Author Archives: Lissa Layman

Halloween in Kuwait

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Halloween celebrations started last night (started this post Thursday :)! Staff children gathered at the school to carve pumpkins. Afterwards, they made their rounds to the teacher buildings to Trick or Treat. We ended up getting 15-20 kids – they were adorable! After the kids came, our neighbor (Arabic teacher here) told us about a tradition during the middle of Ramadan. She said kids dress up in traditional, formal clothing (not costumes) and go around getting candy. They do it after sunset so they aren’t breaking their fast. We love learning new things about the culture we live in!

Thursday was dress down day at school (once a month students don’t have to wear their uniforms and teachers can wear jeans). This week teachers and students were allowed to wear costumes. There were some impressive ones! A middle school boy had a wooden miniature house made and was from the movie Up!. There was a girl with a zipper on her face…really hard to explain but part of her face was normal and part was zombie – use your imagination. One teacher-friend was Ms. Frizzle, our esteemed colleague was Batman and another friend was Robin…they got all their costumes custom made by a tailor nearby! All the KG1 teachers were crayons and the KG2 teachers were highlighters (black outfits w/ neon yellow wigs)…they looked great! Jeff and I were super creative too – we went as muggles. Yupp, it was quite the costume 😉 I was actually most impressed with this costume (you can always count on Jenna Marbles for some crazy shit).

On Thursday morning at 8:45am, the pre-k, KG1 & KG2 students (2-6 year olds) paraded through the school. All the upper elementary and middle school students lined the parade route cheering them on. Jeff and I made it a priority to attend. It was one of the cutest things we’ve ever seen! Each class formed lines by either holding on to the classmate in front of them (see below)or they all held on to a rope led by the teacher. TOO cute!

Our colleague was the Grand Marshal of the parade 🙂 Masks added to protect privacy of students.

Throughout the day we were really surprised at the number of students who went all out with their costumes. Students of all ages came in full costume. In the US we’ve seen a huge decline in the Halloween celebrations at school since we were in elementary. Here, they are all about it! At the end of the day all the classes in the elementary school had parties. We took a stroll around during last 20 minutes of the school day…we’ve never seen anything like it! Each student brings enough for the entire class – the amount of food is INSANE! I heard about a student whose driver dropped off 30KD (~$100) so she could order KFC for her entire class. One student’s dad owns the local Baskin Robbins…so he brought enough single scoops for several classes. Another student’s dad owns the Subways…her class ate a little healthier. One class we stopped by had the biggest cupcake I’ve ever seen.

Stolen photo 🙂

The sheer amount of food was sickening. I wish I would have had my camera to capture the craziness! We tried to be responsible, but I will say I ate two of the best cake balls I’ve ever had!

So tasty!

The students went home to their parents (read: nannies) on a sugar high and the school maids went home with massive amounts of food. The rest went home with the teachers and we enjoyed it at our own Halloween party last night 🙂 There were several more impressive costumes…and Jeff and I rocked our muggle disguises. Happy (belated) Halloween everyone!

A day of firsts

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We are currently enjoying our first vacation. Eid Al Adha was yesterday…so we have a total of 5 days off school! We go back Tuesday 🙂 We took a day trip on Thursday and will share soon.

This morning we woke up to clouds…lots of them! Today was the first day since we’ve been here (9 weeks & 1 day!) that the weather has been mostly cloudy for most of the day! We had waffles and watched old-school morning cartoons with some friends downstairs – fun! I went to the gym for some yoga. When I walked out the door an hour later (1:15pm), I heard thunder for the first time since arriving. A couple minutes, the sky opened up for the first time and it rained! It rained hard for a solid 30 seconds and I got fairly wet… I couldn’t help but smile! It sprinkled and continued to thunder on and off on my way home, but I was mostly dry by the time I got back to our apartment. The day stayed cloudy with random sprinkles, thunder…and Jeff saw lightning – another first! Update: It’s 6:30pm and there is tons of lightning and thunder! That’s 5 firsts in one day…dang! 🙂

We’re really hoping that the rest of the day in the US goes well – we’d love to wake up tomorrow morning to a Tiger win over the Giants, a Notre Dame win over Oklahoma and a UofM win over Nebraska! Here’s hoping! Love & kisses to all 🙂

The crazy clouds that stayed the whole day!

