Beach Party!!

So I actually don't live too far from the Gulf. It's walking distance- when it's not the temperature of the surface of the sun. It's a few blocks away, probably about a 15min walk, but you don't really go swimming here. It's just not really done and there aren't a lot of public beaches. Or so I've been told- I actually haven't looked into it much. Luckily for me I have some friends that live right. on. the beach!

Our ward (that's my church congregation) had a beach party out there on Saturday. This couple works for Chevron so they live out on the Chevron compound which is a ways out of town. Our church hired a van for the bunch of us (me and all the Filipinos) who don't have cars so we could get out there.

It was a lot like getting on a military base. There's some political drama going on that has caused them to check everyone going there. We had to have our name on a list and we were stopped by some guys in military uniforms at the gate. They actually weren't letting us in at first because we were all Filipino. They made us pull over and then we watch 3 cars of our people get waved on simple because they were white. I was about to get out and go all American on them but one of the guys in one of the cars that was waved on stopped and was like- um, those guys are with us too.

The house is literally right on the beach. It was so beautiful and such a wonderful day. It was really lovely. They had chairs and umbrellas, jet skis, a catamaran, snorkels... all kinds of fun stuff. We had great food and great company too.

I discovered another amazing small world moment. The couple that lives at this house lived in Kuwait 94-99, then they came back in 2009. As we were talking we found out that I actually lived with their daughter for a summer 17 years ago in Kentucky. I even met this couple 17 years ago. I had been thinking about their daughter, Gina, a lot lately. I had this roommate that had moved to Kuwait her senior year of high school. I thought that was so amazing that she had done that. I knew she went to an international school here but I couldn't remember which one and I couldn't remember her name. I had decided I was going to go to my school library and look at yearbooks and just try to see if it was my school. I knew there wouldn't be too many Ginas so I would probably recognize her if I found her. Turns out it was a different school so I wouldn't have found her. But seriously- how crazy is that? The first Friday I was here the mom told me that I looked familiar. We tried to figure out where from but nothing in our past homes matched up.

Here's a bunch of pics from the day.