage claim process. Brigitte and I had 8 pieces of large checked luggage along with 2 carry ons, which I thought was a lot. However, we did not have the most by any stretch!
As we walked out through the last customs check, we were greeted by the staff of our new school.
There were 35+ new folks arriving, including families with young kids from Houston and southern Illinois, single teachers from New Jersey, South Dakota, Toronto and more. There were plenty of folks who have taught internationally for many years before coming to Kuwait. It is a neat cohort of people, all eager to get to our apartment and finish this journey.
After waiting for most of the new teachers to arrive, they loaded us on buses and drove us to our apartments. When we walked out of the airport, it was 11:15pm and it was still plenty hot. The drive was about 30 minutes and we all unloaded and were welcomed with pizza, a wifi hotspot to connect with families, and some of the administration of the schools were there. They told us if we knew which apartment we were in, we could go "home" and call it a night. We excitedly found our apartment and put our bags down and had arrived! I will do a longer post about our apartment later when it is more complete and I can take pics.
As I said at the outset of this post, we have had a full day so far and I am wiped. I am going to end this post here and will try tomorrow to follow up with what our first day was like.
Travel to Boston was smooth, other than the torrential downpours along the way. The storms had all cleared out and on our approach to Logan, there was a rainbow at the end of the runway which was, of course a sign of good things to come :)
The flight was long but smooth on Qatar Airways. I knew that coming to a Muslim country was going to be different, but I didn't expect the changes evident with Qatar Airlines.
There was the direction to Mecca on the compass, there were the signs about where and when to pray, and a few other clear indications that you were on a plane to the middle east.
We arrived at Doha International airport and what had originally been a tight but manageable transfer of under an hour turned into 20 minutes. We had to run through what looked to be a fantastic airport to just get on board before they closed the gates.
This flight was super short 60 minutes and we arrived in Kuwait around 8:20 local time. We had met a few other co-workers who were also arriving so we all weaved our way through the immigration and baggage claim process. Brigitte and I had 8 pieces of large checked luggage along with 2 carry ons, which I thought was a lot. However, we did not have the most by any stretch!
As we walked out through the last customs check, we were greeted by the staff of our new school.
There were 35+ new folks arriving, including families with young kids from Houston and southern Illinois, single teachers from New Jersey, South Dakota, Toronto and more. There were plenty of folks who have taught internationally for many years before coming to Kuwait. It is a neat cohort of people, all eager to get to our apartment and finish this journey.
After waiting for most of the new teachers to arrive, they loaded us on buses and drove us to our apartments. When we walked out of the airport, it was 11:15pm and it was still plenty hot. The drive was about 30 minutes and we all unloaded and were welcomed with pizza, a wifi hotspot to connect with families, and some of the administration of the schools were there. They told us if we knew which apartment we were in, we could go "home" and call it a night. We excitedly found our apartment and put our bags down and had arrived! I will do a longer post about our apartment later when it is more complete and I can take pics.
As I said at the outset of this post, we have had a full day so far and I am wiped. I am going to end this post here and will try tomorrow to follow up with what our first day was like.
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| view out our apartment window |
So excited to be going on this adventure with you, thanks to your blog!
ReplyDeleteMary W.