The thunderstorm came…and went.

Some cultural experiences

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One of the things that we’ve learned teaching, traveling and living outside our comfort zone is that life is what you make of it. When we came to Kuwait, we did not want to be seen as transplanted Americans. Our goal was (and is) to be open-minded and immerse ourselves in a new culture. We think this mind-set has helped a lot with our “culture shock” (or lack thereof). Recently, we’ve had some time to take advantage of some of the many opportunities offered to us. Here are just a few!

One of the first things we had the opportunity to do once we got settled was to go on a tour of the Grand Mosque in Kuwait City. The AWARE center hosts a tour on the second Saturday of each month (plan your visits accordingly!). It was a great experience that we will post more about in the near future.

One of our favorite experiences here so far was hanging out at the Hussain & Ali’s after going to the Old Souq and getting to hear about everything carpet. Fascinating!

Three weeks ago, we attended an orientation to Kuwait hosted by the AWARE Center. It was great information and great food. After hearing about their values, we signed up for memberships on the spot!

AWARE is guided by Arab and Islamic humanitarian values which advocate peaceful co-existence between cultures and civilizations.  Among key values AWARE promotes are tolerance, better understanding and mutual respect between the westerners and Arab/Islamic world. source

Last Monday, I attended the world premier of a documentary made by United Productions Foundation at the DAR in our neighborhood.

The  mission of Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) is to create peace through the media. A nonprofit organization founded in 1999, UPF produces documentary films for both television broadcast, online viewing, and theatrical release, and implements long-term educational campaigns aimed at increasing understanding between people of different faiths and cultures, especially between Muslims and other faiths. We are convinced of the power of media to empower citizens with greater understanding and to nourish pluralism in America. source

Daniel Tutt was on hand to introduce the film. He discussed the education piece of the organization – many Americans have never had contact with a Muslim, yet judge Arabs and Islam based on what they hear in the media. One of the goals of the organization is to get people talking. I love the idea!

The video they were showing was called “Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World.” It was narrated by Susan Sarandon and was originally shown on PBS in the US in June. The premier that I attended was the first time the film had been shown outside the US…pretty cool huh?! It was an eye-opening film, beautiful in every way. You can see the trailer below, “like” their page on Facebook, and see more of their videos.

The next night Jeff and I went back to the AWARE center for a diwaniya hosted by our our neighbor at school, Bryn Barnard. I read his book earlier this year and was excited to hear him talk about it! He both wrote and illustrated it – the artwork is gorgeous and I learned a ton. His talk was just as interesting and was a GREAT compliment to the movie the night before. If you’re interested in the history of Islam and don’t want heavy reading, it’s a must buy! My iPod Touch died during his presentation and I wasn’t able to get any pictures 😦

Our most recent foray into Arabic culture is taking Arabic classes at the AWARE center! We’ve been eagerly awaiting this learning experience and had our first class on Monday. For the Introductory class, we will go every Monday & Wednesday for 6 weeks (a total of 12 hours of class). After two classes, we’ve learned to read, write & pronounce 16 letters of the Arabic abjad. Most have 3 different ways to pronounce them and 2 different ways to write them (depending on where they are in the word). Yesterday we took a quiz where we had to match words written using the English alphabet to words written with the abjad. Jeff and I both got them all right and were awarded stars! You know they will be going on the fridge for sure 🙂

We both got stars!!

We’ve heard that Arabic is incredibly hard to learn and many people here don’t find it necessary to know the language. We’re eager to be able to exchange pleasantries with Arabic speakers and expand our world view through learning a new language!

A Poem

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I saw this poem on Facebook this morning. I did a little research, found the full version and the author. Enjoy.

“‘Why do you do it?’ friends often ask, perplexed,
Brows raised, minds sorely vexed.
‘The world out there is dangerous!
Aren’t you scared? Why do this?
You need steady work, a house, two cars!
You have only a motorbike, and sleep under stars!’

