Five weeks in Kuwait!

My mom has been telling me to update my blog for the past two weeks.  I keep meaning to give an update, but I have been so busy!  The first month of school has come and gone and I've been here in Kuwait for five weeks.  

School Update:

My kiddos have been doing great!  They love to sing and dance and they don't even mind my horrible voice... thank goodness they don't realize my singing voice should hurt their ears. :)  Routines are slowly coming into place.  We even managed to walk down the hall in a semi-line all week!  This past week, our class took a tour of the school.  We are studying community, so we visited the Principal, Secretaries and the Printer... yes, the Printer.  At ASK, we are not allowed into the copy room- we send what we need done to this wonderful man, Mohammed, who works his magic and has everything back to us within a day.  WOW!  Some of the boys in my class are very physical with each other.  Not necessarily hitting, but they are always poking each other and can't keep their hands off each other.  My fellow teachers have told me this happens in their room as well; it doesn't bother the children as much as it does us!  No matter how the day goes, I love getting the hugs and kisses from them when they leave.  On Thursday (our Friday), I told them all to have fun on the weekend.  One girl asked me why we can't come to school on the weekends!  Her parents had told me at Open House that she cries on the weekends because she misses school.  I must be doing something right! :)  Speaking of Open House, it was over a week ago and it went great!  I had about 10 families come to visit and it was so nice to be able to chat with them and show them our room.  When the students arrive at school, they are usually dropped off by their nannies.  Even when parents drop them off, they don't get much of a chance to see the room and what we do on a daily basis.  This week, I have planned some arts and crafts activities and I'm searching for a chocolate playdough recipe I used on the ships.  Edible playdough, anyone?  Here is a picture of my entire teaching team (Nick, myself, Rachel, Pauline and Rina).

 

Life Update:

The days at school go by so fast!  By the time I get home from school, I usually relax for a bit and then have dinner or chat with friends.  My team continues to amaze me in how well we all mesh.  Rina, Nick and Rachel are great to have around--- not only do we work well together at school, but we enjoy each other's company outside of school.  After our first payday, we all headed to the Avenues mall for a feast at P.F. Changs!  It was soooo good!

Last weekend, I went to the grocery store and bought a microwave!  I have been enjoying microwave popcorn and warm leftovers.  The little things in life make me happy.  We also had a get together with the British School of Kuwait at our apartments last weekend.  It was great to meet people outside of our school and ended up being a nice evening making new friends.  This weekend, Rina and I attended a "Welcome to Kuwait" event at the AWARE center.  It's a cultural center that provides activities and events (even cooking and Arabic classes!) for anyone interested.  Of course, there is a fee, however, this night was an overview of what they offer and included a free buffet dinner.  The information on the center was so helpful, and I plan to take a tour soon of the Grand Mosque.  The food was great too!  It was an adventure getting there, as our taxi driver assured us he knew where it was.... 45 minutes later we were driving in circles and he was calling people to figure out where to go.  We made it to the center and saw a bus load of people standing outside.  We found out they were teachers from AIS, a school just down the street from us.  A couple I had met from the job fair in Iowa work there, so I started to look for them.  I was able to find them and it was so great to see familiar faces!  We got to catch up before Rina and I started playing dress up with the clothes at the center.

Yesterday, Rachel, Rina and I decided to check out the Marina Mall, which we had not been to yet.  It is on the water and is a very nice mall!  We took our time walking through and shopping at new stores, then headed outside to take some picture.  It was beautiful and so nice to be on the water!

The picture above is of the beach near the mall.  It was full of speedo-wearing men and completely covered women.  We sat and watched for a bit, while the men swam in the water and the women sat on the beach under umbrellas.  We came to the consensus that it's impossible to get a tan here in Kuwait, as there is too much sand in the air!  After taking some pictures, we were starving, so we decided to go to Johnny Rockets.  I don't think I've even been to one of those in the States before!  We all ordered hamburgers, which tasted so good!

After lunch, we wandered around the mall a bit more and found the toy store.  We had to go in!  I took a picture of the Barbie dolls, Kuwait-style!

We also found some fun things in the Hallmark store.....

While we waited for our taxi to go home, we decided we needed some Pinkberry.... frozen yogurt with toppings.  They have fresh fruit toppings and we realized it was probably the only place we would eat fresh berries, as they are so expensive here!

Overall Update:

Life in Kuwait is good.  School is keeping me busy and my good friends are keeping me sane.  We are planning our trip during Eid right now, which is a week-long holiday in November.  Maybe Bahrain for a few days of relaxing or Jordan if we can find some cheap flights.  Next weekend, I am going to try to get to the aquarium/science center and maybe the Kuwaiti Towers, as well.  I will post more pictures then.  Sorry it's taken so long to update this!  Feel free to email me, it's always fun to get emails and if I get one, I will respond! :)  

Cheers,

Megan