Category Archives: Travel

Sports at an international school

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**Warning: I don’t have the luxury of coherent thought today. The following is what I call a braindump; when I just turn over the bin in my head all of these thoughts are in and they come tumbling out in whatever order they please.**

I had never really thought about what school sports might be like for international schools. Having been in public school for grades K-12 and then again as a teacher/coach afterwards, it just never really crossed my mind.

It’s super cool.

Our school is hosting an ISAC (International Schools Activities Conference) volleyball tournament this weekend. Teams from all over the region have flown(!) here to compete. We have schools from Jordan, UAE, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The halls are full of students that don’t go here and it’s great.

Once they get here (more on that later), students from our school host athletes from other schools and teachers host coaches. Just think about that. Would it ever happen that way in the states? I have a hard time imagining it would, but that’s part of what makes our time here so amazing – we’re experiencing things we never would have in the US.

We’re hosting a coach from AIS Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). He’s Canadian, has keys to our apartment, and will sleep in the room next to us the next few nights. We met him last night around 9pm. We are required to provide breakfast for him every morning, a clean bed to sleep in and a bathroom/shower for him to use. When it comes time for his school to host a tournament, he’ll do the same thing for someone else. Did I mention that he brought us chocolate from Bahrain?

At the risk of sounding sappy and melodramatic, it’s fun to continue experiencing humanity here. The trust and kinship you acquire abroad seems more potent than back home. I’ve got several theories for this, the simplest of which is “we’re all in the same boat.” In the same way that hostages and shipwrecked sailors bond due to their circumstance, it seems so do international teachers.

Now that we’ve got the philosophical meanderings out of the way, I can get back to fascinating details.

When you try out for a school sport, you assume the responsibility of covering travel costs to various tournaments. The girls volleyball team for example, is expected to pay 135KD per person for their trip to Amman, Jordan later this month. The girls know ahead of time that if they can’t travel, they likely won’t be put on the team. This may strike Americans as “unfair,” but it’s the truth of being somewhat isolated when it comes to competition. We are spoiled in the states to have so many schools geographically close by. It makes scheduling incredibly cheap and easy. This cost makes the expectation of hosting somewhat understandable. When our students travel for tournaments, they will be hosted by families at those schools. If they’re forking over close to $500 USD to travel, it’s nice to know you’ve got free accommodations when you get there.

Other teams travel to various places and locales including Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Lebanon, Holland, and Qatar. They’ll play teams from all over the world at these tournaments and they’ll make connections with other kids and families half a world away. They have activities planned for them while they are here and are kept busy with the hospitality of the host school. On our side, students are largely responsible for organizing most of the logistics as part of an IB programme project. What a great learning experience.

/endbraindump

 

Update: We attended a couple volleyball games during the last day of competition. We were completely blown away at how much school spirit the students had! We are used to large public schools with varying levels of school spirit. We expected the atmosphere here to be much calmer (students don’t live as close to school here as they do in the US and many don’t drive themselves). Quite the contrary! TONS of AIS students showed up to support the AIS girls in the finals (we had to leave before the boys’ final game). The students organized cheers and even brought a drum set! It was a great atmosphere and we were completely impressed with how many students showed up to support!

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

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.

Day Trip in Frankfurt

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Did you read our post about the flights from Detroit to Frankfurt and Frankfurt to Kuwait? If not and you’re interested, you can do that here 🙂

Since we don’t have internet at our apartment yet and we’ve been extremely busy until today, we headed into school today. We didn’t set an alarm and aren’t doing any real work at school. Just getting caught up with email, blogging, etc. Happy first weekend here to us! We’ll add a few pictures to the blog, but we’ll put all of the pictures we took in Frankfurt up online.

Our layover in Frankfurt was scheduled to be just under 8 hours…so we decided to head into the city to beat jet-lag instead of sitting in the airport staring at each other. Our bags were checked all the way through to Kuwait, so we didn’t have to worry about them. Once we got off the plane, we headed through customs (got our passports stamped!) and then inquired about storing our carry-on bags. It was incredibly easy! There was a small place near the exit that held our bags for up to 24 hours for  7 euros (€) per bag. It was a little steep, but worth it for us! When then headed downstairs to the Regionalbahnhof. We couldn’t get the machines to agree with our credit cards, so we went to the counter and bought all-day tickets to get into the city (it was cheaper than buying 4 one-way tickets).

By a friend’s recommendation, we got off at Hauptwache. Before we left Michigan, I had printed off a small map of the area around Hauptwache. We were also told to check out Paulskirche and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. We wandered around for a while with no real aim (we took lots of pictures, went into a few stores…and even saw a dog chillin’ on the floor of H&M). I loved the dichotomy between the old and new. Then we found our way back to Hauptwache so we could actually see the square!

When we’d come up from the train, it had been at our backs and we’d missed it 🙂 In our wanderings we also found a street with market vendors all along it.

We went in search of Paulskirche (free and really interesting historical info)…

…and the stock exchange. The exchange ended up being right where the market was!

We chose one of the food stands and enjoyed!

We had the Rhoner bratwurst, the Kammsteak and the Apfelwein (not exactly what we expected but still worth the try). While we were eating on the benches/tables to the right of the stand, a German business man next to Jeff (and across from me) dropped something on his shirt and stained it. I offered up my Tide-To-Go stick and taught him how to use it 🙂 We love finding places that the locals go and this market was the perfect place! Of course we had to have some dessert too! Although we weren’t in France, we still opted for a Nutella crepe 🙂

We said good-bye to Frankfurt and headed back to the airport giving ourselves plenty of time to pick up our carry-on bags, go through security and find our gate. It was extremely easy and we’re really glad we did it! We’re looking forward to when we have time to take a 2 week layover in Frankfurt and enjoy a little more of Europe 🙂

More info on our actual lives in Kuwait coming soon!