If someone had sidled up to me five years ago and told me that I’d end up living in the Middle East (and not even the cosmopolitan city of Dubai where you can spend your weekends sipping cocktails on the beach, but in a questionable apartment block in a sketchy part of Kuwait) I’d have laughed. And then laughed some more. And yet here I am, suddenly living the expat life in Kuwait. How did that happen?
How Did I End Up Here?
The Middle East was never somewhere I’d planned on living. In fact, it wasn’t even particularly high up on my travel bucket list. That’s not to say I wasn’t intrigued by the visions I had of deserts, camels and chic, high-rise buildings set against the Arabian sky. It’s just that the laid-back beaches of Thailand and Malaysia had always seemed more attractive to the inner hippie in me.
And yet, here I am – living in Kuwait. How on Earth did this come about?
When I quit my fancy corporate job in 2016 to go back to university and train to become a teacher, I had a deep sense of certainty about my decision. But by January 2017, when everyone else in my class was getting job offers from local schools, that sense of certainty started to falter. I hadn’t really planned much further ahead than graduation.
Cue another rush of quarter life crisis fuelled panic and round two of, ‘What the heck am I doing with my life?’
I’d daydreamed about becoming an expat teacher eventually, but I didn’t think it would happen straight away. Then a friend of mine got offered a job in Kuwait – a country that, at that point in time, I couldn’t even locate on the map. After hearing some of the pros of expat life in Kuwait, I made my second impulsive and life-changing decision in the space of 12 months and started applying for jobs there.
After all, I still had plenty of time until the school year began. I didn’t have to rush into any decisions…
Three days later, the very first school I’d applied to sent me an offer. And just like that, I was moving to Kuwait.
While my friends and family back home still struggle to why I moved to a country that borders Saudi Arabia and Iraq, there are plenty of benefits of living in Kuwait.
1. It got me out of my rut and out into the world
In true millennial fashion, I’ve spent the last three and a half years of my life frantically trying to assemble some kind of ‘perfect’ life for myself…with no blueprints to refer to. I don’t even know what I consider the perfect life to be!
What I do know is that if I want to come any closer to answering that question, I need to get out into the world and start trying some different lifestyles on for size.
2. It’s giving my bank account a helping hand
The Kuwaiti Dinar is one of the strongest currencies in the world and, while that means a short-stack of pancakes can set you back £10, it also means the wage is a lot higher here than it is at home. Plus there’s no tax! For a millennial frantically trying to pay off her ever-mounting student loans and dreaming of buying a home before she turns 40, this is an extremely attractive prospect.
3. It satisfies my wanderlust
Yes, this totally undermines benefit number 2 because a large chunk of my earnings consistently goes towards funding my travel addiction. But I just can’t help myself! Dubai and Bahrain are a mere hour from here. Thailand, which would cost a small fortune to travel to from the UK, is just a hop, skip and a jump away. With Kuwait as a base, I’m crossing places off my travel bucket list left, right and centre.
4. It’s an amazing cultural experience
My Dad always says, ‘Understanding is key,’ and I think the best way to truly understand something is to experience it first hand. If I’d never moved to Kuwait, I’d probably never have learned a single thing about the country. I wouldn’t know what a Q’ran competition is; I’d still be fuzzy on the difference between an abaya, a hijab and a niqab; and I’d never know what it’s like to be woken up at the crack of dawn each morning by the call to prayer (spoiler alert: it’s not great). There’s nothing like immersing yourself in an entirely new culture to get you thinking about your own habits and beliefs.
In Conclusion…
So while some people back home still consider my choice to run off to the Middle East to be an ill-advised result of a quarter-life meltdown (and who’s to say that it wasn’t?), my time here so far has been invaluable. I’m experiencing life from an entirely new cultural perspective and travelling more than ever before, all while giving a brief nod to adulting by stashing a little money away in my savings account. Overall, I’d have to say it’s worth enduring the sandstorms and 50 degree heatwaves for.
