No balloons in this country?

Well it was my daughter's sweet 16 a couple weeks ago and unfortunately there is no celebration here like back home. I wanted to get a custom cake and get balloons and flowers, easier said than done. I started off a week before looking for all the items I needed.

First stop Cake N' Bake to order the cake. After looking through their pictures I decided on a chocolate cake that was black and red which are her fav colors. OK that was easy.

Next stop: Find balloons. That was like finding a needle in a haystack. I started off in Fahaheel at the flower shops. When I asked for balloons the guy looked at me like huh? He didn't speak too much English and certainly didn't understand me or my mother. Unfortunately my broken Arabic didn't help either. We left. I went to Salmiya looking for balloons, finally finding them at Sultan center but they didn't have the exact thing I was looking for, sweet 16 is unheard of here so of course there aren't any balloons fitting that subject. Finally I traveled to Shuwaikh to Party World. Totally over priced items. They have wrapping paper which has the dollar amount of $2.99 but they charge 2 kd and it wasn't even pretty. I did find a devil balloon that I bought. It was marked 2 kd and she tried to charge me 4 kd, sorry it was price 2 kd so of course that's what I paid for it.

I got the balloons and some over priced tissue paper which would replace the wrapping paper. I decided to have the balloons blown up on the day of the party. My daughter wanted Japanese food for her b-day so we made reservations at Sakura for the buffet. The day of the party arrives and I was running mad trying to get the balloons blown. Finally I found a place in Salmiya the 101 dalmatians place, God what a cheesy name. They charged me 1 kd to blow the devil balloon and 100 fils for each of the smaller ones. The guy blowing up the balloons popped 2 of them Ahhhhh nothing goes right in this country. The silver balloon had no hole for the helium machine, now I'm getting really ticked off. I cut a hole in it and somehow he tied it up with some ribbon. Now it's off to get flowers. There is a flower shop close to Mowasat, nice guy, nice flowers and a good price. Flowers, check, Balloons, check.

I picked up the cake and headed off to Sakura. So it was almost 2:30 when we arrived, close to the buffet closing. The food was awful. Everything was stale and cold. I don't like Japanese food too much anyways and this just killed it permanently. The girls liked it and had a good time. Next is cake cutting time. The cake was narrow and stacked 5 layers high. All I wanted was a good old fashioned cake from the grocery store but that was only a dream. Give me back the good old days of renting a helium machine and blowing up my own balloons while make that donald duck voice after sucking a little helium. Where is Wal-Mart to supply endless wrapping options and party items. Well I hope she liked it because I worked my butt off for it.

I really never knew how hard it would be to find balloons and gift wrapping. Isn't anything easy in this country??