December 2010

Adele's New Haircut - and, waving "Bye Bye" to the USA

Home Again, Home Again....

My apologies for leaving you in the lurch - the blogging urge left me - now I know how you frequent bloggers feel :-)

To bring you up to date... We finally came home!

Adele did great on the plane ride, too. The flight attendants were awesome and got us switched to bulkhead seats. (Those face a wall instead of being behind other seats.) You don't have under-seat storage but the benefits were many - for us at least.

When carrying a baby, a little more space in front of you is very welcome. And in the bulkhead, you have floor space where a sleeping baby can lay down to rest. That's great when you're facing 13 hours of quality time together. On our way over, whenever she slept it was on one of us, so it was a really nice break to be able to put her down for extended periods.

We got to the US, checked into our hotel for about an hour, then headed to C'ville to catch up with family for a few days. Now we are home and settling in.

Now for the bad news - a casualty from our travel appears to be our camera. It struggles and can't seem to open the shutter. I'll work on it, but may not have many new pictures for a while.

Well, that's all for now - thanks for reading!

More Mubarakiya - This place has everything from duct tape to dill!

Mummy helpfully posing so I can take a picture of the outside without attracting too much attention. There are many small restaurants around the square with all their seating outside - I wonder what it's like in the summertime when temps hit 55 degrees c. (that's around 130 f.)

A main hallway

We bought some nice things from this lady - and she charged us less because we weren't locals - sometimes it's a good thing to be from out of town.

Outside - an old street

That front one is full of dill. This man was nice enough to let me take this photo, but I think was a little surprised he was in it!

Many restaurants have tables outside and this houka service will deliver to your table. They were kind enough to allow me to take this photo.

Liberation Tower commemorates when Kuwait was rescued from Sadam by the coalition forces.

So you may have noticed, I really like this place. It's got everything, including the very best people watching outside the mall (Kuwaitis LOVE the mall - I'll share some pics of that soon!)

Canadian Bilingual School

I was very lucky to tour CBS (Canadian Bilingual School) the school my sister-in-law and her husband run. How is it bilingual you wonder? Arabic and English of course. Lots of ESL classes fill out the day for students. Most are fluent in Arabic while their teachers, flown in from Canada, are not. It makes for a very rich experience. I believe most of the academic day is taught in English, with some students going out for additional English (ESL) classes. An arabic teacher comes to teach Arabic in their classrooms, since the Canadian teachers obviously cannot do that.




I am sure there is a lot I missed about the curriculum and structure of the students' day while on our tour as I explored each classroom. Clicking the picture below will take you to the school's website if you'd like to learn more about it or the Canadian curriculum. Can you see the flag silhouetted against the night sky? The little dot is the moon. (Yes, I'd like to learn more about nighttime photography!)

A lot of the classrooms and work resembled those I am familiar with - student work displayed for all to see, small groups and/or rows of desks. It appeared that the teachers chose different classroom layouts for themselves. I was able to see small group spaces, carpet time, and desk time spaces all available.

Students wear nametags - hung here neatly under the VERY clean chalkboard.

Several teachers had this (or similar) display. I liked how everyone starts the day on the happy face, regardless of yesterdays behavior. It's nice to have a clean slate.

This is a KG (Kindergarden) classroom. They are learning shapes, colors and numbers - both in Arabic and English (I think!).

The computer lab had a very nice display about the internet - I would be interested to observe a teacher using it with their students.

The crafts they did in this classroom were really neat. I was thinking this octopus would be an easy one to adapt into a math activity. You could use the dots on the legs to illustrate some concepts - addition, multiplication and division.

A sweet way to teach this shape



There are some differences between a school here in Kuwait and one in the US or Canada of course - space in this small country is at a premium, and of course, grass doesn't grow in the desert. The yellow "mushroom" here is one of many shade-providing cement structures on the play yard. These have benches below them where children can gather to talk or play.

