Category Archives: Kuwait

Our first hours in Kuwait

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Sorry for the hiatus! Students came back to school on Tuesday and we’ve been busy! I (lissa) am currently teaching 3 sections of French (grade 9, 10 & 11) until the new teacher arrives. She’ll be here late Sunday night but I’ll probably be teaching for her all next week too.

So I told you about how we got to Kuwait…but we did actually leave the airport 🙂 All of the new staff met the admin & their families on the other side of the alcohol scanners. We all labeled our bags with our building number and apartment number so the porters could load them on the appropriate trucks. They had water & snacks for us while we got organized and waited for the buses. We were exhausted and it was quite overwhelming to be surrounded by so many new faces. We were incredibly surprised at how BUSY the airport was after midnight on a Friday night. We finally boarded the buses with the other people in our apartment. Now that we’ve been here a couple weeks, I don’t even really remember that bus ride in…it seems so long ago!

When we got to our apartment building we met our building host (Deb is in her 2nd year here and is the Middle Years Programme Coordinator) and she gave us keys to our apartments. We waited (and waited) for the truck to arrive with our luggage, but it gave us time to ask Deb questions about everything we could think of.

When we finally got up into our apartment (we’re on the 7th floor of 17, 2 apartments on each floor) we were a little surprised at how big it was…but also how sparse it was. We were told it was furnished and it was…but with much less furniture than we had expected. It’s a two bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment with an open entrance/living room/dining room and a kitchen.

We’re allowed to do pretty much anything we want to our apartments. Our unit was not repainted after the last tenant left. If we pick out colors before the school repaints for us, they’ll do the painting how we want it which is really exciting! It’ll be nice to have some color and make the place our own. During the last 2 weeks, we’ve been to the mall several times and used almost all of our 600KD settling allowance. Ikea has become our new favorite store and we longingly browse Pottery Barn wishing we could afford it 🙂 These pictures are of our apartment the night of and the morning after we arrived in Kuwait. Hopefully in a few months (after we get paid) we’ll have new pictures to show you of a cozy, homey apartment!

Some interesting features of living in Kuwait:
1. In the summer, the hot water setting is actually “cold” and the cold water setting is actually HOT! The water is stored in large containers on the roof of our building. Because it is so hot in the summer, the water that comes directly to our faucet is hot from being stored on the roof. We also have water heaters for the bathrooms and kitchen. We can turn it on in the winter when the water coming from the roof will be cold and the water from the hot faucet will go through the heater.

Large water tanks on top of apartment building.

2. The switches for the bathrooms are outside the room.

Switches for master bathroom (outside of room).

Switches in the kitchen (washer, dryer, water heater, lights, fan).

3. There is approximately 1 outlet per room  and NONE in the bathrooms 😦

4. Most people don’t use toilet paper. We’ve heard that the pipes here can clog easily. So people clean with sprayers that are by every toilet (yupp…EVERY toilet we’ve seen has one of these with it!) and then dry themselves with toilet paper that they throw in small garbage cans that also accompany every toilet. We haven’t adopted this practice just yet.

Hussain and Ali’s

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No pics on this one I’m afraid, just a short story.

[EDIT-J: I lied. We have pictures.]

Thursday night (our “Friday”) we went with 5 of our friends to the Old Souq. It’s a pretty standard thing to do if you’re ever in Kuwait, and we’re glad we went. We wandered around a bit and eventually sat down to eat dinner at one of the common food places there. Fun fact about eating in Kuwait: restaurants fight over you, so guys armed with menus try to recruit you to sit at their tables if you even pause anywhere near the food area. It makes you feel special.

Anyway we ended up ordering some saffron rice, hummus, some sort of small shrimp dish, some sort of small chicken dish and, because there were seven of us splitting it all, we ordered 1.5 skewer plates. What they brought out to us was a delicious mountain of food. We ate for an HOUR STRAIGHT. They served us fresh Iranian bread in giant baskets and brought us new baskets whenever ours got cold whether we had finished it or not. Iranian bread is amazing. Someone remind me to post a picture and blurb about our Iranian bakery that’s close by. We left with bags of food and plan on having a reunion feast on Saturday.

After dinner we rolled walked around a bit more and our friend brought us to a carpet place called Hussain and Ali’s. Hussain happens to be an Afghani carpet salesmen educated in Iranian literature and one hell of a storyteller. He brought us into the second floor of his shop and proceeded to tell us everything there is to know about carpets. For two hours. It was amazing. He taught us how to count threads, identify & define Muslim symbols within the carpet, and determine whether the weaver was left or right handed. How cool is that?

By the way, should any of you ever be in need of a carpet consultant, we may be of some  service.

As for the week ahead – we’ve got some blog posts simmering. Until then you can amuse yourself by price-checking authentic Qum (city in Iran) silk rugs of 1.5 million threads or more. Do it. It’s nuts.

An artsy shot of the store. Carpet for dayyyyys. Thanks to Lindsay for the picture!

Packing for 13 hours in an airplane.

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13 hours in a plane, broken into an 8 hour and 5 hour segment. The goal is to sleep as much as possible during the first leg and stay up during the second. You have a 7 hour layover during which you plan to walk around a foreign city. What do you pack?

Here’s my personal item.

things arranged neatly.

I’ll list them by column:
1. Nalgene,  UberLarabar x2, Larabar x2 travel dopp kit.
2. Headphones in a tangled mess, iPod touch, headphone splitter, iPod charger, Pens, Sleep-mask with earplugs.
3. Passport wallet, sunglasses, zip lock bags.
4. GQ, Runner’s World (Running Times could not be found… what’s up with that, Battle Creek?), Backpack.
Not shown: long-sleeved sweatshirt.

It all fit pretty well. It was light enough to walk around Frankfurt with and small enough to easily stow underneath the seat. A few items I consider must-haves if you’re flying overnight: sleep-mask, earplugs, chamomille tea & and a pillow. Entertainment is secondary on a flight you need to sleep on. You want to limit your exposure to light/noise as much as possible to get your body to sleep, so the mask and earplugs are worthwhile investments. Chamomille tea packs fit easily in your dopp kit and flight attendants gladly bring you piping hot water. When you wake up, you can clean up with the facial wipes and it’s almost like you got a semi-decent nights sleep.

Here’s my carry-on:

must improve photography skills…

The focus for my carry-on was two-fold: clothes and food. I needed a change of clothes for Frankfurt (middle column), a change of clothes for the flight to Kuwait (right column – no shorts!) and some PJ’s that were easy to access when we got to Kuwait (left column). God Bless Sperry’s.

In the upper-right hand corner you’ll notice some food. Ritz makes these amazing cracker sandwiches we just discovered and are a handy snack for planes and German streets. Next is a cup of soup, which is something I’ll pack for every single flight I’m ever on ever again. It’s amazing to be able to ask for hot water and make something to eat if you’re on any length or flight over 3 hours where they don’t feed you. Do this next time, people around you will be jealous. Finishing out our stowed-away snacks was a can of cashews. Salty goodness.

Humid or dry? Just plain HOT!

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Yesterday on our walk to work (more info about our apartment, school and daily life soon) we were quite shocked when we walked outside. Although it had been humid on Tuesday, we were not prepared for yesterday! When I looked online at the weather when we got to school (about 8am) it said it was 88°, felt like 99° with the humidity at 70%!!! Every time we walked outside my glasses steamed up. Whether you were in the shade or the sun, it didn’t matter…you were instantly sweating profusely. Luckily today on my walk to work at 10am (today is our “Saturday” so I came to use the internet) the humidity had dropped considerably. The temperature was 106°, felt like 101° with the humidity at 13%. We’ve heard that anything about 20% is almost unheard of and that it usually gets humid during the ‘season’ changes. So hopefully that means it’ll be getting ‘cooler’ here soon! We’re extremely excited for the days when the lows are in the 50s and the highs are in the 80s 🙂

We’ve also been trying to get used to talking about temperature using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. The easiest conversion we’ve learned is Celsius times 2 plus 30 (or Fahrenheit minus 30 divided by 2). It usually gives you a rough estimate within 5°. So currently at 11am, it’s 43°, feels like 41° with a humidity of 11%. Today you don’t really want to be in the sun for too long, but it’s not bad at all when you’re in the shade.

For all of you who hate the heat…don’t worry, you can still come visit us when it’s beautiful between October and April 🙂

Update: We walked to get some soup and bread for lunch. Even though the humidity went down to 6%, it was still 47°. During the 30 minutes of walking/waiting, our clothes became quite soaked with sweat. Something we have quickly realized throughout the 7 days that we’ve been here…laundry & showers will be occurring much more often than before we came 🙂

The Plane

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Jeff has a post about packing to come soon! He’ll show some pictures of his bags & carry-on and my bags. Plus he’ll tell you about why we packed what we did and how much luggage we brought to Kuwait.

