I may not be updating this anymore. Add me on Facebook if you have an account.

Cheers ~~

Dana was asking me why I haven’t updated in a while. Well, other than the fact that I can’t be assed to do so, it’s because I don’t have a camera anymore. This was intended to be a photo-blog, so I can’t really update much without photos. The pictures on my blog were taken with my mom’s camera while she was still here in NY, so after she left Sara’s left with no camera *wimpers.*

I do intend to go buy a decent one at some point when I have some extra money. So, until then, I may update every now and then, using my camera-phone or even no pictures at all.

Today I have some camera-phone shots for you:

Firstly, I would like to thank Michelle for sending me a packet of Davidoffs in the the mail hahaha….

They don’t have Davidoffs in the U.S. It was funny because when I opened my mail box there was this little envelope that was all scrunched up and buldging. I was like wtf. Then when I saw it was from Michelle I thought ok no reason to be surprised here lol.

Aaaand…..

I finally got my baby fixed :D It’s not perfect of course, being that it was fixed by somebody who fixes guitars and not ouds. The strings are a teensy bit further away from the board then they normally are. And the guy who fixed it thought it would be a good idea to greese the pegs because he said it was nearly impossible to turn them for tuning, which was actually a bad idea because the pegs are supposed to be tough to turn. Now I’m having trouble tuning it cause the pegs just slip back everytime I play. Oh well.

Oh and I told some of you that my neighbor’s house burned down. Here’s a picture of it:

It’s pretty unfortunate that this happened. Thankfully nobody got hurt. It’s stupid that houses here are made of wood it’s about time they switched to concrete or brick.

I know. Camera-phone pictures suck >:(

And finally, from the cutest blog EVER:

Haha I love kitties with funny captions. To see the original blog for this click on the image.

Hofstra is an interesting place. It’s more well-known than I thought, even though I don’t see it in the American Colleges rankings (click here to see the rankings if you’re interested). When I tell people I go to Hofstra (even people who live outside the U.S.) eyebrows are immediately raised. I didn’t think that anyone would know about it, and even if they did, I didn’t expect they would be impressed. They say Hofstra has an amazing Law School, and Communications School (my school of study), so I’m really happy that I’m getting a better education than I predicted. By the way, thanks all for your support and encouragement :)

In this picture, I’m standing in a court outside one of the student residence halls. This is the day when all students moved into their dorms. It looks like a lot of fun to move into a dorm, but I’m happy with my apartment since I get more privacy and space, and I don’t have to deal with an annoying roommate :p Plus, I feel more mature living in my own place. The students who live in the dorms seem so childish.

Speaking of children, Feras took out my Hofstra gear out of the closet the other day and decided to try it on :p

Mom and Feras went back to Kuwait before yesterday. It was so hard to say goodbye :( I miss them so much already, especially my mom since she’s always been my best friend. Oh well. That’s life I guess. I can’t wait to see her this Christmas, thats if I get a chance to go, or she comes over here again, whatever works. I’d rather have her come here since I’m in no mood to go back to Kuwait this winter, even though escaping New York winter sounds tempting.

Anyway, I better get to my homework. I probably wont be updating my blog much since I started classes. If you don’t hear from me and wondering what I’m up to, send me an email. It’s always a nice feeling to read emails from friends :)

This guy of course ignored the sign and cut right in front of me. You gotta love Kuwait, and the invention of the camera phone :p

Ok there are some things that I didn’t expect to happen when I left Kuwait. I didn’t expect that:

- I would live right next to a liquor store :p 

- I was going to need a car, badly. (planning to get one soon :D )

- It’s so hard to get a pet here. You have to apply for one and wait until they “accept” you. COME ON! I need a kitty :(

- I would start liking Chinese food for the first time.

- Feras would drive me insane. Our apartment looks like its been hit by a hurricane just because of one little kid…

- I’d miss my dad.

- My dad would miss me.

- I’m AMAZING at putting furniture together :p

- I’d spend so much money on the “little things.” My life revolves around the little things.

- A large pizza is more like xxx-large here in NY.

- I didn’t get sick yet.

- My blog has over 200 hits already :D

We had lunch at a pizza place that apparently has the best pizza in New York. It’s in Greenwich Village and they say that people have to wait in lines to get their pizza. We went after lunch hour so we found a table straight away. Apperently many celebrities come to eat here but I didn’t see any, cause I is loser :( And about the pizza itself, it was really good, but I don’t know if its the best :p

Mom and I infront of John’s Pizza.

Ok. Now ask me how crowded is it in NYC? I’ll show you.

It’s so crowded, that people have to stack their cars when they park them. Yes the picture above is an actual vertical parking lot, and there’s a lot of them. Anybody from the civilized world wouldn’t think much of this, but since I’m from a country thats nowhere near civilized (the same goes to probably half of you who are reading this. Losers :p) I was amazed, and also scared at the same time. There are too many people in this world half of us should move to Mars or something.

Oh and today I had to take a writing proficiency exam at Hofstra. I suck at writing timed essays :( or essays in general. I don’t know my score yet but I’m starting to feel very intimtidated because of my shitty writing skills >:( ALL OF YOU must wish upon a star for me to pass this test. Hmph. If you do I will give you each a cookie

Messages to some people:

Michelle: You said if you could shit money you would come visit. START SHITTING THEN :p

Ramsey: If you’re reading this you must come visit too. Or no cookie for you 

Dana: Send me some of the bags you designed I need some dammit.

