ching ching

Tonight I was pleasantly surprised by my very first pay check. I am to be paid at the end of each month, however thursday is the national holiday so my company was nice enough to pay us now. This is my first official pay, and although its inflated with my relocation allowance, its still a surprise seeing the dinars roll in.

Also its wonderful not to have 20%-30% of your pay check deducted in taxes. When I was back home I never minded because I never had a choice. Here in Kuwait there are zero taxes. The trade off is that there is no garbage collection, no health care (nothing good anyways), no road or city up keep. The local government does infuse LOTS of money into things but its not done democratically.

What was the first thing I had to do with all that money....spend it!

 Tonight I got to feel truly like a grown up and buy a fridge, washer, dryer. In all my years of living on my own I have never had to buy those things. I have been doing my homework at all the appliance shops and chose wisely. The brand names are different over here, but the features on each one were things I recognized. I got all 3 things for 283KD. To me that sounded like a real steal until I did the exchange rate. YIKES! it ended up being close to $1000 (easy come, easy go). The cool thing is that my building Harris will take the delivery and have everything hooked up for me while I am travelling.

Speaking of travel.... I finally get to go to Dubai! and help the team over there. I got my passport/residency so now I am allowed to leave the country. The Dubai store is 20 days till grand opening and the excitement is building. The WSI teams arrive March 3rd- it will be wonderful to see everyone and share how great this experience has been so far. I'll be leaving Friday and returning the following saturday. (yeah! for alcohol too!)

hope to sqeeze in one more post before Friday....ching ching!