Category Archives: Kuwait

A little extra

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We came to Kuwait with minimal expectations. Since arriving, we’ve learned a lot about living and teaching abroad (in general) and in Kuwait. Some people might think we make lots of money. We don’t really – we just don’t pay taxes.

We’ve learned that the real money comes from tutoring. Some people tutor just before big assessments, others tutor 10+ hours a week. The going rate is anywhere from 15 to 30 KD…an HOUR! That equates to $50 to $100+ an hour! Wow is all we had to say. And tutoring is extremely common. Lots of students ‘need’ it (elementary through high school), for a variety of subjects and skills. The tricky part of tutoring is making sure that you are indeed tutoring and not actually doing the students work for them. We’ve heard that many students just hire a tutor to complete his/her assignments. Not okay.

Although not many students are looking for tutors in Social Studies or French, Chemistry and Science is quite popular. So I’ve been sitting back waiting for the right time and the right student to come along. After communicating with the father of a grade 11 boy (from Kuwait), I had my first tutoring session on Tuesday. The student came with his driver to pick me up. We drove to their villa passing the Switzerland Embassy on the way. We entered through the garage into a gorgeous room that had a couple round tables and an area of couches for a social gathering (diwaniya?). A maid was just leaving and had left a tray for me with water, juice and a couple pieces of some cake/bread. For the next hour we talked Chemistry – what he was struggling with and where I could help him. He taught me, I taught him. He is an incredibly respectful, nice young man who seems like he actually wants to learn and understand. At one point his mom came down and I was able to meet her. She was nice and very grateful. (I’ve heard that many tutors rarely see the students parents.) After our allotted hour he walked me back to the car, getting his driver on the way out (he lives off the garage). Starting next week, his driver will be at our apartment every Monday and Wednesday at 7:45pm. We’ll work for an hour and I’ll be home by 9:15pm.

Life is crazy…good 🙂

Introducing…

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…Nijumi (نجومي)!

When we moved to Kuwait, we had NO intention of getting a cat (we still love Noel…and she’s going to live forever). But then one of our friends rescued an adorable baby kitten and we couldn’t say no. We’ve had Nemr for almost 3 months. He’s bored out of his mind and uses us as chew toys. As we started getting closer to Christmas break and leaving him alone for almost 2 weeks (not to mention nearly 3 months in the summer), we decided we needed to find him a friend. Fortunately we found Nijumi (originally Sundari) on Saturday. Her new name means my stars in Arabic. She is about 3 months old (Nemr is 4 months) and has been fostered since the beginning of September. We said we’d foster her to see if she got along with Nemr. We kept them separate for 24 hours and after 48 they were playing together. Now, they’re practically besties!

We hereby vow that under no circumstances are we getting another cat. Please hold us to this promise. We will not become those people. Cross our fingers, hope to die. We have 3 cats in 2 countries. They were all born in August, all have names that start with N and all three are bilingual. We’re done 🙂

Getting in the (school) spirit

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There were many exciting things going on at AIS this week! The high school has had dress up days. Tuesday was Twin Day! Jeff and I decided to participate…so we went though our closets on Monday night to see if we could find anything. We we able to throw a little something together 🙂

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The activities this week have been leading up to the Forensic tournament this weekend that AIS is hosting. It is very similar to the volleyball tournament, but with different ‘sports.’ I had no idea what happened at Forensic competitions, so I had to do some investigating. Here is a little more info and here are some of the events. Jeff and I will again be hosting a coach, this time from Amman, Jordan. Hopefully we’ll be able to go to a couple events!

The other incredibly awesome thing this week was the Arts U: An AIS Arts Gala that took place last night. When I stopped by on my way home from the gym and grocery shopping, I had no idea what I was in for. It was fabulous, amazing, incredible…I can’t even describe how great it was! When you first walked into the lobby there was art on display and FOUR artists doing live art. One high school teacher was painting on a huge canvas while another HS art teacher was painting her paint.

Image Credit to L. Marek

There was a student painting a LIVE still life.

Image Credit to C. Botbyl

(That’s a person under there…)

Image Credit to C. Botbyl

(What part of that is real and what is painted? 😉

In the auditorium they had short plays every 30 minutes. In the foyer and tennis courts they had drama, monologues, improv, choirs, bands…they had it all! There was a maze of walls with Elementary art. Students from all grades participated and were able to show off their amazing work. It was beautiful. The atmosphere was perfect too. I think the main goal was to give students the opportunity to perform before the competition this weekend, but it was so much more than that. I hope it becomes a long-standing tradition!

Another thing that has made this week perfect…we found out that Abby will be returning to Kuwait with us in January! We don’t know the specifics of what she’ll be doing, but at minimum she will be substitute teaching (there are several maternity leaves available). She’ll live with us for the semester, sub, tutor…and just have a great experience! I CANNOT WAIT! 🙂

We’ve got more fun news coming this weekend…see you then!

2 things I’m thankful for are…

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1. Learning Arabic. Tonight Jeff and I went to our a restaurant around the corner to pick up a chicken machine. We go there 2-3 times a week to pick one up and use it in a variety of recipes. We are quite familiar with the guys who work there. Tonight we were able to order in Arabic! We recently learned numbers and they taught us how to say chicken machine. So tonight we ordered one (واحد) chicken machine (شواية)! Exciting 🙂

2. Skype/FaceTime. Today we were able to FaceTime with both Jeff parents and Skype with my family at a family get together! While my family was coming and going during the hour we talked to them, I had one of those moments where I was like “Wow, technology is freakin’ awesome.” We were basically with our families today! Amazing 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving!