Miss ya peoples.

Things that annoy me about NY:

- People dress as bad as they do in Kuwait.

- You can’t order food that doesn’t come in massive portions.

- People say “aks” instead of “ask”. You know ASK is not that hard to say. Say it with me, ASK…ASK…ASK.

- Gangsters. Not the stupid Kuwaiti perception of gangsters, but the real shit. They ride on my bus sometimes. Why can’t they just go steal a car or something?

- There are as many religious Jews as there are trees. In case you don’t know, Long Island has a lot of trees.

- I have to sell my teeth to able to afford FOOD, let alone anything else.

- They advertise so many drugs for kids on TV for like ADD, ADHD, AHHD, ADgodknowswhatDD, it goes on :s Some kids are hyper, deal with it! Don’t give them drugs…

Stuff I like about NY:

- The weather (so far)

- There are so many places to shop. No more Marina Mall bullcrap.

- My uni :)

- The amazing ICE CREAM. Screw Hagendaaz.

- People don’t stare at you like they do in Kuwait, unless a Jewish person hears you speak Arabic.

Ok thats all I have at the top of my head :p.

Now for some pics:

Feras at Hofstra.

My uncle Sharif and I. He lives in DC and he came to visit. I’m so glad he came he’s so cool :)

Feras again :p Its gona be so depressing when he goes back to Kuwait :(

I don’t know if any of you have been tuning into U.S. weather lately, but its been very messed up.
Today I experienced my first tornado warning. It was so cool :D I woke up early around 6 am or so and it was raining and thundering badly, but I didn’t think much of it I assumed it always rains this bad here. But then mom comes up to me and coldly says that we might have to go down to the basement cause CNN announced a tornado warning lol. We didn’t do anything though, the tornado just brushed our area, and I guess it wasn’t a very severe one either way.
Apparenlty tornados in Long Island are very rare, which is why people made such a big fuss here. It even hit Manhatten and closed down the JFK airport for a while. Now there are floods here and there.
Looking out the window more than an hour later it’s as if nothing happened. The sun is out and the roads are dry, and the heat is back :s There have been heat waves all over on this side of the U.S. but my cousin who is in San Fransisco says its freezing there.
Global warming sucks people should stop farting for like a week or so maybe then the weather can go back to normal >:(

Omar and I found a place in Garden City, which is where Omar’s uni is. It’s a beautiful area. The houses look like they came out of a story book. We’re actually staying in a house ourselves, on the second floor. The rent is reasonable, cosidering all the shitty apartments we’ve seen previously with the same price. We don’t have any furniture though. We’ve been sleeping on the floor. Uff my body is so sore still :p

Anyway this is just a little update. I’m actually at Hofstra now using a library computer. Got some things to take care of. I will update again with some pictures when I can :)

I brought my oud with me from Kuwait because I simply can’t live without it, especially since the one I have now is a birthday gift from my dad. I never had my own oud, I always used my dads. But look what happened to it >:(

The pegbox broke off :( This must have happened in the plane. I took it with me as a carry-on and didn’t want to put it in the bag compartment thing cuase I was worried that something like THIS would happen to it, so I gave it to a stewardess to keep somewhere safe. Obviously, that was a huge mistake  *sobs* I only notice this now cause I haven’t opened the bag it was in until now.

How on earth am I going to get this fixed now? How many music stores in NY sell and repair ouds?? And I think the strings are damaged too. Even if they can fix it, where the hell am I gona get the the strings??!!?

AAAH sorry I’m so mad right now I need to vent.

F*** KUWAIT AIR!

We went to NYC today. I was amazed that my mother was brave enough to drive there, and I was even more amazed that we found parking.

The city was hectic, and it was a very hot and humid day :s I expected this from the beginning, but I had to go there to see my cousin Fatmah. It will probably be another year until I can see her again, so it was worth the trip. Besides, how can I be living in New York without visiting the Big Apple? NYC is definitely a fun place, but not when you’re dragging along a hyperactive, whiny 5-year old kid who likes to chase pigeons down the street when the traffic light is green. Feras made it a point that we have a hard time lol.

We didn’t stay there long, mainly because we didn’t want to end up having to drive home at night. We spent some time in Central Park. It’s so green. I’m not used to such green-ness. My eyes are still acustomed to Kuwait’s limited color pallet of beige, yellow, brown and vomit green. We then went to have lunch at a little cafe on Avenue of Americas, which is the street of the hotel my cousin is staying in. That was pretty much it. Unfortunately most of the time was spent trying to get there (stupid GPS system screwed us over), and trying to keep an eye on Feras was time-consuming.

Oh and one thing I forgot to mention is that NYC is so damn expensive. I bought nothing from there >:( except a hot dog, which was also over-priced. The guy who sold it me asked me where I was from before giving it to me, and when I told him I was from Kuwait he said “Oh oh Kuwait? Don’t worry don’t worry, this hot dog is Halal, and so is this pretzel. You want pretzel?” I never even knew there was such a thing as a Halal pretzel…

Ok I have to go crash now. I took so many pics. If you have no life you can look at them. Losers :p

Fatmah and I

Feras actually paused for 0.5 seconds to get his photo taken…

While we were lost we ended up here…China Town!

Ufff so crowded…

Street scene

Smoggy city scene

Central Park.

Foofoo having fun

3 stupid looking tourists :p

I was acutally very tired in this picture lol

Break time back in Queens.