(Written October 2011) Well, I’ve been bested by our oven. And it’s not even like I was trying to make a vegan tofurkey feast or anything. It was a damn frozen pizza that I managed to scorch into charcoal. And this pizza, unlike our first, even had degrees in Celsius, so my only conclusion can be that we have a super-sonic Easy Bake oven (and yes, I did follow the instructions correctly).

Previously, we had discovered that it cooks things incredibly fast. Roasting eggplant in a regular oven can take a good 20-30 minutes. But in ours, it’s done in 10. You have to just sit in the kitchen and watch, because you can’t just set the timer and walk away. It’s proving to always be done far earlier than expected (lesson learned, at the cost of one decimated pizza).

Part of the problem is that we’re still figuring out the symbols on the dial. There are three dials, the left is degrees in Celsius (from 0 to 250), the middle is the timer, and the right is the oven settings. The one we’ve tried with success is labeled “pizza” and seems to work for most things. My husband managed to confirm that the light bulb-looking one does nothing more than turn the light on (and unlike the original Easy Bake ovens, does not appear to be able to cook a chocolate cake). The remaining nine symbols are a variety of squiggles, dots, little fans or clover, and parentheses that have fallen on their side and look like burger buns. So I guess I’ll just have to throw in some eggplant and cook a batch with each setting to see what it does. For now, I’ll throw everything in under “pizza” and will sit on the kitchen chairs with Chuckles (his latest favorite spot to sit-in-wait) and we’ll just watch the water boil, so to speak.

This issue with new appliances and fixtures, continues to vex us throughout the house. It took us two weeks to figure out that each bathroom has a switch for hot water. Now, when we first arrived, this wasn’t an issue, because the cold water was so hot it was all you needed. But with the drastic drop in temperature a few days ago (it dropped below 100), we did find that we could use a little hot water. My husband figured it out by hitting all of the five switches outside the bathrooms and tracing their use.

That’s another thing. For some of the rooms, the accompanying light switches are not actually in the room you want. So you have to backtrack into the hall, turn the light on, and resume entry. Our downstairs bathroom has the handy feature of having all the switches on the far side of the first room. So you have to walk into the dark double sink area, turn on the switch, and then continue into the half-bath. And if you want to turn on a table lamp, make sure you’ve turned the plug on. Each wall socket has its own on/off switch. And if you have need for a power strip, then you have the socket on/off switch, plus an on/off switch for each plug on the strip, and then the appliance switch. Great fun for those with a switch-fetish. This is the same for the washing machine, the dryer, the fridge, the dishwasher, and the oven, or “cooker” as it’s called on the switch. It took me a befuddling few minutes to figure this out with the washing machine, until I wandered back into the hallway and saw two suspicious switches. I flicked both until I figured it out. Then I went and grabbed my handy Dymo label maker and labeled one “washer” and one “dryer” for the next tenants (aren’t I kind?).

I have great faith that by the time we leave we’ll have it all figured out to perfection and will cease in the torching of various frozen dinners, and will only take two attempts to use an appliance.

(Written October 2011)

As an ex-pat, adjusting to life overseas in a new place goes in waves. There’s the initial shock and excitement (possibly fear, depending on the locale). Everything’s new, you have to learn where the light switches are, how to use the oven, and get used to new sounds (I was all flummoxed one night recently when I heard a thwup, thwup sound and could not place it – turns out it was just my husband walking up our marble stairs in his slippers; another time I heard a repetitive knock, knock, knock and finally figured out it was Louie the kitten racing along the marble floors with his gimpy knees hitting with each inchworm-tug).

Then there’s the neighborhood and getting around, finding shops and stores, maybe do a bit of wandering to see what’s in walking distance. In our case in a suburb of Kuwait City, we have a handful of American fast food restaurants, including KFC and “Bizza Hut” – there is no “p” in Arabic – and an odd shop that sells fruit, vegetables and eggs (that’s it). Next I'll start to wander out beyond our neighborhood and see what the city has to offer and figure out just how we’re going to shape our life for the next few years.

When we were in Cairo, it came down to how much can you cram in? In three years we did a lot, a lot more than most people, and still we left with some un-finished things on our “Fun things to do” list. (Because of the revolution and subsequent evacuation, I never did make it to St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai, nor to the beach resorts of Dahab or Sharm el Sheikh. Lesson learned? Don’t leave things until the end, you can watch all your DVDs your last few months when you’ve seen and done everything else.)

In Kuwait, things will be a little different. We were forewarned to bring “hobbies” with us, because there was not a lot to do. So, being semi-professional dilettantes, we came fully armed. My husband always has his language interests, and can forever add to his growing collection of sentences in German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and the ever-popular Latin. Which is ever so helpful when we need to say, “No, I don’t need a blood transfusion,” in a variety of situations and countries. He also just added electric guitar to his musical interests (which will look very nice leaning against the wall with the acoustic guitar and the three ouds we already own).

For my hobbies, first and foremost is writing. Well, that’s not true. First and foremost, when it happens, will be adopting a child and figuring how to be a mom. I figure that’ll take up most of my time. But in the interim, between writing, reading “how to be a mom” books, some photography (though Kuwait has barely a smidge of the amount of interesting things to capture compared to Cairo), and checking out what Kuwait has to offer, I’m sure I’ll be able to keep myself busy.

Kuwait may not have the tangible 4,000-year-old history that Egypt offered, but it has about 4,000 different clubs/classes/courses in which we can partake. I just got the monthly expat e-magazine for October and of the 49 pages, there are piles upon piles of things to get you out of the house. There are salsa, tango and reiki lessons, classes in Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, as well as a request for a Chinese-speaker to help someone learn English. We can join scrapbook clubs, or writing groups, take scuba lessons, or join a multitude of mommy-and-me activities. We can attend a Ceilidh, which is a Gaelic gathering and dance (attire is “Scottish/smart casual” – do they make pinstripe kilts?), see a showing of “The Winter’s Tale” at Kuwait’s Shakespeare Theater, or even RSVP for Thanksgiving sponsored by the Canadian Embassy (eh?). We can rent a Harley for a day, join in an expat yacht-share, or even join the Filipino Badminton Association (though I’m not sure if there’s a nationality requirement there).

If nothing there strikes our fancy (imaging you’d have to be a chronic agoraphobic to not find anything), we can always just join the throngs and head to the mall. Even then, we’ll have to decide which mall to go to as there are dozens. I’ll save the mall assessments for another time, since I’ve only been to three in my first two weeks, and I don’t feel I have a fair impression of them yet. But needless to say, mall-walking could be a daily activity here with few repeats.

The two biggest issues for us here in Kuwait will be 1) deciding what we want to do/be/try, and 2) getting off our butts and doing it. Inertia has a heavy pull, so therein lies the first battle. Now, where was that yacht-sharing ad?