Beautiful People in Kuwait

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Last night Jeff and I decided to venture to our bank. Our branch is in Salmiya and we needed to go to our home branch to do paperwork for our account. We knew about where the bank was but not exactly and couldn’t find it on Google maps. We risked finding a taxi on the street instead of calling our normal guy. The first 2 taxis didn’t know where our bank was either. Finally the 3rd guy seemed to know so we got in. When we got to Salmiya, he started pointing at every bank…”Bank?” He realized he had no idea where we were going! Once we were somewhere we recognized, we quickly got out of the taxi. We figured a Starbucks might have the most English speakers in it, so we went in to ask. The cashier didn’t really have any idea, but there was a customer who was incredibly nice and helpful! His English was pretty decent too! He took us outside and showed us where we should walk. We were a little surprised and incredibly grateful! Unfortunately, it wasn’t the exact branch we needed but fortunately one of our friends answered the phone and directed us to just walk a little further down the road…and we found it 🙂

After we were done with business at the bank, we decided to walk home. The Kuwaiti customer service employee who helped us (طه) walked outside with us to show us the way. He said that if we wanted to wait 30 minutes, he would be done with work and could just drive us. SO nice! We really wanted to walk, but were (again) surprised at his offer and thankful. We love that when you are kind, respectful and not judgmental people respond to you positively and are willing to help you 🙂

In other news…I’m teaching again. I have taken back 2 of the 3 French classes that I was teaching earlier this year. They are once again looking for a teacher. This time the search is for a French teacher only…so if anyone knows anyone, PLEASE send them our way! It won’t be an easy job, but it’s a job 🙂 I’m currently telling myself that I’ll be in this position until the end of the year…and just going so the the flow!

UPDATE: they hired someone Thursday afternoon for the French position! I taught my last grade 9 class today (Sunday) and tomorrow I’ll teach my last grade 10. I met that new teacher today and she seems great! She’s from France even 🙂 A GREAT start to the week!

World Record Breaking Fireworks

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Last weekend was the 50th anniversary of constitution of Kuwait. It’s only natural that there was a full day of celebration on Saturday and that HH the Emir canceled school on Sunday. We stayed away from most of the happenings but did not want to miss the firework show. There were lots of rumors leading up to the evening and it did not disappoint! We watched the show from the roof of our 19 story building and had a pretty dang good view of 65 minutes of firework. The show was officially deemed the world’s largest firework display of all time with 77,282 projectiles! Although we enjoyed it immensely and we will never see anything like it again, we did ask ourselves “What else could you have done with $15 million?” We did hear that there were quite a few things we missed out on since we weren’t at the show – music, laser show, pictures, kites and more. However we did see the the planes that had fireworks on their wings (see photo below)! It wasn’t until the fireworks stopped and we could see the lights that we even knew what they were!

We took a gagillion of our own pictures and a short video. Click here to see them all.

There was a ton of publicity and professional pictures taken. Have fun browsing!
Watch the entire show
Photos from the fireworks show
New Guinness World Record set
Snapshots of the fireworks
The news made world headlines
Behind the scenes

And a couple videos (not done by us)!
Human emotions during the show:

Kite Flyers’ perspective:

Winter is coming!

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When you live in Michigan, you are constantly checking the weather forecast. In Kuwait, we rarely usually look at the weather because it’s been almost the same since we arrived – sunny (with an occasional cloud) and hot (over 90 degrees).

Last week, I happened to check the 10-day forecast and saw it coming…winter! Yesterday it was slightly more cloudy than normal, but the high was still in the mid 90s. Last night it got windy and the temperature dropped (not out of the ordinary). BUT today it never went back up! It’s been in the 70s all day AND it’s been cloudy, windy and rainy. Did I mention the thunderstorms? We’ve been hearing gorgeous thunder on and off all day! The cool temperature and rain is refreshing and very welcome to stay. It was hard to imagine this weather when we got here in August, but it’s here and we are loving it 🙂

Here is a picture of one of the courtyards at school at 2:30pm this afternoon.

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Unexpected Holidays

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Today is November 11th. As you can see in the calendar below, we should have only had 1 day of vacation since the beginning of school for the Eid break (have a post in the works about what we did!). We were told on October 18th that our that our 3-day weekend would be extended to include Sunday & Monday making it a 5-day weekend. A week and a half ago we were told that we would get Thursday, November 15th off for Islamic New Year. This morning at 6:30am we found out school was cancelled today by HH the Amir in honor of the 50th anniversary of the constitution (we had record breaking fireworks last night…post in the works for that too!).

Recap: Thanks to the Ministry and the Amir, we have gone from 1 day of vacation to 3. We worked a 3-day week, then a 4-day week, we suffered through a 5-day work week last week and now this week has turned into another 3-day week! Can’t complain about life too much 😉

Feels a little more like home

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Kuwait has slowly started to feel more like home. There are still days when we think “We live in Kuwait?! Crazy!” But those moments are getting few and far between. Our apartment is still quite bare, but we’re chalking that up to the fact that we’re trying to save money and we’d like to be here for several years…we’ve got time.

On Friday, I got a hair cut. It might seem a little silly, but finding a good salon and hair stylist makes a place feel more like home to me. Eden Salon & Spa was just what I needed 🙂 Mez did a great job of cutting my hair AND I even got my eyebrows threaded! The prices were reasonable and much closer to what I’m used to paying than some places here. For awhile it seemed that all the salons were either extremely overpriced (35KD) or under priced (5KD). Eden is just right (20KD for cut, curly style, threading & tip) and I quite enjoyed my experience! It was a little ‘welcome home’ moment just when I needed it most 🙂