Saturday, March 7, 2009

Entry #24 Liberation Weekend

Finally we have the computer and internet working at the apartment so I will be trying to update the blog on a more regular basis!
This entry is about Liberation Weekend. It is a two day holiday on February 24th and 25th to celebrate, you guessed it, Kuwait's liberation from Iraq in 1991. There is a lot of excitment around this holiday and it doesn't seem to involve the memories of a country coming together to defeat the enemy. No, much of the excitment comes from the way in which they celebrate Liberation Day. It is the only time of year where people come out in large numbers to foam, silly string, and squirt random strangers with water guns. I have no idea where the silly string and foam come from. Somehow I doubt that people had stockpiles of silly string tucked away in their homes and when the coalition forces defeated Iraq people poured into the street to silly string each other. Really I have no idea where this all started but I do know that it was a lot of fun!

I took Zoe out in the early afternoon along Gulf Road and already the traffic was bumper to bumper. Apparently at night traffic comes to a standstil and people are running around in the middle of the street spraying each other. We thought the afternoon was safer for Zoe to join the festivities. We would stand at the side of the road and spray cars and then they would pretend to spray us and Zoe would laugh hysterically. Most people seemed very respectful of how small Zoe was. I say most people! As we were waiting for the next friendly car to drive by a car full of young guys came along and just covered us with foam. Zoe wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry but since I couldn't breath from laughing she decieded to laugh. I had only brought along one can of foam and we quickly went through that and had to buy several more from people along the road. We lasted for about an hour and had a great time. Coming home Zoe said she wanted to go foam people again the next day.

Again pictures really capture the day better than my ramblings.

Enjoy!














No comments: