Entry 44 International Day

On March 18th AIS celebrated International Day and it was amazing. I could feel the energy and excitement that was running through the school. There were workshops, booths, assemblies, dances and lots of food. Apparently, the students running the Kuwaiti booth even brought in a baby camel...not sure how I missed that! Here are some pictures for your enjoyment.
Zoe and my dear friend Angie, who is Lebanese Australian.

Zoe, Hudson, and Maguire in front of the Canada booth.

Zoe at the Jordan booth.
Zoe and my student Elio. Elio was in the assembly doing the debkah dance from Lebanon.

Zoe at they Egyptian booth. She is quite excited about our trip to Egypt.

Some of my students at the whole school assembly.

Zoe and her classmates.

The Egypt booth

Angie and I. I wore Lulu Lemon attire for the day! Very Canadian but only Canadians understood the Canadian connection.

The Kuwaiti Booth (minus the camel)

Dancing and Drumming in the tennis courts.

Flora brought Isaac in for a bit to look around.

Entry 43 Limes Anyone??

The Adventures of Jack Lime was officially released in Kuwait on March 5th! We had a very successful party to celebrate the release of Jamie's first book. A HUGE thank you goes out to Kim Lee for coming up with all the creative lime ideas and for making 75 key lime pies! Without her we would have had a few bag of chips and some pop in our apartment. Instead we used the theatre at the school and it became a very classy event. THANK YOU KIM!! Jamie created a power point show with all his favourite dectectives, some quotes from Jack Lime, some reviews and music from the 1920s. We had over 80 guests and we sold 70 books. It was very exciting. We had a party that night as well to celebrate with our close friends. (FYI: date rum hangovers are not cool!) The whole weekend was exhausting but so much fun.


Our friend Nadine, who was in charge of selling the books!
Jamie doing one of two readings. Doesn't he look handsome?!?

Zoe enjoying her third cupcake of the day!

The food table...perrier water with lime, key lime pie, chocolate cupcakes with lime candies on top, and water with lime. YUMMY!

Entry #42 Dust, February Blues, Spray Foam, Desert Trips and Testicles

I have not had a chance to update our blog in almost three months so I will now try and sum up three months in a condescend yet humorous summary.

Dust: As I write this, I am looking out our window and can see the dust in the air. It gives everything an eerie orange hue and you can actually taste it when you sallow. There has been dust storms on and off for two weeks and it makes me miss our rainy Nova Scotia even more. Yes, I miss rain! Please remind me of this statement this summer when I complain bitterly about the rain!

February Blues: Through February I was tired all the time and even went for blood tests to rule out any medical problems. Everything came back fine, so I have self diagnosed myself with homesickness! There are so many things I miss about home, but the element I have been missing most is the familiarity of home. Living in a foreign country is an exercise in frustration and a test of one’s patience. We are still finding out where things are and why things happen the way they do. There is never a moment when your subconscious can just be. I feel like I can never truly relax. So, despite the fact we are in place that is almost always sunny (minus the dust storms), one can suffer from the February blues!

Spray Foam: Once again we were in Kuwait to celebrate Liberation Weekend (see entry #24). Many teachers try and leave for this long weekend to escape the crazy traffic and party goers. We stuck around and, like last year, we went walking along Gulf Road. I took both Isaac and Zoe this year and we had a great time. Not sure where the foam spraying came from but it is a lot of fun and the kids love it. Isaac was a little upset when he got foamed but he liked spraying the cars.

Isaac had trouble pressing down hard enough to get the foam to come out. In this picture he is using all his strength.

The day was a bit windy and dusty.
Desert trips: I am assuming that people can figure out from the title that we headed out to the desert a few more times. The temperature has been awesome here so a few families have gone out to enjoy the nice weather in the desert. Unfortunately, the spot we go has become more popular and we now have to compete with quads, dunebuggies, and fully built compounds for Kuwaiti campers (complete with satellites). The campers here have not heard of cleaning up after themselves so the beautiful desert is completely littered. It really is hard to get my head around people camping and leaving all of their food and garbage rotting in a spot they might return to the following month. We made the best of it and the kids adore climbing up the dunes and sliding down them. The campfire, complete with marshmellows, is a big hit as well.

Our friends Kim and Blair

Marshmellow fingers!

The boys being goofy!

Testicles: If my son wasn’t so cute I would return him (plus I can’t find the receipt!) Isaac had his second surgery this year on March 4th. This time it was for an undescended testicle. We were called into see the doctor on Tuesday at 5:00 pm and were told we would have the surgery the next day! Things move fast here. We quickly arranged our sub plans and headed to the hospital early the next morning. Everything went smoothly with the surgery and he was back in our room within an hour. I was calmer then last time and he was calmer too…not sure which caused what! I took the next day off to keep an eye on him and besides trying to keep him somewhat still he has recovered nicely. In my other entry about Isaac’s adenoid/tonsil surgery I included a cute picture of Isaac showing off his tonsils; I have decided not to include a picture this time…enough said!