“My assignment is to work with the Kuwait armed forces. And one of the challenges I did come across that, when I did work with my partners, or the Kuwaitis here, I’ve noticed in a lot of the institutions, or within the Kuwait armed forces, there are no women at all. So a lot of the meetings or engagements that I’ve attended had no women. Sometimes I was the only female in the room, or part of the group. And over time I’ve pretty much had to realize that and get over it. And notice that, within their own organization, they just do not have women. I mean the females that serve in their armed forces. but I also felt at the same time lucky due to the fact that there is a female there that’s integrating my perspective to the armed forces to where they can learn how to work with women in uniform. In this culture, being social with your partners is a very, very important thing as far as strengthening your partnership, or your relationship with people in this region. And one thing that a lot of local people like to do in this region [is] attend social gatherings like ‘dewaniyas.’ And sometimes, not all, but sometimes those dewaniyas were predominantly males. No women, or no females were allowed to attend, even the American females were not allowed to attend. And some dewaniyas, females are allowed to attend, but I thought that was pretty much a disadvantage for myself due to the fact that that’s a special time to build up your relationship with your partner, or your ally within the region.”