Fred came to town!

A few months back my friend Fred messaged me to say he wanted to come and visit. Fred and I met in Thailand while volunteering at the Tiger Temple. He's from the Netherlands and he's one of the smartest and coolest people I know. I told him I would love to have him come but just wanted to remind him that Kuwait is pretty boring and you can't buy alcohol here. He said he could go a couple of weeks without alcohol and I laughed-- I have no idea what you would do here for more than a couple of days. He adjusted his plan to be here a few days, then off to Qatar, Oman, and then we were to meet up in Bahrain the following weekend which would be Fred's 75th country. See.... this is part of the problem when you travel. You meet people who have been more places than you and you feel like you need to catch up. Unfortunately those plans fell through. After Fred left Kuwait he got terrible news of some friends passing and had to cut the trip short so we didn't meet in Bahrain. I'm just really glad we got to hang out here for a little bit first.

He landed here and got through immigration around 10pm on Thursday and his flight to Qatar was 3pm on Saturday. That pretty much just gave us 1.5 days to see Kuwait, which turns out to be plenty of time-- even with everything being closed on Friday morning. It was so good to have him here. It forced me to get out and see things, which I haven't been doing. I've been keeping myself cooped up in my apartment, not really wanting to go out. We walked the Corniche, saw the towers up close, went to the planetarium, walked past the grand masque, and ate at Applebee's (Fred's favorite).

Friday night a couple of teachers were having a Friday Market Prom. The Friday Market is like a big flea market and apparently you can get some really hideous prom dresses there for cheap. I hand't gone shopping or anything because I wasn't sure if we would be going. When I was telling Fred about it he asked, "So, would an orange suit be appropriate?" I was like, "You have an orange suit in your backpack?!" Sure enough, he did. This is why I love Fred. He had the suit because it was going to be King's day when he got back to the Netherlands so he was just going to stay in Amsterdam and celebrate with his friends. For those that don't know, they wear orange for King's day. It was perfect and he was easily the highlight of the party- as always. :) Thanks for coming Fred!

First time I got this close to the towers. 

Towers at night :) 

Isn't that suit the coolest?

Bumble standing guard of Fred's bag.