Dear friend, if you must ask, you cannot know
This curiosity that drives me so.
To you it is hidden; in me rises unbidden!
But one day the world I’ll have ridden
By iron steed, then perhaps this need
Will have vanished, finally vanquished!
That day will find me on deathbed,
With no regrets for the life I led.

Will you be able to say the same?
Or will you despair a life worn plain?

I will stake my Himalayan memories
Against your estate of a thousand trees.
Pit my Thai sunset
Against your private jet.
Weigh my horse rides at sunrise
To your Italian suits and ties.
I’ll rejoice in friends before I go,
Not the figures of my stock portfolio.

And, amazingly, there are more like me;
They reject slavery, and are truly free.
They took the chance we all had,
And honestly it makes me sad
That you didn’t.
You thought you couldn’t…
What?
Live without the luxuries
Of all our modern amenities?
You choose the bonds of mortgage, but claim to be free,
Wasting a lifetime absorbed by TV.
Why watch it? but live it!
One life’s all you get!
Don’t put off ’til morrow and continue to borrow
The lives of strangers; ’tis the greatest of dangers
To the soul
Which grows old
Before its time.

Hercules, Columbus,
Guevara, Odysseus,
Champlain, Agamemnon,
The list goes on…
What have they in common?
Regardless man or god,
The soil of continents they trod,
Not in search of gold but adventure!
Not growing old ’cause they ventured
Far from safety; but far be it from me

To Judge…
The pitiless pity us
With souls black pitted.
Pray! save it for those less spirited.
For us… our horizons are unlimited.”

By James C. Richmond

We’ll be home for Christmas!

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Hi friends & family!

We have some exciting news to share…we’ll be home for Christmas! We’ve been waiting to get paid and find just the right ticket. The GOOD NEWS: Today we purchased 2 tickets to come home (for under $2000 total!)! We’ll be flying Turkish Airlines with layovers in Istanbul. On the way back to Kuwait, we have an 8-hour layover so we will be able to go out for dinner in Istanbul 🙂

Now for the bad news: we won’t be home for as long as we’d hoped. We fly out of Kuwait the morning of December 22nd, arriving in Chicago that evening. We then fly out the evening of January 2nd, arriving in Kuwait on January 4th.

Who’s ready to come pick us up in Chicago!?

See you in just under 3 months!

xoxo

source

weekend, friends & backflips

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Happy weekend (to us)! Tonight we’re going to a get together at a friend’s apartment (in our building). We’re also having another friend, Dana, over for dinner. I met her when I was visiting Danielle in Scotland in 2007/8. We didn’t stay in touch, but she randomly contacted me earlier this week to ask about Kuwait because she had a job interview here! She got here yesterday and leaves tomorrow but is coming over to hang out tonight. SMALL WORLD!

I saw this video while browsing a Kuwaiti blog. I think it’s a pretty fun idea, plus you can see some of the things we see on a regular basis! The whole first part is at our resort & spa (read: gym), Al Corniche. He is also at the Avenues, the grocery store we frequent, and the place we found our first geo-cache. Enjoy!

Update: Just found another video you might enjoy with Kuwait as the back drop!

Food Lately

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**This post has taken me countless hours to write because of many technical difficulties (among other things). The pictures still look funny when published for some reason. Sorry..you’re going to have to deal with it! I’m going to bed 🙂 I really, truly hope you enjoy!!

For being such lovers of food, we haven’t posted a lot about what we’ve been eating…so today I’m here to make you jealous! There are lots of American restaurants in Kuwait (McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Ruby Tuesday, Chili’s, Applebee’s, P.F. Chang, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway…I could go on). We’ve only patronized two Western places so far…Starbucks and Shake Shack, both at The Avenues. Instead of eating at places we’re familiar with, we’ve been making our own food (comme toujours) and going to small, local ‘restaurants.’ Jeff has two rules for you when you come visit…one of them is that you eat whatever we tell you to eat! Enjoy!

