Photos and a Few Thoughts, From Kuwait.

Thanksgiving.
Enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving with some of my sweet, fun colleagues.

Good people, good food and games = smiles.

Two Monthly Book clubs. 

Participating in two clubs gets me reading books I may not otherwise choose to read on my own.

My apartment building's (I can go in my slippers!), last month's, book club read: City of Lies: Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran. Yeah, I only made it half way. That was enough of those true stories for me.

This month's read: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. I know, we DO read a wide range of books. I've never read an Agatha Christie book.   

Heading to the in-my-apartment-building book club.

In the other club, last month, we read The Paradise Guest House, a novel that takes place in Bali, Indonesia. This month: The Snow Child by Ivey Eowyn.

Of course we eat at both meetings.

The Novelty of Running.

I'm still enjoying running. It still feels novel and like a major accomplishment. But, my sensitive knee, has been limiting me. 

In November, I ran my first 10K.

Really Random Stuff.

I am not creative enough to even try to tie this stuff together.

Tim Horton's now sets up a stand at our school every Thursday morning, before school!

I snapped this, from my window, at the end of September.

January 8th. I'm not thrilled.

Wherever they are, I love sunsets.

My school has an amazing canteen.
"I say cafeteria, you say canteen."
I eat these stuffed grape leaves a lot! 

Arabic.

This, beautiful, language is Arabic!

Graduation from another class.  I am still a beginning beginner though.
(You just don't need to see me that up close, again!)

How awesome is this. I haven't made the purchase, yet, though. Hmm...

Christmas.

Got to do a small service project with friends. The note below is in, beautiful, Sinhalese. A language spoken in Sri Lanka.

The things that amuse me. The tree in my classroom.

My adorable, not-so-secret, admirer.

Wrapping it Up.

I wish I was at Pizza Express now.
I ♥️ food pictures.

I'm Actually here: at the new Starbuck's, in my neighborhood.

Next up: Home for the Holidays. Nebraska.

Can you ID the logos of common stores in America, in Arabic?

How good are you at recognizing the logos of typical stores in America? Do you think you could ID the logos of common stores in America, in Arabic?

Okay. I'll give you one practice round. This isn't a common store in America, but you can see how it keeps a similar font and design while incorporating the right to left spelling and Arabic script. 

It's Tim Horton's, a Canadian donut chain. 

*Sorry I only took pictures of the Arabic writing though they usually have it written in English and Arabic(like the above picture I just took off the Internet).

Alright. Ready, Set, Go!

1. 

2.

3.

4.

Having fun yet?

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 

*BONUS

If you get this next one you are very shopping savvy.

Answers:The Athlete's Foot, Payless, Justice, Nautralizer, Ikea, IHOP, H&M, Build a Bear, Clarks(that one was hard, but once you know), Caribou and (the BONUS) Claire's.

New Experiences

The Heat, Observations and New Experiences
It's really too hot to do much exploration, but I'm experiencing new things daily. As I'm typing it's 97 degrees Fahrenheit(9 pm). I checked at 4, one morning, and it was 99.  The high today, at 11 am, was 115 degrees. Some days are unbearably humid and some are dry. I guess the hot weather of my recent Haitian summer was foreshadowing in my story.  I don't sweat here though because I just run from one air-conditioned place to another.

What I have seen:
- Sand colored high rise apartments covering the desert landscape.
- Most things seems to be in a state of construction with lots of scaffolding, surrounded by piles of sand. 
- It's hazy, but I'm not sure if it's sand or pollution.
- Bits of green here and there, increasing as you go towards the city center. 
- Some areas are quite well done and maintained, but overall there is very little landscaping. Sidewalks, in general, are scarce.

Shopping

I checked off a few things from my To Do list. I took my first taxi ride with friends. We called a suggested driver who is trusted by our fellow teachers. He took us to a fancy mall right on the gulf, in Al Kout. It has a music and light fountain show that is especially pretty at night. It is only about a 15 minutes drive from our apartments. 

It was a good thing I had that taxi experience and the driver's number saved in my phone because I needed it again very soon. On our third day of meetings, I missed the bus the school provides to school. For the record I was, at the most, 1 minute late. I wasn't stranded though, because I called my taxi driver friend and he knew where to take me. 

I also went  to The Avenues, an even more extravagant shopping center, twice this week,

got a few household items at Ikea,
 

ate a doughnut at Tim Horton's

and checked out my favorite clothing store from Hungary, H&M (I know it's actually Swedish)(as is Ikea). Not surprisingly, they have lots of high end stores at the affluent mall, but also Payless shoes, Claire's and Texas Road House.

Marked off things on my To Buy list, too. I now have a local cell and internet in my apartment because of the generous help of a veteran teacher. 

Food

My new favorite food may be Lebanese. We tried out one such restaurant at an all-new-staff dinner out: falafel, hummus and baba ganoush(a spread made of mainly eggplant) are among my favorites. There was a really good arugula salad, too.

I tried the Indian restaurant across the street, too. It's cheap and also good.

I still haven't ordered my food from the food ordering app yet, but I want to try it soon.

I did however call Caribou from work and they delivered. My small hot chocolate with skim milk and no whip tasted exactly like it does in Nebraska. A school security guard calls me when it arrives.  Pretty sweet.

Most things are expensive here. For example, the small hot chocolate cost 1.5 KD, which sounds cheap, right? But 1 Kuwaiti Dinar is equal to 3.50 dollars. So the small drink cost me 5.25 USD. My taxi ride to school on that lesson learning day, cost 3 KD, or 10.50 USD.

School Stuff
The school did a really great job of creating opportunities for us to get to know the other new teachers. And now that the returning teachers have arrived we are getting to know our teaching teams.  My third grade team consists of 6 Americans.

Meetings are going well.  I'm working on my classroom. 

Students come next Tuesday.  I wish there was a little more technology (though I do have an interactive whiteboard in my class), but they make up for it in other ways. I'm overall impressed. The administration seems very professional, organized and approachable. 

For my teacher friends: 

   -The school is on a 7 day rotation, which is new to me. In that rotation, the students go to the following specials: Art, PE, Music, Reader's Theater(it's a special!), Arabic(45 minutes everyday), Spanish or religion and technology. 

   -We use the Reader's(including Daily 5) and Writer's workshops. 

   -We have NO standardized testing. We do, do MAPS to monitor progress.

   -We use Common Core standards for Math and Language Arts, Arrow standards for Social Studies and Next Generation for Science.  

We were told, "They have never had a new group of teachers laugh as much as us."

Random Things
I love how most things are written in English on one side and Arabic on the other.

The mosque next door is under construction, so that is why I don't hear the call to prayer.

My apartment is the short one to the right.

The water that comes out of the tap is hot. (BTW it is not brownish anymore and I have a filtered tap in the kitchen) I don't have my hot water heater on. The water is stored on the roof so it is just hot from the sun. Even the water in the toilets is steaming hot. You can not get cold water, in fact. So, you can't wash your clothes on cold and the filtered drinking water is hot.  It will cool down here in a few months and then I'll turn on the hot water heater.  I hear I will use my central heating, too.