Saturday 26th May 2007

Hello everyone,
Well, I had a really crappy week at school, possibly one of the worst since I’ve been here, but after coming close to an annuerism over some ridiculous thing that got blown out of proportion, I decided to fuck them all and have a bit of a time-out!
I got so stressed out – the evil music teacher and I had a huge fight and he then went and complained about me to my boss, so I had to go and try to explain my side, which she wouldn’t listen to and then made it clear that she doesn’t trust me at all – despite HIM
being the arsehole!
Anyhoo, I threw a sickie and gave myself a break in order to avoid a total meltdown, but managed to successfully decompress enough on Wednesday to be fully relaxed and ready for my birthday!

I had a lovely birthday, got lots of nice pressies, and had a really great day.
We went to Aquapark (Me, Betty, Bryn, Rita and Bill) in the morning and had some fun whizzing about on flumes, jumping waves and generally being silly. It would have been awesome to take some pictures, but it’s not allowed because of the swimming costumes.

We learnt some of the finer points of Kuwaiti logic too – as women we had to wear t-shirts and shorts over our costumes (for modesty’s sake), but the boys decided to wear their t-shirts too, (less out of solidarity than to avoid burning to a crisp – it is still the desert after all!!).

However, the lifeguards (or Gaurd as their uniform clearly stated in a less-than reassuring fashion) were insistent that the boys had to take them off, even though us girls were wading into the water practically fully dressed! The boys won in the end, by pointing out that they were in fact white, and white turns to red when left in the sun!

Then while waiting for the flumes, we watched in amazement as a bloke who was having a fag with the lifeguard at the top, saw us coming, stuck his fag in his mouth, jumped on his rubber ring and went down the chute still smoking!

Another bloke had a nasty cut that was bleeding profusely, but waved our concerned looks away and rinsed himself off in the pool.

So, we thought, men aren’t allowed t-shirts in the pool, but cigarettes and blood are ok!

Lovely.

However, it was really fun, and we spent the rest of the day recovering before going out for a nice dinner in a posh restuarant. On Friday we chilled out and then went to Rita’s house to make jowsa (Chinese dumplings) which were yummy!

Even better news was that Jazeera airways (the middle east’s answer to eazyjet) were offering 3KD flights to Bahrain, an offer too good to pass up!
It actually came to a fair bit more than that when you throw in airport taxes etc, but we decided to do it anyway, and booked flights for next weekend. We’ve literally only got 24 hours there – we arrive at 4.30pm Thursday and have to leave again at 3.50pm Friday, but it’s only a half-hour flight and it’ll be so worth it! A big night out in an actual bar, plus we’ll have time for the champagne brunch the next morning before heading back!

I can’t wait!!!

Anyway, thank you so much for all my lovely birthday messages from everyone, and especially thank to those of you who’ve donated on my website – I’m doing really
well and only have 1300 quid to go now!
I have to have all the money collected by the 1st July, so there’s only a month left. If you would like to donate, but haven’t yet done so, please make sure you do it soon!

Thanks again everyone, and I’m REALLY looking forward to seeing you all soon,
tons of love and happy thoughts
26-year-old-Maya

xxx

My birthday dinner

Posing on the boat