Saturday, Aug. 23rd - Visit of Muscat and area

We got up early to take a tour of the city and the area, organized by the school. There were about 15 of us, newbies to the area, and it was fun to get to know each other a little bit. A lot of them come from South Africa. The tour was very nice. It is very different than Kuwait. The landscape is basically made up of bare rocky mountains (it makes Sudbury Region look like a tropical forest!), and you have beaches where they meet the Oman Gulf. There are some very nice buildings and properties all over the place, with a 7 star hotel in there somewhere. We all had lunch together then Jacqui and I went to the mall to get Internet for our phones and our computer. Of course, the stupid thing didn’t work when we got back home; we’ll have to go back tomorrow! We unpacked the rest of our stuff, had a very light dinner as we were still full from lunch and our bodies are telling us it’s not time to eat yet, and went to bed very early (before 8pm). We start at school tomorrow; the first week is teachers only. It will be interesting to see what we signed up for!! Stay tuned. 

Friday, August 22nd – The day that wasn’t

This new chapter of our blog starts a little late. As you read along, you will find out why this was. Sorry for the inconvenience; I know a lot of you friends and family are anxiously waiting to hear from us. In a few words, we are fine and loving it. Happy reading!!

Friday, August 22nd – The day that wasn’t

Have you ever felt like a day totally disappeared out of your life? Well, we have. We left Toronto on Thursday, Aug. 21^st at 10:45 pm (after a very nice dinner with Nicolas and Vincent), flew for 13 hours to Abu Dhabi, had a two hour layover and then had an hour flight to Muscat. By the time we landed, got through immigration and customs, met up with people from school that were picking us up, picked up SIM cards for our phones and drove to the apartment, factoring in an 8 hour time difference, it was 1am Saturday morning by the time we got “home”! Friday just didn’t happen!

The “flat”, since we work in a British school, is very nice. It’s about twice the size of what we had last year in Kuwait. We have two bedrooms, both with beds, including a queen size bed in the master bedroom, two and a half bathrooms, a large living room with a real couch, and a small kitchen with lots of cupboard space. It is very nice … looks like a real apartment!

So far, the first impression is good. We have a tour of the city and of the Muscat area planned for tomorrow morning; we are looking forward to that.

Our bedroom, with a queen size bed!!

In our second bedroom - it has furniture

Jacqui's stuff - mine is in the master bedroom!

Living room, with a real couch and chair

and work desk

and a table with four chairs - You might think this isn't much, but it is so much better than what we had last year!!

Thursday, June 12th - Last entry - We're coming home!

Wow! Our year in Kuwait is already over; we are leaving tonight (actually early Friday morning - 1:30 am). There have been ups and downs, but all in all, it was very good. We had a slow start: Jacqui had a tough time adjusting and went back home for a bit. She came back planning on leaving after the Christmas holidays, but I convinced her to stay until now. This decision was a life changer. Had we gone back after the Christmas holidays, or even I had gone back in November when she wasn't feeling to well, none of this would have happened and probably never would have. I'm not sure that we would have signed up again to teach abroad. Our life would have been very different. We are both glad we took the decision that we did. That being said, we are also glad to be coming home for two months. We look forward to seeing, or at least talking to, all of you.

Here's a quick "Mastercard" review of our year in Kuwait.

Number of ... 

- months in Kuwait: Richard 10 / Jacqueline 9

- weeks living apart: 5

- sleepless nights: Richard - a few / Jacqueline - a little more

- people we missed : many

- trips taken: 8 ... Dubai (UAE) twice, Manana (Bahrain), Adu Dhabi (UAE), Beriwala (Sri            Lanka), Arusha (Tanzania), London (UK), Ottawa.

- airlines flown : 9 (Jazeera, Air Arabia, Etihad, Sri Lankan, Ethiopian, Precision Air, British Airways, Lufthansa, Air Canada, )

- countries visited: 6 (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, England, Canada)

- continents visited: 4 (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America)

- different kinds of monies that we still have: 8 (Kuwaiti dinars, UAE dinars, Tanzanian schillings, Sri Lankan Rupees, British Pounds, Euros, USD, CAD)

The whole experience: Priceless

This is the last entry for this blog. It has been a real pleasure writing it; I hope you enjoyed it and were able to have a bit of an idea of what our life in Kuwait, and elsewhere, was like. There are a lot of things I did not write; it will make for better stories to tell. We will start a new chapter in August, but until then, I'm signing off! So long, and hopefully, see you soon!

Monday, June 9th - 48 degrees, and British lingo

48 degrees on Monday afternoon... no need to say more.