Eventually the school will have two stories instead of one, and house up to 1300 students on this one city block. School days are very structured, hallway order is strictly maintained, and discipline is immediate. In this way many students can be very well educated even when there is not a lot of space to use.

This school, like most in Kuwait, requires their students to wear uniforms. From direct observation of teenage girls, I really do think uniforms are a great way to go. How long does it take a teenager to pick an outfit? An hour? Kids can go from PJs to "out the door" in about 7 minutes. It's such a load off of their minds remove "peer judgement of their clothing" from the long list of concerns one has at this age.

A cute door decoration. All teachers are addicted to things like this, aren't they? :-) This was the only chalk smear I observed in the ENTIRE school. Everything was clean and neat. One very large difference between this school and ones where I have worked is that a team of maids keep it clean for the teachers.

As a reaction to the H1N1 scare, maids disinfect the desks, doorknobs, and surfaces of each classroom daily. That's certainly a service not found overseas. Teachers have a lot of support with those kinds of tasks so they can focus on their true purpose -teaching. I'm sure you teacher folk would appreciate that kind of help in your classrooms.

Here's something not found in the US or Canada - an illustrated reminder guide to the prayer format. There is a temple room where students go for their prayers each day. I think they may have it three times during the schoolday, but am not sure. Remember, Arabic reads right-to-left, so start with the upper right-hand picture, then on the right side of the second line to follow this guide.

The Arabic ABC's. Again, start at the top right.

Minarets visible in the near distance - just outside the school walls.

Day:

Night:

I'm sure there are a thousand things I've missed - many differences and similarities with the models I am familiar with, plus lots of ideas to borrow. The Canadian Curriculum was chosen when they created this school because it is considered one of the top three in the world. If you'd like to read more about it, here is their website.

More soon....Thanks for reading!

xo

b

The Fabric Souk

The entrance to one of several fabric souks. They are in large buildings near Souk El-Mubarakiya.

Looking left and right as we enter -

This is a very large place - fabric is a BIG deal in Kuwait. Lots of people make their own clothing here. Quilting is also apparently very popular. Along the halls we saw many displays of things for sale including trim...



...accessories...

...and of course plenty of fabric.

I didn't take too many pictures because I couldn't avoid getting people in them and it is a little rude to take people's pictures without permission.

I admired a fancy ceiling at this store - maybe I'm silly but I found it quite fantastic.

The fellow at this little shop allowed me to take some photos. He imports handmade things from India and since he is the only one (that we found anyway) he sells them at a premium.

He had a few items of clothing and completed pieces, but mostly he specializes in decorative pieces - you buy a few little things and use them to create or decorate your own piece.

He had a LOT of pretty stuff in this little place.

On my way out of the fabric souk, I noticed these doors. This souk seemed kind of like a aged indoor mall - so in some ways similar to a US shopping location. But the differences from such a place in the US are many

- doors and decor that stands out

- each place appears to be privately owed

- each shop is sooo tiny but totally packed from floor to ceiling.

I wish we'd been able to spend more time wandering through the halls, as each corner brought so many sights it was almost hard to focus your eyes and really SEE. I could have spent an hour in one corner, just gazing in the windows of a few shops.

Now, off to put together that school posting for you!

Wafra (Long Time Coming)

Workers tending the fields.



Babies...


A Greenhouse full of Peppers

It's so big - can you see R. and B. across the room?

More Peppers

Empty Greenhouse. The black hoses are irrigation hoses. They are laid parallel across the whole room. Tied on one end, they have a hole punched into them at the base of each plant. Water pushed in from the open side waters each plant at the roots.

The earth - and it is a pretty damp winter this year.

The greenhouses - each fan blows out - pulling air into the greenhouse from across the room.

The opposite side of the room from the fans has a rope wall descending into a channel of water - the water wicks up the rope and is pulled through the room by the fan to create a moister environment.

Close-up rope

Wafra is only an hour or so from Kuwait City.