Tag Archives: weather

An epic day of thunderstorms

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We don’t post much. I’m going to blame it on the fact that we’re too busy living & enjoying life. We had a wonderful summer – visited France with my grandpa and then soaked up family & friend time in the US. Since we arrived in August, we’ve been to Bahrain for Eid and Sri Lanka 2 weeks ago for a spur of the moment trip (seriously, we booked it 1 week before we went #risktakers).

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This morning I woke up at 4:40am to some crazy sounds. And then realized it was lightning. I was going to go back to bed but was mesmerized for 2 hours by the storms. Turns out watching from the 15th floor is pretty dang great. {This is probably only the 2nd time we’ve had thunderstorms like this in our 3+ years here.} 99% of the time our radar is completely clear. Not last week!

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Kuwait when it rains is a lot like South Carolina when it snows – chaos. To be fair the flooding in other areas was significant. However it has been difficult to hear people talking about the flooding here after the extreme damage that happened in South Carolina after an actual hurricane.

We can’t complain about the sound of thunder & rain, a rare occurrence in our lives here.

The ministry ended up cancelling school after many of our staff & students had arrived. School continued with about half of our students present (that might be high). Wednesday night, after we went to bed, the ministry cancelled school for Thursday. This time we had a (very productive) teacher work day. It has continued to rain on and off. Maybe this means we’ll have a green winter!

 

Fall is here (for now)

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We don’t write much. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot to write about. We do. But we’re also pretty busy living such a kick-ass life and enjoying moments that we don’t always have the time to write about it. Among other posts, I want to write about spring break in Oman, June in Iceland, our summer, and Bahrain.

In the meantime I’m going to write about weather (again). I just can’t help it. It’s our daily life. And when it changes it’s a pretty big deal. Yesterday was incredibly windy. And then it was DUSTY. Probably one of the dustiest days we’ve seen since moving here (it hasn’t actually been very dusty in our 2+ years here). I was in a classroom for 30 minutes and when I came out the dust had come. It was gross – all in your mouth and nose and the weather turned orange. It kind of looks like when it’s snowing a super fine light snow in MI. We didn’t take any pictures. But check these out from Kuwait UpToDate:

This morning we woke up and it was still super windy. Then we walked outside. It was GORGEOUS! It was in the low 70s with a cool breeze. I wore fall colors and loved every minute of it. We got back to our apartment and realized it was one of the clearest days we’ve ever seen. And the water was a DEEP blue. And the sunset was beautiful. The weather here is static for so long it’s refreshing to have something a little different.

 

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It’s cold! (weather again)

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I have a whole list of posts that I’ve been meaning to write. Some of them I’m not even sure what I was going to write about. Shoot. We’ve been bad bloggers!

Last time I wrote about how nice the weather was. That was after it rained. I don’t think I did a good job of sharing how crazy the rain was. Now it’s cold (it’s been in the high 30s and low 40s a couple mornings when I’ve gone running!).

our apartment...at 3pm.

our apartment…at 3pm.

The weather is gorgeous (now)!

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It rained a lot this week. There was some pretty serious flooding in Kuwait. All schools were even closed to students on Wednesday so the schools could clean up. But now the weather is GORGEOUS! The outside of the buildings are just a little cleaner and brighter. The air is clear and we can see for miles from our 15th floor apartment. I’m pretty sure we can even see Iran from our kitchen (my phone doesn’t do it justice!).

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We hang out with kids…voluntarily

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Our Friday started out quite foggy again.

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The day also ended quite foggy! Luckily it turned out to be a gorgeous day in between. We don’t really follow the weather here so we don’t know why it has been so crazy (we’ve heard it hasn’t been like this in past years) but it’s foggier by the Gulf so it has to do have something to do with the water being warmer than the air. We’re practically meteorologists!

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I forgot about our dessert on Thursday evening! It was at the Chocolate Bar by Dana’s place. We had dark chocolate fondue…no idea how I forgot about it!

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Friday morning we got up WAY too early for a weekend and headed to a ‘yard’ sale. Abby got a few things for her classroom and Jeff and I picked up a pizza paddle. We also came home with 3 Disney movies! We had about 10 that we wanted to buys but narrowed it down to Fern Gully, Mary Poppins and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Abby and I had a great time reminiscing about our childhood 🙂

After the yard sale I made a breakfast that was ALMOST as good as the Cocoa Room…pumpkin pancakes 🙂

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We did buy the movies and pizza paddle for a reason. After a workout and a chill evening, we voluntarily hung out with 3 cute little girls (ages 4, 6/7, & 9). Even though we don’t really want kids of our own, we do enjoy hanging out with other people’s kids! You can’t call it babysitting when we volunteer to do it, don’t get paid and have fun! The girls played with our kittens, made their own pizza, played with balloons and watched Fern Gully. Pretty sure the 3 adults in the room enjoyed the movie more than the kids!

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Next up…camel races!

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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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.

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 🙂