New York girls and the Kite Runner

   I would like to start off by telling a story about a girl and some cheese.  I thought it was a funny situation, I hope you do as well.


   Last week I went to dinner with Sarah and Scott, a married couple I met at church.  Sarah is my age, Scott is a couple of years older and they've become my good friends since I came to Kuwait.  Oh yea, Sarah is from NY, not that its a bad thing to be from NY, but someone from TX would never make this mistake.

   So we went to dinner at Tumbleweeds, a "southwest" styled restaurant in Kuwait city.  Sarah orders some chili con queso and i ordered, i dont remember what they were called, something as an appetizer.  What I ordered was like the ingredients of an enchilada, but stuffed in little cup shaped chips.  Well, it was more like rice paper than chips, or that really thin stuff that's sometimes used to wrap egg rolls.  Its wasn't bad, weird, but ok.   So the waiter brings out the queso, my appetizer and shortly later our food which we enjoy.  Sarah hasn't touched the queso since it was brought out, which i thought was weird, but it didn't look like very good queso so i didn't say anything.  It had the look and giggle of cheese from a can, with a couple of pieces of pepper. 


   The waiter brings the checks right after Scott starts eating the queso.  Sarah looks at hers and tells the waiter she never got her chili and would like it taken off the bill.  The waiter then looks down at Scott with a confused look, which Scott and myself are also both giving Sarah.  But the chili con queso is right there was his reply and Sarah just looked confused.  It turns out that Sarah had thought she was ordering chili, with a little cheese sprinkled on top and not the great mexican dip chili con queso. I laughed for a while and promised Sarah that if they ever came to Texas, I would take them to a real mexican or tex-mex resturant and order some real chili con queso, or we could get some chili.



   I also finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini last night, and while a pretty sad book, i would say it was a worth while read.  Basically its about a guy who goes back to Afghanistan to try and makeup for his cowardice as a child.  His dad and himself fled Afghanistan and left behind those he had betrayed.  15 or so years later, he is reminded of his past and given the chance to make up for what he did.  Next up is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, but i did just get in a couple of programming books about PHP, MySQL and Ruby on Rails, so who knows if i'll be reading or playing around with those.

After Kuwait...

I just finished reading A.W.O.L. on the Appalachian Trail and i've had to stop myself from doing any more research on the trip.  The book is a journal of a 41 year old engineer who went awol from work to hike the AT (thats what the hikers call it, saying appalachian trail over and over would get a bit annoying)

It took him 146 days to walk 2172 miles through the east coast of this great nation.  that's an estimated 5 million steps.  he had a small surgery to cut out an infection on his foot, and sprained his ankle requiring him to use an aircast for part of the trip. other than that, and some not too friendly bugs and storms, it sounded like an amazing trip.  so much so that im really considering doing it when i get back.  It starts in Georgia and goes all the way up to Maine.  He met some interesting characters, stayed in a lot of hostels and camp shelters, and went through a lot of shoes. 

i've already decided that if i hike it, im taking a hammock and avoiding shelters, hostels, and tents and a couple of pounds of weight.  im hoping i can find some friends from A&M or Camp Ozark that would be willing to hike with me. I will also be hiking the Lone Star Hiking Trail (130 mile hike about 2 hours north of Houston, TX) and likely heading out to Big Bend State Park to get a little training in, and test out all my equipment.

If I'm able to hike the AT, i will be very likely starting the hike about 2 years from now. I guess time will tell if its gonna happen.

Eat, Pray, Love.............?

I'm gonna try something new and start writing about more than my travels and life in Kuwait.  If you really care one way or the other, please let me know and I can create another blog where I can share my thoughts and beliefs and just use this one to keep people updated on my comings and goings.

My first blog doing this will be my review of "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.   While I didn't love the book, it should be known it made the New York Times best seller list, and I'm pretty sure is being made into a movie.  So there are a large number of people who think highly of this book, if that means anything to you.

While this book is written well and has a lot of useful advice, it is ultimately a cheap band-aid for the many problems facing us today.  I found this book mostly useless because of how little she turns to Jesus and how much she turns to so many other options.  It's so easy to turn to the infinite list of man-made quick fixes, to take a pill to relieve the symptoms, while ignoring the root of the cause.


You can talk about love, peace, happiness, and self-reflect with eloquent speech all you want, but in the end, Jesus is King and man will continue to fail when we lean on ourselves.  When you understand the root problem that man is inadequate, you have to realize that anything man-made cannot be 100% perfect.  One broken gear in a watch will guarantee the time is always wrong.



Edit: So I talked to a friend who loves the book for reasons not applicable to me. It was good to her to see a woman stand up for herself and try to figure out life for herself. To go across the globe if that's what it takes.  I'm all for that.   I would like to make it known that the book was recommended to me from a christian friend and I read it like I would "Blue Like Jazz", or "Mere Christianity".  From my point of view, the book is rubbish.  If you are reading it to learn about a woman escaping a life forced on the her and rebuilding after a failed marriage, then that is a different story.  Considering I will never be in that situation, this book does little for me, it all comes down to where you are coming from and where you would like to go.