First, some of the meals we’ve bought…

Swedish meatballs from one of our early Ikea excursions.

Once a week we pay 1.5 KD for a rotisserie chicken (chicken machine) from a Lebanese place between the school & our apt. It lasts us 2 meals and the first night is usually pulled chicken over salad. Sometimes we splurge and get a schawarma too!

A true staple in our diet. This particular bread we bought fresh out of the oven for pennies! It was so hot Jeff needed more than the newspaper to carry it home 🙂

The (literal) hole in the wall where our bread was made!

When we went to the Friday Market (on a Thursday), we ate at an Indian place there. We paid 800 Fils for all this yumminess…two chicken wraps of some sort, fried veggies, & a sambosa!

We love the two Lebanese restaurants between our apt and school! Bread & hummus from one, falafel wrap from the other…all for less than 1KD!

The Shack Shake in The Avenues is amazing…expensive, but my caramel shake was totally worth it!

Some friends introduced us to the soup place. We ask for 4 containers of green soup with onions & lemon and hand over 1.5KD. These 4 containers (with bread as spoons) will last 4 meals for both of us!

Our green soup came in the one with the towel. There’s other soup too…we were advised against trying them though 😉

And here are some of the meals we’ve made…

We found a Madras curry paste that we’ve fallen in love with! So far, we’ve had a curry stir-fry about once a week. We vary up the veggies and have added Kuwaiti shrimp a few times too!

This is one of the ways that we used pulled chicken machine…with green beans over couscous. More delicious that we thought it would be!

Yet another meal using pulled chicken machine…this time pasta! It started off as a creamy sauce and ended as a cheesy sauce. Basically spicy mac n’ cheese w/ artichokes, tomatoes & mushrooms…again better than expected!

Another weekly staple – pizza using Iranian bread (we can get 5 pieces for 100-250 Fils). We’ve been using sun-dried tomato pesto, whatever veggies we have and sliced mozzarella. We also make garlic cheese bread with the ‘fluffy garlic’ sauce that we get with our chicken machine.

We love us some Iranian bread! For wraps, Jeff roasted chickpeas in cumin and we ate them with moutabel, cucumbers & lettuce.

Another concoction with Egyptian bread 🙂 We were recently introduced to labneh – a cheesy sour cream yogurt spread. Delish!

Jeff had the amazing idea to make a Niçoise Salad. It was simple, filling and healthy…yum. We also found a new bread – Egyptian bread sold at the Sultan Center. Kind of like a thick pita and it comes in white or brown.

I found a pumpkin pancake & waffle mix at the Sultan Center! If you didn’t know, I ❤ pancakes…seriously. We’ve made these the last two Saturdays. We put out tons of toppings (butter, PB, almond butter, cocoa, honey, pecans, banana…) and eat up! This morning I added oatmeal to the batter for the last couple…tasty and SO filling!

We hope you’ve enjoyed a peak into our culinary lives! Are you ready to come visit yet?! We are loving the food here so far and have had a lot of fun being adventurous. We’ve heard that there are a lot of great restaurants so we are eager to find & try them! Enjoy the rest of your weekend 🙂

Al Corniche – worth it? You bet!

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One of the options during our first week here was to tour Al Corniche Resort & Spa. We had heard that many teachers joined the ‘resort & spa’ for a variety of reasons including access to the gym and private beach. We were pretty confident we were going to join, but we were taken aback by the price. AND our athletic director got us a pretty good deal (I advice against doing the math, I about choked) – 950KD for a couple for a 1 year membership with the possibility to put it hold for up to 2 months. This price probably sounds exorbitant to you (and it did to me too after belonging to Gold’s for $30/month). I won’t even talk about all the extra services that you pay for (spa, restaurants, cabanas, premium membership, guest passes…). But…let me tell you about it and maybe I can change your mind like mine was 🙂