From Jacqui, teaching in a British School.
We came to Kuwait to teach; however, we did a lot of learning as well!!!  Besides struggling to understand the accent, there was also lots of vocabulary that I learned while teaching at a British School.

English (British)                                                  English (Canadian)

1.  Foundation Stage                                            Early years 
2.  Reception                                                        Senior Kindergarten 
3.  KG                                                                   Junior Kindergarten 
4.  Sticky chair                                                     Time out chair 
5.  Rubber                                                             Eraser 
6.  Clever                                                              Strong student 
7.  Topic                                                               Theme eg. Jungle, Spring, Farm... 
8.  Inset                                                                 PD day workshop 
9.  Y'all right?                                                       How are you? 
10.  Bin                                                                 Garbage can
11. Rubbish                                                          Garbage, junk
12. Full stop                                             Period at the end of a sentence

 Living in Kuwait 

Here are a few everyday terms that I am guessing we might continue to use from time to time... 
Insha'allah  (God willing...but actually should mean "for sure, maybe, probably not") 
Too much .. it is too much hot, too much cars, 
Backside .... our driver always picks us up "backside" of our building.

Saturday, June 7th - Our last ... everything!

One week to go before we head back to Canada. So basically, everything we do is our last time, or just about. It's our last weekend in Kuwait, our last time at the Palms, our last time in Fahaheel, our last time ... everything, or almost (there will be one more time to special water place!). It's also not my last entry on this blog, as there will be one more before we leave (probably Wednesday June 11th).

Jacqui took a sick day this week; she is so bored at work. There are hardly any kids there anymore and being an ESL teacher without a classroom as such, there isn't much to do. She reads, spends time on the computer, helps out other teachers, but still, filling a day is a challenge! For my part, I finished exams on Thursday and I am still marking and doing report cards; I don't have any problems filling my days!

With the temperatures climbing to the mid 40's, people are using more and more those watering fountains found on every street. Here are a few of them.

Saturday, June 7th, 2 pm. Nice to see it finally warms up as the week goes along!

Water dispensers - they're not all pretty!

Some are more interesting to look at.

Monday, June 2nd - Going for gold!

We are not Olympians, but we did go for gold. Jacqui and I went to the Gold Souk after school on Monday. There are so many little shops, selling just about everything gold you can imagine. We even saw a soother (pacifier) made from gold (not the part that goes in the baby's mouth, but all the rest - what is commonly plastic at home - was made of gold!). We spent a few hours walking around from shop to shop, sometimes going in some of them just to cool off, as it was 44 degrees outside!

Before that, our weekend was nice and relaxing. We had a three day weekend (Thursday to Saturday) where we caught up on our sleep, went to the Palms, and out for dinner a couple of times. We never cooked much all year but now it's even worse, as we do not want to buy food that we will not have time to eat since we'll be leaving in a few days. Jacqui had a full day of tutoring on Saturday, and finished with her last student on Sunday. She really enjoyed tutoring and was glad she didn't have a class as such, as she would not have done it. She finds her days at school pretty boring these days, as there is not much to do anymore as far as working with kids is concerned. She's helping out teachers in various classrooms, trying to keep busy! For myself, we are into exams, so it's basically marking and preparing report cards. Not exciting, but easy work. The week will go by fast, and then we'll be on to our last one!

Thursday, May 29th - Coming home June 13th!!

Tuesday May 27th was my last day of teaching for this year. We started exams on Wednesday; it will go on until June 5th, then one week of busy work and then that's it, done for the year. I'll be done on June 12th! Jacqui's school goes on until the 19th. However, she will finish working on the 12th as well so we can fly back together on the 13th. My flight had been booked by the school last year, and to change the date to wait for Jacqui would be more expensive than her losing a week of salary. That plus the fact that she would not have much to do at school - all the kids will be gone so there isn't much to do when you don't have your own classroom - made the choice easy. We will therefore fly out in the early morning of the 13th to get to Toronto shortly after noon. We are looking forward to spending two months at "home" - wherever that may be!!

Jacqui had a really busy week of tutoring; all kids have tests and exams this week and next, so it's a little bit of panic city for students and parents! A least she gets a bit of a break as Thursday is a religious holiday and we get the day off. It will be the first time that we spend a long weekend in Kuwait, but we just got back from Ottawa last week and are leaving in two weeks, so it's kind of hard to justify going away for this weekend! We are just planning on spending time at the Palms, relaxing and enjoying ourselves. It still weird to thing that we start our weekend when most of our friends back home still have three days of work to do before you get there. Granted, we will have worked two days by the time your weekend is over, but it's still weird anyway. Pretty soon, we'll have the same weekends!