Cassie and Joel's Wedding!

Last week I had a whirlwind trip back to America for my cousin Cassie's wedding. Cassie got married on October 17th, and AIS let me use my personal days to go back to MN for a short visit. It was kind of crazy (50 hours of travel for 100 hours in the States!) but so worth it to be part of Cassie's wedding. She was a beautiful bride, and I think all of her friends and family love her new husband, Joel. Hannah and I were both bridesmaids, so it was fun to have family so involved in celebrating. I was also able to enjoy the beautiful fall foliage (especially at Olaf!), eat yummy Mexican and Greek food (which you can't get in Kuwait), and spend lots of time with family and Lucy. Even though it was a short trip it was great to be back in Minnesota, and to enjoy some relief from the 95 degree+ temperatures in Kuwait! I've posted some photos from the trip below.

The next big projects on the horizon are the grade five assembly on November 5th and then a trip to Syria or Jordan at the end of November. My kids are attempting to perform a rap about the skeletal system, which I will then attempt to edit into a video. Check out the blog next week and if it works I'll post the video. :) Until then!

Aphrodite's Island

The times that I enjoy my job the most tend to be during break times. :) We had a week off at the end of Septmber for the Muslim celebration Eid Al-Fitr, which celebrates the end of the fasting month, Ramadan. For Eid this year I traveled to Cyprus with two good friends from AIS, Mariam and Marisol, and my friend Kristin from Term in the Middle East. Cyprus is a small island located south of Turkey in the Mediterranean Sea. The island has had a tumultuous past, with the Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, and British all ruling the island at various times before Cyprus gained independence in 1960. Cyprus is also considered to be the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite, and you can visit the rock where she supposedly emerged from the sea. Currently Cyprus is divided between the Greek southwestern portion and the Turkish northeastern portion. We spent the majority of our time in the Greek side, but did spend a few hours in the Turkish part of the world's last divided capital, Nicosia. The whole week was really fun and relaxing. Highlights included the beautiful natural scenery...



The religious and cultural monuments, Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Greek and Turkish...



Getting to hand out with wonderful people, including meeting up with another group of AIS teachers in Cyprus for the break...

Renting a car and seeing how well Mariam and Marisol could drive on the "wrong" side of the road...

And, of course, plenty of delicious food and beverages that can't be purchased in Kuwait. :)

Cyprus really felt like a perfect combination of Turkey and Greece, and was definitely one of my favorite destinations. Now it's back to the grindstone at school, and we're back to our regular schedule. I'm still really enjoying my class, and finding this year much less overwhelming than last year. The year of experience last year makes a huge difference. I have nine days left in Kuwait before I head to America on a whirlwind trip for my cousin Cassie's wedding, which I'm really excited for. Until then, maasalama!

Back in the Kuwait!

It's the beginning of week three here at school, and I definitely feel back into the routine and the swing of things at school. My classroom is all set up and looking lovely, as you can see below.

The first week back was a crazy amount of activity, with trying to get my apartment set up again as well as my classroom in the seven days I had before school started. A lot of construction work was done on the school over the summer, and people were frantically painting, sawing, moving and cleaning up until the very last minute, but everything magically was completed by the time school started. To end the week I hosted my first Kuwait party in honor of my good friend Andrea's birthday, and over 50 people crammed into my tiny apartment to celebrate!

I have 22 students in my class this year, 8 girls and 14 boys. I have 12 Kuwaiti students, five Lebanese, two Americans, one Russian-Lebanese, one Egyptian, and one Palestinian. I'm really enjoying getting to know this new group. They are definitely less social this year, and so far have been really fantastic about following directions and following class rules. The fear of H1N1 led to about 60% attendance the first few weeks of school, but I've met all of my kids and have been lucky that most of them have been there every day. We also started already into the month of Ramadan, so I know there are parents who aren't even thinking of sending their kids until after Eid break at the end of the month.

H1N1 precautions meant that we couldn't let kids bring in candy for the mid-Ramadan celebration of Gurgiyan, so we celebrated this year just by wearing national costumes.

