Saturday, November 30th - Doesn't look like December around here!

Things got a little shaky again on Friday night - a 5.7 earthquake in Iran was felt here as well. The building didn't move like last week, but you could still feel it.

Temperatures have warmed up for the weekend, which caused traffic problems by the beach. I went for a walk down towards that area on Friday. The parking lot for the beach was full (it was a beautiful day for the end of November, 28 degrees), so people started parking on the sidewalk and in the first of the 3-lane street. This caused people to stop in the second lane to unload their stuff, meaning that traffic that wanted to get by only had one lane for it. People here are masters of Honking the Horn; you shoud have heard it. New York City doesn't even come close to this place! They honk for everything. Drivers slow down, they honk. A bus picks up someone by the side of the road, they honk. It's even weirder when they stop at what would be equivalent to our corner stores. Since there is no place to park, they stop in the first lane or pull up on the sidewalk, and honk their horns. Someone from the store comes out, takes their order, goes back in to get what they need and brings it back. Obviously, if it takes more than a few seconds, they honk again.

The rest of my weekend was quiet. Waiting for Jaqui to get here on Monday night. It'll be nice to be together again.

Wednesday, November 27th - Tutoring - first we eat, then we work

Since I have a fair amount of time on my hands after work, I started tutoring a grade 10 student in math (a lot of students in Kuwait  hire tutors to help them with their school work). I worked with him on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I go to his place after school; his driver picks us up at school. When we get there, we eat what looks to me like a full meal (he's still a growing boy, I guess). I've had rice everyday, with chicken or beef on top of it, and salads, and desserts. It's all very tasty! The maids (there are two that work solely in the kitchen and two more who take care of the house) bring us food, juice and water; they bring out more rice after 10 - 15 minutes because the other batch got cold. When we are done eating, we go to the other end of the table (it sits 12 people) and start working on math while the maids clean up the end where we ate and bring tea while we work. When we are done, his father brings me back to my apartment. He's a very nice man and fun to talk to.

Weather wise, I guess it's "very cold", according to the kids at school - ya, it was 12 degrees the other morning (got up to low 20's in the afternoon)! I must say that they find 40 - 45 degrees quite comfortable, while we die from heat, so it's all relative. I've even seen a few people wearing ear muffs!

The end of November means that the start of December isn't very far, which means that Jacqui will be back in Kuwait pretty soon (Monday,the 2nd). And yes, I'm looking forward to it! It'll be nice to be a couple again. Just a few more days to go ...

Saturday, November 23rd - The building was swaying back and forth

We finally had kids at school on Thursday. It still made for a pretty easy week - two days off plus one day without kids!

Friday started out  like a lot of uneventful days, but finished quite differently. We felt the aftershocks of two earthquakes that happened north east of Bagdhad, Iraq (5.3 and 5.5 on the Richter scale), which made our building sway back and forth for a few seconds. I had experienced tremors back home, where you feel the vibrations - mostly because we lived in a two storey house - but never felt swaying like this before. I guess living on the 7th floor of a nine floor tower building will do that. It also makes you think : if this thing sways to much and crumbles, ... no more blog I guess. Oh well, for now, we just "ride the wave"!  

Saturday was a beautiful day (I should have worn shorts to go outside). I went for a walk to buy ink cartridges. I wrote a few weeks ago that Jacqui and I had found a mall nearby that was within walking distance. Well, around that mall are 5 other malls - not huge in size but still big enough to be a mall. Two of them are very much like the malls we have at home (they both have 4 floors for your shopping pleasure) while the others seem to have two floors and more local shops. It's kind of bizarre when you have to walk through two malls to finally get to the third one to buy what you need. This could be shopping heaven for some people (I'm not one of them!)

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Wednesday, November 20th - Major rain storm in Kuwait on Monday

Well, who would've thought! We didn't have school on Monday as the governement was closing the roads close to our school for security reasons for the African/Middle East summit. So I stayed home and watched one wicked storm go by. It was windy, raining very hard (the rain was coming down sideways!) and we got lots. I didn't think it could rain this much, in "the desert". I've included a few photos (not mine) to show you a bit of what we had to deal with.
 