Al Corniche is a 15-20 minute walk from our apartment. On our way, we pass our favorite grocery store so we often hit the store on the way back if needed. When we get to the parking lot, we routinely walk past fabulous & beautiful cars – Porsche, Ferrari, Mazarati, Aston Martin (who needs BMW & Mercedes?). Going in the front doors, we walk on glass over water – their own private moat! I’ve never once touched the front door as there is always a security guard who holds it open for us. After scanning our membership cards, the lobby has shopping, restaurants (frozen yogurt, a cafe, sit-down), the entrance to the spa (Jeff received a free massage w/ membership and I’ll get a facial) and comfy couches where you can hang out in the AC and use the Wi-Fi. Last week Jeff signed up with Porsche to attend a test drive event coming up soon. You can go outside to the pool (31 C all year round with a lap pool), ‘cold’ tub (like a hot tub but cold water!), beach, green-space, cabanas and kiddy pool (did I mention there is wi-fi outside too?). From the lobby you can also go down to the squash & tennis courts (members can play anytime). The locker rooms are downstairs and can be accessed from the pool as well. There are lockers, showers, a sauna. Upstairs is the gym with 2 rooms for classes and a large space with all the equipment you could need. Although personal trainers are extra, you do get a ‘Meet the Trainer’ session with a fitness trainer to talk about your goals, do all your measurements and help create a plan. I’ve loved classes for the last couple of years, but this place takes it to a whole new level. There are multiple classes a day that I wish I had time to go to (including Les Mills classes!). In the bigger of the two rooms, both outside walls are floor to ceiling glass so you can look out over the Gulf and Kuwait city while you sweat. The outside walls of the main gym are also glass so you can look out over the pool, Gulf & City while you get your aerobic & weights on.

Jeff and I have been members for 16 days. Of those 16 days, we’ve gone to the gym 14 of them. Although there are quite a few teachers from AIS that belong, it’s also nice to see some different faces. We thought about joining a different gym, but there are no other gyms within walking distance (read: pay for taxi) and they aren’t much cheaper either. Al Corniche just went through some significant renovations (so don’t look at too many of the pictures on their website) and is beautiful!

Lastly, between working out, eating better and not drinking on a daily basis, Jeff and I have lost a combined 14lbs in the 3.5 weeks since we’ve moved here. We’ve really enjoyed having somewhere to go besides school and our (mostly) empty apartment. Here’s a quick video I took while walking on the treadmill the other day…

 

Update: Al Corniche posted some pictures on their Facebook page…thought you’d enjoy seeing where we spend a lot of our time 😉

Drumroll please…

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We’d like to introduce you to the newest addition to our life in Kuwait…Nemr (نمر)! He is 4 weeks old and was rescued by some friends of ours here. Our friends couldn’t keep him and we decided there are already too many feral cats on the street here. We hope we can give him a great life here 🙂  His name is Arabic for tiger and a little hard to say, but we think Nemr is the best way  to spell the way it sounds. Hopefully we’ll be able to learn Arabic soon so we can say his name correctly! He loves to play and run around our apartment. He slides and jumps all over the place!  He also loves to be with us and on us…he follows us everywhere and usually wants us to be paying attention to him 🙂 High maintenance at night, but adorable all the same!

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Little Kitten!

Orientation Week

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I know this post is a little delayed…but it’s been sitting waiting to be finished for quite a while now. Today marks our 3 week anniversary of arriving in Kuwait 🙂 We have lots of ideas for fun posts to come so be on the lookout in the next couple weeks 🙂

By the time we made it to our apartment and got our luggage, it was about 3am on Saturday morning (August 25). Orientation started bright and early on Sunday morning at 8am! We quickly realized the school’s goal was to keep us busy all the time for the first several days we were in the country. Most likely they wanted us to get over jet-lag as quickly as possible and keep us out of our empty apartments. As I try and think back to those first 4 days in the country now, they are definitely a little blurry!