This did not prevent me from enjoying some store purchased Gurgiyan cookies, though. :)

Since the majority of the Kuwaiti population isn't eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset it's been a pretty low key month, complete with a shortened school day schedule. It's also wicked hot here, with highs between 115-120. It's much less humid than it was at this time last year, which makes it bearable, but still not pleasant. However, I knew that I had readjusted to the eat when I went out for iftar (the meal that breaks the Ramadan fast) with my friend Marisol and we sat outside!

So overall it's been a very smooth transition back. I had a slight hiccough with a bad sinus infection last week. I had a tiny temperature, so due to the H1N1 extra precautions our school is taking I had to miss two days of school until I had a negative test come back, which luckily didn't take long. However, my class is fabulous, I love my new grade five teaching co-workers, and it's already so much easier the second time around. It's great to see old friends, and we get next week off for the end of Ramadan Eid, so I'll soon be off to Cyprus! Until then, masalama!

Summer Loving

Hello friends! I am back in Kuwait now! I know it's been a long time since I last blogged, but I wanted to write a little about my summer break before I write about this school year so far. The end of the school went off fairly well. It was definitely a stressful year at work, but I know the first year in any occupation involves lots of extra work. And of course, there's nothing better for a teacher than receiving a "Thank You for Teching Me" plaque at the end of the year. :)

On my way back to America in June I spent two weeks in Germany. I had studied German for six years in college and high school, and have several friends living in Germany, plus we had to fly through Frankfurt on the way from Kuwait to America, so it was the perfect vacation and transition destination on my way back to America. My good friend Mariam travelled with me the first week in Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, and then I went on to Salem and Trier where my friends live.

I was able to visit my aunt and uncle's foreign exchange student Claudia in Trier. She is now married to a wonderful man and they have two of the cutest sons ever, Tilman and Linus.

They were incredibly hospitable and did a wonderful job showing me around, especially considering that both of their boys are under the age of three!

Prior to Trier I spent five days in Salem, off the Bodensee in Southern Germany. My good friend Hillary from St. Olaf lives there working at a boarding school located in a castle! I was able to meet Hill's students and we enjoyed lots of champagne, walks in the German countryside, and even a Renaissance harp performance from one of her girls. I hadn't seen Hillary in four years so needless to say it was a very joyful reunion. :)

My trio of wonderful visits was completed with several days in Munich with my friend Lara. Lara lived on my block growing up and was totally my idol when I was growing up, so to stay with her and her husband, Steve, was amazing. She also did a fabulous job showing us around Munich and making us feel so welcome.

Once I was back in America it was eight weeks of friend and family love. Highlights included California for a long weekend with my best friends from high school, Allie, Allison, and Jenny...

Playing with my SO SMART dog, precious soft baby Lucy...

Family and sister time in Apple Valley and Rice Lake...

College friend reunion in Nebraska...

And baby and wedding preparation and showers galore with my aunts and cousins.

To end the summer my new baby cousin Molly was very cooperative and arrived a couple of weeks before I left. All in all it was a fabulous and refreshing summer, filled with relaxation and time with people I love.

Exhibition and ANZAK Ball

March and April were the two busiest months for the fifth graders at AIS.  Our school follows the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program for the elementary school curriculum, and grade five is the last year in this program.  As a culmination of everything the students have done in the PYP there is an exhibition towards the end of the year.  The exhibition is supposed to be completely student driven, with the kids deciding the theme, what kind of projects they want to do, and how they want to present their projects.  This was the first year we've done Exhibition at AIS because fifth grade had previously been part of the middle school.  It was definitely a huge challenge, but overall the kids really stepped up and did a great job.  We picked the theme "Though we're young we can reach out to the world in which we live, with caring hearts and understanding there is so much we can give", which is a lyric from our school song.  Each student group researched a problem they saw in the school, Kuwaiti, or world community and then created a project to help solve that problem.  My class' projects included helping handicapped people, anti-bullying campaigns, reusable water bottle promotion, anti-smoking, healthy foods, helping a children's hospice, helping the workers in Kuwait, and saving penguins.  Below you can see pictures of students at the actual exhibition with their projects, where they presented the work they did in a format of their choice.