 


We had some more rain on Tuesday, which had been declared a National holiday. So I stayed home again. This weather wasn't great if you wanted to venture far away from home! I got a text from my principal at night saying that we had to go to school on Wednesday, but the students would not be there. Again, they are trying to minimize traffic for security reasons and there is water damage to a lot of schools. So I spent that day at school working on two of the three different projects that the school has going and that have to be completed before the Christmas holidays. We had to leave school early (1h15 instead of 2h40) as they were starting to close some roads. Well, we left to late. We ended up having to take a major detour and got home 75 minutes later (normally a 20-25 minute drive). It was however kinda cool to see the security that was around the airport. There were army trunks with machine guns on them, soldiers just about everywhere, ... and traffic, lots of it. It would be like closing, all at the same time, the 401, Airport Road, the 427 around the airport and all the smaller roads close to it as well. It makes for a mess!
Will things be back to normal Thursday? Not sure.Because of the water damage, students might be asked to stay home one more day. We probably won't find out until later tonight (it was past 9 pm last night when we found out that kids wouldn't be there today).

Sunday, November 17th - Start of another weekend!

Gotta love this job. Like everyone, we had our weekend on Friday and Saturday. Going in on Sunday, we already knew that Tuesday had been declared a national holiday, and that the school would be closed. There were also speculations that Monday or Wednesday, or both, would be a holiday as well, because they would close the road leading to school. Well we were told just after lunch that the school would be closed Monday as well. No word yet on whether it will be open on Wednesday or not. I guess we won't find out until Tuesday, sometime. So I had a weekend, worked one day and get another two day off. Kinda works for me! We'll see what happens later on in the week.

Saturday, November 16th - End of my weekend

Another quiet weekend alone in Kuwait. Did some school work and some stuff around the apartment and went out for dinner with friends on Friday. We had parent-teacher interview day at school on Thursday. It was nice to do it during the day as opposed to doing it at night like we normally do back home. It was very much like any other parent-teacher night that I've been to, except for some of the clothing; it's kind of weird to talk to mothers when you only see their eyes. But basically, they're just parents wanting to make sure that their kids are OK and that they're doing the best they can. Despite all the problems that we have at school, it was a very nice day and everyone was very nice!

I'll have another short week this week. Tuesday has been declared a national holiday because of the African Summit that's taking place in Kuwait City. So everybody gets a day off. There are still rumors that our school (and another one nearby) might also get Monday or Wednesday, or both, off for security reasons as the road leading to school (Airport Rd) would be closed to traffic. We should find out tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed!!

Tuesday, November 12th - Not much going on!

It's been a few days since my last post. Not much happening these days. Report cards are done and over with. We have parent-teacher interview on Thursday, all day, which means we don't teach that day. I'm OK with that. And for next week, the rumor of Kuwait hosting the African summit seems to be coming more and more of a reality (it's still not confirmed by anyone) as we are seeing different african country's flags along the highway, close to the airport. Rumor has it that our school might be closed for 2 or 3 days; the country might even declare it a national holiday, so everyone gets time off. Just got to love politics!! We should find out soon!

Wheatherwise, it's cooling off (just like back home - it dropped around 20 degrees from the average high temperatures of mid-summer days); our daily highs are in the mid 20's and it's mid to high teens when we leave in the morning. Mohammed (our building supervisor) can be seen washing cars outside the building in the morning wearing his thick fall jacket and a tuque. He is however the exception, as most people now wear long sleeves, and a light jacket (canadians and irishmen are still wearing short sleeve shirts, as the temperature is now quite comfortable!)