Right now I’d like to tell you about the plane ride(s). My parents and my sister took us to the airport in Detroit. We had some traffic on the way and arrived about 4:30pm for a 7:10pm departure. We had some tearful goodbyes and then headed to check our bags. We ended up not having to pay a single cent to check our bags! Even though we would have been reimbursed sometime in September, we were still incredibly grateful! Jeff can tell you all about his theory of using people’s names to get better customer service 😉

We were a little hungry so we had nachos at one of the airport restaurants. I also splurged and bought a $10 glass of wine. Gotta do what ya gotta do when you’re moving to a dry country (more on that to come in subsequent posts too)! We sat for a few minutes at our gate and were called up to start boarding. We flew Lufthansa (arranged by our school – AIS) and were very happy from start to finish with their customer service, timeliness…well everything! I did realize that I forgot my Nalgene in my parents car and the compression sleeves for my calves in my checked baggage 😦

Jeff and I’s goal was to sleep as much as possible on the first flight to Frankfurt. We stayed awake for dinner and (of course) drinks. The wine was free and the flight attendants were walking down the aisles with open bottles offering more! They did always insist that you drink water though 😉 After a glass of wine, we settled in for dinner…

We were very surprised at the quality of the meal! Real silverware!! The pasta was only okay, but everything else more than made up for it. Before and during dinner we also watched movies (we had personal TVs with a variety of ‘on-demand’ movies, shows, music, etc. and free headphones were provided)…Jeff and I both enjoyed Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. I also watched Mirror, Mirror (quite good!) while Jeff watched The Avengers. After dinner we asked for hot water and used the teabags we brought with us (Chamomile). Before attempting to sleep, we each took 3mg of Melatonin and situated our eye masks and ear plugs.

With the help of blankets and pillows provided by Lufthansa, we each got 4-5 hours of sleep and were surprised when we took our masks off and the lights were on! We had another delicious meal for breakfast along with some peppermint tea that we brought along.

We landed in Frankfurt early (just before 9am) and explored for the day (blog post with pictures coming soon to a blog near you!). Our second flight was slightly longer than one might think…we left Frankfurt just before 5pm and arrived in Kuwait just after 11pm. Germany is 6 hours ahead of the US, Kuwait is currently 7 (we don’t observe daylight savings). See the timezone map here!

We were quite hungry on the flight to Kuwait and we weren’t exactly sure what the meal plan was. So we pulled out our healthy soup in a cup (that my mom made a last minute trip to Meijer to get for us) and asked for hot water. It was better than expected 🙂

Dinner was, in fact, served on our plane but by the time they got to the back only the lamb option was left. We decided to be adventurous and tried it…amazing!

Although we watched several movies, we also brought lots of magazines, books and playing cards to keep us busy while we waited in airports and sat on planes. The Frankfurt airport had several international newspapers and Jeff attempted the crossword…but quickly found it harder than the Wall Street Journal! During the second flight, I watched Cider House Rules and several TV shows while Jeff re-watched The Hunger Games. It was so nice to be able to decide what we wanted to watch and when we wanted to watch it! The views flying into Kuwait at night were beautiful!

We were on the plane from Frankfurt with the majority of the new staff. The activities director (a returning teacher) came around to each of us and answered questions and gave us instructions for what to do when we landed. Shortly before arriving in Kuwait, the flight attendants came around with after-dinner drinks. Who would give up a chance for free alcohol!? Our last drink for who knows how long was Baileys 🙂

Everyone from AIS gathered outside the plane upon landing and headed through passport control together. It felt great to finally be here after ~24 hours of traveling! After getting our bags (took forever) we had to put them through a scanner in case we were trying to bring in any alcohol (have we mentioned Kuwait is a dry country…?). The rest is history! No but really we hope to have more posts soon about what life has been like since we stepped out of the airport!

Although we won’t always respond in a timely manner, please don’t hesitate to contact us through email, facebook, etc. Hopefully we can even skype/facetime soon and see some of your lovely faces! Love to all!

Some Entertainment

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Hello all! We’ve had a GREAT few days of orientation (we have no idea what day it is or how long we’ve been here…our internal clocks are all messed up!)! We meet all of the new teachers and are pretty excited to get to know them even better (definitely some potential friends). Today was our first day of ‘real’ school with the entire staff. It was a little overwhelming but good to see how happy returning staff was to see each other. I (Lissa) agreed yesterday to temporarily teach 3 classes of French while they are looking for a new teacher (could be before school starts on September 4, could be through the first semester). Today we found out a lot of information about the iPad deployment and had quality time to meet with our colleague to start creating a job description and united front. We have lots of ideas for blog posts, but very limited access to the internet. We’ve also been kept busy, busy, busy the entire time we’ve been here (only minutes a day when we’re not occupied). Today starts a more ‘normal’ life & schedule and we’ll be ready to get our civil IDs and internet in the next couple of months.

While you are anxiously awaiting to hear more about our lives here…we were shown 2 videos during our orientation that we thought you’d enjoy. The first one is a brief history of Kuwait through a children’s performance – it is in Arabic and the chorus is (basically) “I love Kuwait” (love the chubby-face kid!). The second is a flash mob that occurred at one of the malls here (we’ve been there twice…nicer than any mall I’ve been to in the US!).