We spent literally over a hundred hours on this project, and it was exciting to see it all come together at the end.  We already have a ton of ideas as to how to do better for next year, but there is definitely a feeling of relief having completed the project for this year.  And when you need to celebrate, it's time to attend another ball!  The Australia and New Zealand Association of Kuwait (ANZAK) hosted a spring ball at the Hilton, and I had a ton of fun dress shopping, attending with friends and dancing the night away.   

There is exactly one month of school left now, and I'm getting excited to head back to Minnesota!  There are no big events coming up in the next month, but I'm sure it will be crazy busy trying to fit all the last things in at school and then cleaning and packing up my classroom and apartment for the summer.  It's hard to believe the year is already coming to an end, but I'm looking forward to a nice long break. :) It's good to be a teacher!

Greece

This blog is turning into a bit of a travelogue, but that is just because the best part of being an international school teacher is the vacations! In between vacations life in Kuwait feels much like anywhere else, so there aren't very many interesting things to report on. Spring break came in April of this year and I ended up taking a last minute trip to Greece! It's a long story as to how that decision came about, but I will definitely still visit Jordan, my original intended spring break destination, at some point during my time here. I had been to Greece before in 2004/2005 as part of my semester abroad, and Greece was the first international destination I returned to. It felt strange to be there again in the same places I had been before, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and the company of my dear friend Tylene. Tylene booked us an incredible hotel right on the sea, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting some sun time while we were there, as well as enjoying the amazing buffet breakfast at the hotel. Fresh fruit like you wouldn't believe!

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to see the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet perform Don Quixote! I really miss getting to go to ballets and plays while in Kuwait, so it was very exciting to have this work out. I've never seen Don Q live before and it was very well done.

We spent a couple of days sight-seeing in and around Athens, including the Parthenon, of course, and Cape Sounion. The weather was very nice, high seventies the whole time (which felt freezing coming from upper nineties Kuwait!) and all in all it was a very relaxing trip. This is my last vacation before I go to Germany and then Minnesota in June, and it was a great end to the year.

Hannah's Visit!

The worst part about living abroad is missing my family and friends, so you can only imagine how excited I was to have Hannah come to visit this March. As those of you who have seen us together know we share the exact same zany sense of humor (and if you've met our dad you understand where it comes from) and are able to entertain each other like no one else can. :) Hannah's visit also gave me an excuse to explore Kuwait more and see some new things. To ease Hannah into the cultural shock of being in the Middle East we started by visiting Kuwait's largest malls, The Avenues...


...complete with a movie in the VIP section of the movie theater. For double the price of normal admission you can sit in a reclining lazy boy chair in a 20 person theater and have a personal attendant come and bring you your popcorn.

To appreciate Kuwait's history we visited a museum dedicated to chronicling the '91 Gulf War.

Hannah came to school with me for a day and learned why my new mean teacher voice had to be created...

..and enjoyed Machboose, a traditional Kuwaiti dish with chicken, rice, tomato sauce and spices courtesy of one of my students. She received a whole chicken in the machboose!

We did a sunset visit to the iconic Kuwait Towers...

Visited Kuwait's tradition souq (open air market) area...

And the Scientific Center/Aquarium.

Hannah got to smoke sheesha (hookah-don't worry JuJu! It's just flavored tobacco!0 for the first time at one of my favorite places here, Layali Al Helmiya.

The two of us took a boat tour to Failaka Island, just a 45 minute boat ride of the mainland. Failaka has ruins on it dating back to the time of Alexander the Great, and had been a popular weekend destination for Kuwaitis prior to the Iraqi invasion. Unfortunately the Iraqis completely destroyed everything on the island, as they did to most of the mainland, but Failaka island has not undergone even a fraction of the restoration the mainland has. Walking around the island feels spooky, as nearly all of the homes still have bullet holes, etc. in them. Hannah and I visited an old abandoned school and there are still papers all over the floor from when the school was used before the invasion.

It wasn't all doom and gloom, though. Hannah and I were able to wade in the Gulf, Hannah experienced her first camel ride, and we rented a four wheeler to drive around the island.

We finished out our fantastic week by renting a car with some friends and driving out into the desert near Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately the border isn't very clearly labelled, and we almost drove right into Saudi! We finished off the day with a picnic on the Gulf before Hannah had to leave. I feel so lucky to have such an amazing sister, and I'm so thrilled she was brave enough to come to Kuwait on her own.