On the lighter side, you would think yoga is good for relaxation. Well maybe not in Kuwait. My principal decided last night to go to a yoga class; she had done yoga in Toronto for years, but never went to this place in Kuwait. She had all the info from their website, so she took a cab to get there. Getting to the neighbourhood where the class was offered was easy (we are getting very familiar with the various neighbourhoods and blocks); however, finding the specific place is a different story. The cab driver got lost, called a bunch of other drivers to find out where this place was, got answers from everyone, but never found the place (no street names, no house numbers is the norm here). After 45 minutes of driving around, she decided to come back, really pissed off. So much for relaxation!

Enjoy your week.

Friday, November 8th - Morning blog

Another week gone by. It was kind of nice to get a day off in the middle of it. On Tuesday, I went for a nice long walk along the seaside; it was beautiful. I sat on a bench for a while and looked at the gulf, taking time to reflect on this whole situation, sitting in the sun at 28 degrees, and thinking of all of you back home, probably scraping the frost from your windshields! I must admit I don't miss that part! My week was quiet. We were supposed to have a presentation at school on Thursday morning, only to find out  about 30 minutes before the scheduled time that it was cancelled. I should have expected it; not much here goes according to plan!

My weekend looks pretty busy (sic) : laundry, grocery shopping and cleaning the apartment. Wow, almost looking forward to going back to work on Sunday! (not).

Bad news on the home front. Julie rear-ended a car on Wednesday in Ottawa. Everyone is fine (no injuries), the other car doesn't seem to have too much damage on it but the Honda seems to have taken a beating (front bumper, hood, front fender, radiator, AC?, and maybe more). As I write this, we are still waiting for the adjuster to look at it. Jacqui was planning on going to Ottawa for the weekend, but finally decided to go on Wednesday instead. She'll spent quality time with Julie. They were planning on having dinner with friends on Thursday night. They'll have fun.

Monday, November 4th - Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone! Tomorrow is the islamic New Year. We get a day off from school! On our school calendar, the holiday was scheduled for today, Monday. Two to three weeks ago, there were rumors that we might get the Sunday off as well to make it a 4 day weekend (that would have been really nice). But a few days later, the rumor was now that the holiday would be on Thursday the 7th, giving us a 3 day weekend. Then finally last week, the government decided that the holiday would be on Tuesday, dead smack in the middle of the work week. However, this wasn't really official until Sunday, at least that's when they guaranteed us that we wouldn't work on Tuesday. I find it amazing that they can change the date just like that. We are certainly not used to that! The arabic staff at school treated us to a nice lunch after school to celebrate the New Year. They brought something that looked a bit like pita bread stuffed with chicken and cheese, or veggies, or fish. It was really good. A few of our arabic staff members were saying that they use this day to gather with family and reminisce about the past year and talk about their faith. They supposedly eat a lot as well!

Meanwhile, back in Canada, it's only November 4th. Jacqui did supply teaching today at a school close to our old neighbourhood. She had gone to Chatham to see her mom on the weekend. She seems to feel a bit better (she's sleeping better) even though she finds it hard that we're apart from each other. We skype everyday. She's planning on going to Ottawa to see Julie this coming weekend. I'm sure they'll have a good weekend.

Saturday, November 2nd - The weekend - Fall has started

It's our first weekend apart, separated by the Atlantic Ocean and some land on each side. Who would've thought? The rest of my week was good. I went out for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday night. Friday was a quiet day, worked on report cards most of the day. Did groceries and ironing on Saturday; real exciting day!

Jacqui saw her doctor on Thursday, did supply teaching on Friday and will continue this coming Monday. She's planning on going to see her mom in Chatham sometime this weekend but I don't know which day since I haven't talked to her yet today (it's still pretty early for people back home!) But I know she's glad to be back in Canada.

Fall has started in Kuwait. Temperatures are now in the mid 20's for our daily highs and in the 15-18 range at night and in the morning. We now get cloudy skies; there's even a 40% chance of thunderstorm for tonight. I still haven't seen rain though. I turn off the AC once in a while in the apartment - you can't let it get too cold as there is almost no way except outside heat to warm it up. There is no furnace in the building but we do have an electric space heater. Not really looking forward to using that, but I guess that it will have to come at one point.

Enjoy your weekend. Mine is almost over.