Friday, October 31, 2008

Horseback riding in the mountains.....

Again, I am writing to myself. LOL This is getting to be habit forming. Anyway, just thought I would share what I am going to be doing over the weekend. Every year my kids and I load our saddle bags and bedrolls onto our horses and we trailer them up into the mountains and spend all weekend camping, fishing and riding. We live in the Ozark Mountains but the elevation where we are going is a little higher meaning the tree's will be vibrant shades of orange, yellow and red. Autumn is truly here. We have been making this trip together for years now and it's always a great time to catch up on what we have been doing. My son lives on the ranch with me and he manages the cattle. Both of my daughters are nurses and live and work in town. The weather is suppose to be awesome this weekend so we are really excited. Campfires, hot chocolate, smores and howling coyotes. Ya can't beat that with a stick :) I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Amirah.....who the crap are you talking to?????? LOL

Thursday, October 30, 2008

The bravest and most honest person I have never met.....

Well again here I am talking to myself. I have figured out that that's ok though. The only problem is that I argue with myself and most of the time I loose. Jeeez. But the greatest news is that in the last few days I have found a blog where I swear this woman has got to be related to me. She is totally awesome. Whether you agree or disagree with her, you have to respect her for her honesty, brutal honesty actually and her courage. Here is a link to her blog. I guarantee you will both laugh and cry. If I were ever granted a wish as to who I would like to meet in person from the internet, it would have to be Desert Girl, hands down !!

http://desertgirlkuwait.blogspot.com/

Monday, October 27, 2008

Introduction

Am I the only person to ever make a blog and wonder what the purpose was for writing something no one would probably ever read ? I guess this will be my lil space where I can write and say what I want to without any reservations. Well, ok, maybe some. I mean, this is the world wide web. I could start by telling my life story, but that would wear my keyboard out, not to mention it would bore me to tears. I mean, I lived it, why would I want to write about it?
So, what are you suppose to write in one of these things?

Here's an idea. It's actually what brough me to this "blog" thing to begin with.
I was searching on the net trying to find Kuwaiti's that lived in the US. Why? Well because I consider myself half Kuwaiti even though I was born and raised here in the US. My mother was an American and my father was Kuwaiti. A national even. From what I read, that seems to make a difference. Anyway, I tried to find forums where other Kuwaiti's that lived in the US made posts. Couldn't find any. So I started looking for sites with people from Kuwait period. I found a few. I didn't find what I was looking for though. I was looking for something to fill the emptiness, for someone to understand how I was feeling, for someone to say,"I'll be your friend". LOL
I am a grown woman and actually feel silly sitting here typing all this, but maybe it will help me to get it out of my system.

When you are "half" anything I guess it's hard to feel like you really fit in anywhere. I am half of two very complexed cultures and countries. One, the US which I know quite well and one that I love and know very little about (Kuwait). My American family doesn't understand why I want anything to do with my Arab family and vice versa. Rarely do I tell anyone here in the US about my bloodline. Arab's aren't exactly popular and when you live in a lil po'dunk, redneck community as I do it's not something you broadcast. Am I ashamed? Crap no I'm not, but I'm not stupid either. Anyway, it's just that you never feel like you really fit in. I have two "legal" names, Amirah and my American name, *****. If an American friend hear's the name Amirah, they are like "what the heck is that", and then I'm like, "oh well, umm, see.....", and then some of my Arab friends can't understand why anyone with the name Amirah knows so little Arabic. My English is bad enough, my Arabic is just pathetic. I've had a lot of people in the past say, "oh, I will teach you". Well, who can afford to sit on a long distance call and listen to someone try and pronounce something from 10,000 miles away? At one time in my life I was actually getting better, but as they say, if you don't use it, you loose it. I love this language too, Arabic, I mean, and yea maybe because my father was Kuwaiti, I love the Kuwaiti accent the best. I could go on and on about the language. The biggest problem I face is that I am the ONLY one in my Arab family that's Christian. WOW...thats a biggy. Talk about getting dis-owned !! Of course my American family and friends look at me like I am crazy (majnoon) when I tell them that I respect all religions and if I mention the word "muslim", good grief, here comes the lectures.

There are things about each culture that I truly love. I have owned and raised horses all of my life and I can't imagine them not being in my life and I truly can't imagine not being able to ride them anytime and anywhere I wanted to. I have always been a modest person and dressed very modestly, so that's no problem, but I love talking to people and I am not a shy person. Sometimes that is a problem. I don't drink, have never done drugs and I live a good clean life, but in my Arab culture that's not quite strict enough and in my American culture I am viewed as old fashioned and not "with it". LOL See my dilema?

Oh yea, another BIGGY !! My son, joined the US Army so he could go to college and 4 months later on his 19th birthday he landed in Kuwait City and then spent the next 18 months in Iraq. I mean we had Iraqi friends and we have Kuwaiti family. How horrible is that ????

Well I think I had better stop typing and go feed my horses now. I think this has helped some. To put this on paper. More to come I'm sure.