first world money, third world mentality

On October 1st, we received a notice from our superintendant telling us that our water heaters would be changed in the next couple of days, and we should lock up our valuables and whatnot in our apartments.

Who knew that "a couple days" would turn into a couple of weeks? Mine was changed today. Yesterday, they came into my apartment to get it started, and moved my fridge across the kitchen. Today, they finished the job, and my fridge was back in its happy location. Now with a large, white cylinder above it, that is my water heater.

Not a bad thing, I do like hot water! It makes my showers feel, you know, bearable.

But the mess the workers left behind! My apartment smelt like sweaty men who hadn't showered in a while (you know, that taxi driver smell), and there was dust PARTOUT. (aka everywhere). I swept up the largest pile of dirt. They left the doors to my washrooms open (including my boy's bathroom...which smells like an outhouse, even after i clean it, because of the drains) and they used my ensuite bathroom! Not only did they use it, but they left the toilet seat up. For the love. Honestly. Is it so difficult to put a lid down? Especially in a girls' apartment?

Needless to say, I spent an hour cleaning when I got home from school. Maybe my apartment needed it. Though I was still a little bitter about it! ;)

Although the water running from the tap is now brown. Mmm...hot chocolate, straight up

worlds apart

Mom just sent me a small reminder. On October 29 of last year...I woke up to this:

This year?

Swimming in October! Today it was 34C in the shade. I love it :) What a difference.

24!

Another year, another birthday :)

Today started ...early. 4:45am early. Enough time to get ready for school and on the bus by 6:15am. Man, I sure didn't miss these early mornings before Ramadan! Christina decorated the door to my classroom, and the 'social committee' dropped off a card and some chocolate. I had 2 classes, which I managed to get through without my students even realizing that it was my birthday, until lunchtime, when I had lunch duty and several girls wished me happy birthday - even students that I don't know! Thanks to Miss Pam, who even showed the girls a picture of me so that they would know to whom to wish happy birthday.

That's why I love my new coworkers and friends. Even the busdriver sang happy birthday on the way home from school this afternoon!

We all watched Grey's Anatomy together this evening, and, half way through, the Peppe's Pizza guy arrived! They'd ordered pizza for all of us...including my pizza...sort of...a 16-alarm-super-spicy-hot pizza instead! But delicious, and it's the thought, and I'll finish eating it tomorrow :) I love my girls.

It's been a great day, I even got to talk to mom on the phone for a few minutes! Very short, next time I'll have to move to a country where the long distance rates aren't so ridiculously high!

So thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday - whether you read this or not - you made my day feel very special :) I hope that 24 is better than 23 and 21 combined! It's already looking up.

back again, back again

It's hard to believe that I'm back in Kuwait. Our trip to Jordan went by so quickly - yet so wonderfully. Of course, not without it's frustrations, or stresses, a few tears and short tempers - but that makes it more interesting ;) We spent our last 2 days at the Marriot Resort in the Jordan Valley, floating in the Dead Sea, and that was just perfect.

I'll upload some pictures later, I'm just waiting for a good time to head to Burger King for fast internet! Our plane landed this morning at 5:20am, and we arrived back at the apartments just before 6:30am. It's now 7:30am and I'm fighting going to bed...I know that might be a little disastrous. Necessary, but disastrous nonetheless. I think I'll do laundry first, and then sleep. I'm still feeling a little energized from the sunshine and the 1 hour nap that I had on the plane! I'm sure I'll crash in a little bit.

The hard part was realizing, when we landed, that we'll be waking up at this time tomorrow to go back to work....

oy!

So I will be spending most of the afternoon and all of my night sleeping in MY bed.

I'll update on our Jordan adventures later, I promise - it was an awesome time and we did soooo much. Amman, Jerash, Kerak, Petra, Dead Sea, Mount Nebo, Medeba, Bethany...my visa and I both got quite the workout!!

But I love the girls I was traveling with, and we had an awesome time hanging out, getting to know each other better and seeing a little bit of the world.

Eid Mubarak!

Happy Eid! We're off school next week, and heading to Jordan. The flight leaves at midnight tonight and we'll be away until October 20! That's one way to make the days fly by.

Today was a good and relatively relaxing day. I let the girls watch movies in French class; French 1 watched a movie on learning French and French 2 watched the Princess Diaries in French. They complained at first, but it had their complete attention for 55 minutes, plus they kept asking questions, like, "why did the subtitle say that? she said something else..." It makes me glad that they were paying attention.

I did give the Economics class a free work period today, seeing as only 5 of them came to class and I didn't feel like actually doing any work. One of my girls is from Ottawa, Canada - it was neat to connect with her a little.

I also met the previous French teacher after school today - that was a little awkward. She said to me, "I hope you got all the stuff I left for you" and i wanted to say, "yeah, thanks for all the plentiful resources" in a sarcastic tone. But I just said yes, being nice and what not. It is working out, and I'm proud of all my girls. They are MY girls. And they are good students. Even when they whine.

It's definitely a challenging year, but I'm having fun (finally!). Once Eid is over, school days will go back to the original 7:30-2:30 format, which is exhausting, but in a way it's better because we can just get more done. And the girls won't have the "But I'm fasting, miss" excuse!

And we can listen to music in class, again. I love subjecting them to my French music.

Well, I'm off to pack! See you in 9 days, with plenty of pictures.

Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am again very blessed to be surrounded my so many fellow Canadians. We couldn't let this holiday pass without a little celebration. So we organized a large Thanksgiving Dinner for the entire building! We had a good turnout - Canadians, Americans, British (among others) and there was still lots of food leftover. Which means...Thanksgiving leftovers! We started eating them tonight, we'll continue eating them tomorrow, and dear Diane is already sick of turkey!

I'm thankful for my new friends and coworkers. We're getting through this together, and having a lot of fun in the meantime.

This is just part of the group, sitting on the floor and in the couches in the lobby, eating our hearts out.

anaa' min Kanada

The letters are starting to make sense :) This is my arabic teacher, talking and writing, believing that we all truly do understand.

It's getting easier. Slowly! It actually says Canada on the board, the second word from the top on the left. Can you see it? You read it from right to left. It starts with an S shape. That's Kah. Jennifer is written above it and Kathryn is below it. It makes us feel both smart and stupid at the same time. That's impressive.

But you can't learn a language in a matter of weeks - and we've decided to take Arabic 1 in November. We have 2 more classes of introductory Arabic, before Eid (the celebration marking the end of Ramadan). We just want to be able to understand our students! The horrible thing is that our students speak Kuwaiti Arabic, which is practically a completely different language than ordinary Arabic...d'oh!