Here’s a quick snapshot of our first 4 days in the country before returning staff came back…

Saturday, August 25 ~ We headed to Jeans Grill on the Gulf for breakfast with all the new staff, their children and the admin team. It was a huge buffet and a great time to sit and talk with the other new teachers plus get a heads up for what was happening in the days ahead. After breakfast, we headed back to the school for tours and administrative stuff (we got our settling allowance, handed in our passports & got our pictures taken to get the work visa process going). After some lunch & computer time, we headed to the Sultan Center for our first shopping trip. It was quick and we were completely overwhelmed! So much stuff we weren’t used to seeing and we didn’t really have a good idea what we needed & didn’t need right away. Plus all the prices looked so funny! That evening, we returned to our apartment building to have dinner with at our building host (Deb has been great!). It was relaxing and we had a great time asking questions and getting to know the other new teachers in our building.

Sunday, August 26 ~ We walked to school for the first time with our building host (Deb). We had time for coffee & tea with the other new teachers and then headed to a cultural presentation by the middle school assistant principal. She’s been in Kuwait for 19+ years after meeting her Kuwaiti husband at college in Florida. Her husband is part of the royal family in Kuwait (Al Sabah) but he is not part of the ruling line. It was a great presentation! I’ve asked her if she would be willing to share it…so hopefully you’ll see it soon too! We also got to try dates (not as dried as I’ve had them before) and Arabic coffee (which doesn’t taste like coffee, so I liked it!). The rest of the day was spent in a Q&A session, getting to know our divisions (elementary, middle school, high school), and time to organize our apartment. That evening we went to the Avenues for the first time…I thought the Sultan Center was overwhelming! The Sultan Center has nothing on this mall (we went again today and I’m still overwhelmed!). On the way to the mall our bus had a fun little adventure…our bus blew a tire! We had to sit on the bus on a busy highway and then transfer to the new bus…all with crazy drivers whizzing by! But once we finally got shopping, it was great to finally get some things to make our apartment less empty!

Monday, August 27 ~At school in the morning we attended our divisional meeting before heading out to get fingerprints. We were told it could last 20 minutes or 4 hours. Let’s just say that our trip was anything but short & pleasant. Our appointment was at 1pm but when we got there they said it was supposed to be at 2pm. We didn’t actually get STARTED until 3:30pm. They wanted us (50 teachers) to be quiet…no one seemed to be able to. A young, short man was constantly yelling at us (we later found out he was a police officer). Once we finally started getting printed, one of the men was taking smoke breaks every couple of minutes. While I (lissa) was in the room with a few other girls waiting to be printed, a very official looking officer came in and started yelling at the ‘break’ man. Turns out he was a police office too and wasn’t in uniform. Some operation they had running there! I left about 5:30pm and none of the guys had even gone yet. Jeff got home just before 6:30. We rested for a few minutes and then met up with the group again to go to LuLu Hypermarket (think Walmart) way out of the city near the desert. We were again overwhelmed, but getting better at the whole shopping thing. I noticed that the grocery stores here are an interesting mix of ones I’ve seen in the US and France.

Tuesday, August 28 (last day before returning staff joined us) ~ Our last big hoop to jump through was our medical visits. Even though we had been medically cleared in the US (and paid LOTS of money for it unlike our Canadian colleagues), Kuwait still needed to make sure we were healthy in order to give us our work visas. Our first stop was to get our blood drawn. There were lots of immigrants at the public medical center (we were happy to hear our health insurance is for private care). One of the teachers who was here last year recognized the logos on the immigrant workers uniforms and told us that they worked for a large oil company. We also heard that it’s common for the company to keep the workers’ passports so that can’t leave. People come here to work because they can make ‘good money and send it back to their families. Then they realize how horribly they are treated…and can’t leave. Glad to know we’ll be getting our passports back as soon as our visas come through! After all the women in our group were done, we had to go to another medical facility to get our chest x-rays (all the men were able to complete the check-up at the first stop). We got to wear awesome orange dresses…which reminds me I need to get a picture from my friend so you can see how great I looked 😉 That afternoon we went back to the Avenues and also went to True Value Hardware (except it had everything, not just hardware). That evening we went to a traditional Arabic dinner…AMAZING! We got to try so many different types of food and drinks and it all just kept coming. YUM!

Lemon Mint - the drink we were told we had to drink at dinner!

Lemon Mint – the drink we were told we had to drink at dinner! Like a virgin sweet Mojito!