We made it!

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Hi all! We made it to Kuwait! We are safe (maybe not so sound of mind). By the time we go to bed tonight we will have slept about 8 hours in 56 hours. We got to take a day trip to in Frankfurt and today we’re doing orientation stuff at our school. We’re still not really sure exactly what our jobs entail, but we’re excited and going with the flow. We’ll be trying to get online once a day (Insha Allāh) but only Jeff currently has access to his email…so don’t worry about us if we don’t get back to you right away 🙂

How did you get the job?

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We’ve been asked this a hundred times if we’ve been asked this once. After the initial shock wears off and people realize we aren’t joking when we say we’re moving to Kuwait, they always want to know how we got the job. Well, here’s a (rather lengthy) excerpt from an e-mail I sent to a former co-worker that’s also interested in doing what we’re doing.

Lissa and I used a 3rd party service called  Search Associates that specializes in matching International school openings with credible candidates. We had a fantastic experience and would recommend them to anybody interested in going abroad. You sign up individually and that gives you access to their database and also grants you entry to one job fair. You set up a profile that is pretty specific and every day Search Associates will alert you to any new jobs that have been posted in your field. Additionally, schools that have signed up through Search Associates will be able to see your profile and resume so they could potentially contact you without a job being open. I can’t remember if you pay by the year or not (as opposed to a 1-time fee), but the longer ahead of time you sign up the more you’ll get for your money.
 
Lissa and I signed up in late November-ish. In retrospect, that was pretty late. Based on our late entry into the game, we were limited in which job fair we could go to. We quickly decided on San Francisco (which took place in February) because the only other option was Toronto. If given the choice between SF and Toronto in February, it’s a no brainer 🙂 Once we had decided that, we spent our time combing through the jobs that came to us via the daily emails. With 2 weeks before the job fair, the American International School of Morocco contacted me and eventually offered me a job before the fair even started. Had we not bought tickets already, we’d be headed to Africa this August instead of the Middle East. This goes to show that you don’t NEED to go to a job fair to get a job, though I would say that our situation was not normal.
 
We went to San Francisco with little idea what to expect and were pretty surprised. Having never done it, I would compare it to speed dating. The job fair takes place over 3 days (fri-sun). You show up Friday morning and sign in. You go through some “training” in how the fair will run, etiquette, rules and some other housekeeping type stuff. In one of the conference rooms there are jobs posted all over the walls with butcher paper. It will have the country name, school name and the opening. You can go in that room whenever you want and check to see what’s open, what’s been filled, etc. The rest of the day Friday is spent going to 30 minute presentations on schools you’re interested in. It’s nice to have two of you because you can split up and cover more info. Friday night you go to a giant ballroom and sign up for interviews on Saturday/Sunday with the individual schools. It’s pretty intense, but hopefully by that time you have an idea on who you want to talk to so you can go straight to them. While all of this is going on, you have a “mailbox,” as does each school. Schools can contact you via your mailbox and ask to interview with them. You can reply to them via mailbox and also send them thank you’s after you interview. It’s oldschool but I can’t begin to explain the excitement when you open up your mailbox and see a letter waiting for you 🙂
 
Saturday you start your interviews. If you don’t have any you can spend your time researching schools, writing thank you’s, checking your mailbox, networking, etc. If you get a job offer, you have 24-48hrs to respond. It’s a very pressured situation and will require you to have your stuff figured out beforehand. If you’re lucky enough to get multiple job offers, it’s even harder. Saturday night you have a social. There is food, drinks and lots of networking opportuinities. People get job offers at the social. Don’t miss it.
 
A few insights and tips:
– Any IB experience will help you immensely. LOTS of PYP and MYP coordinator positions were open when we went.
– Kids can be hit or miss. Some really enjoy the family atmosphere. Others see it as an unneccessary expense.
– Work on your resumes. We re-designed ours so they would stand out and had multiple people identify us as “that couple with the resumes.” I’m positive it gave us a leg up on getting noticed.
– Do your research, do your research, do your research. It will prove to be invaluable.

In a nutshell, that’s what we went through while we were there. It was a maddening but worthwhile time, one I will gladly go through again should the need arise. I’ve probably left a good bit out that I can’t remember off-hand, so if you’ve got questions, please let us know 🙂

Want to send us cool stuff? ;)

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9 days!! whoa!

Just in case you want to be super awesome and send us anything while we’re in Kuwait, we have some addresses for you. The mailing address is for normal mail (letters) and the courier address is for packages (<3).

Click here. Hover over ‘Contact us’ at the bottom of the menu. Click ‘contact address.’ Voila!