October in Kuwait

Hi everyone-

So obviously the past weeks have been pretty crazy, resulting in an absence of updates for my blog. Here's the scoop of what happened the rest of October. At the beginning of the month we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving at my coworker Tylene's apartment, complete with turkey, decorations and pumpkin pie. Although nothing could even compare to Thanksgiving and Judy and Warnie's, it was ninety degrees out, and I still think it's weird that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October, it was a fun evening.

After Thanksgiving it was stress time, preparing progress reports for parent/teacher conferences this past week. I've found that my procrastination skills are still in full working order, but was able to complete all of my grading and my progress report comments before the deadlines. Conferences proved to be a very pleasant surprise. I went into them prepared to really have to prove myself and my grading, but the parents were all incredibly supportive and in tune with their children's academic strengths and weaknesses. I ended up really enjoying the chance to speak with all of the parents.

Adding to my stress levels the past couple of weeks was the fact that the grade fives were in charge of the all elementary assembly last week. Each class had to prepare a ten minute presentation to perform in front of the school. I was really nervous about the project because independent work and initiative aren't necessarily the strengths of my class, but I was so proud of the way my kids ended up performing. We are currently working on a geography unit, so my students split into two groups and did the skits, "Tikki Tikki Tembo" from China and "The Magic Tree" from the Congo. We probably spent about twenty hours in the past couple of weeks rehearsing, preparing costumes and sets, and getting ready to show the school what the kids could do. Again, I had very supportive parents, who even brought in props and supplies including a smoke machine and an artificial Christmas tree! The end result was quite successfuly, in spite of a last minute broken nose of a lead performer mere seconds before we were scheduled to begin! Luckily she is doing okay and another student was able to step in and take her part.

As if that wasn't enough going on, the day of the assembly and parent teacher conferences was also the day we celebrated Halloween at AIS! The kids brought just as much candy as they had for Gurgiyan, and were all very dressed up. We ended the day with a Halloween party, which was the perfect relaxing ending to a very stressful week.

I've enjoyed not doing any school work this weekend! I saw the play "Othello" at the British Embassy yesterday, and it was fun to get to dress up and go out. In two weeks I'm going to Qatar with three friends for the weekend to celebrate one of their birthdays, and there are only five weeks left before Eid Al Adha/Christmas break! Despite the sometimes frantic pace I'm still really loving life in Kuwait. I hope all is well with all of you!