our Christmas break in 16 seconds

The OneSecondEverday app is back, y'all!

Did you see what we did there with the "Bonjour Paris"? No?  Go back and watch it again.

More on our adventures in France coming soon.

Vicariously yours,

A day at the races...camel races

On December 14, I had the opportunity to experience a very Arab event: camel races. A local cultural center hosted a day and bussed a comically large number of expats out to the Kuwaiti Camel Racing Association camel track. I am so glad I got the chance to finally figure out where the track is, and I definitely plan to go back on my own without all the gobsmacked North Americans.

Criticism aside, the day was very entertaining!

You approach the grandstands out in the middle of the desert and enter a very swanky lounge type room with a wall of windows. An announcer calls the race, which has started 6 kilometers away and is in progress as we enter the complex. His feverish cadence, even though you have no idea what he's saying, builds the excitement as the camels make their way to the finish line.

Assumed these were the owners/investors of the racing camels. We called it the Old Boys Club. 

The racing complex from the front.

The TV screens that showed the progress of the race as the camels approached.

Now, when you google "camel races," you get images from Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia where they still have human jockeys. From what I've been told, they used to have small boys as the jockeys at the camel races in Kuwait, but it became a child safety issue so now they use robots here.

One of the last of the pack coming in for his race.  See the little red box looking thing behind his hump? It's a little robot jockey that has a little whip any everything! It's even dressed like a horse jockey!

 They also had camels for the tourists to enjoy for rides and photo opportunities.

I assume they had her hobbled so that she wouldn't freak out and trample any of the tourists surrounding her. Eventually they took off the hobble and led her home.

Over all it was a really cool experience. I'm looking forward to going back for a solo adventure.

Vicariously yours,

A night out in Kuwait

It all started with a genuine Kuwaiti dinner.

The Mister and our friends went out to a local restaurant for a sampling to the national dish of Kuwait: Machbouse. It's very similar to the Saudi national dish (Kebsa) in that it is a meat-and-rice dish.

One difference is the little stack of lentils, raisins, and cardamom you can see next to the chicken. Our Kuwaiti friend taught us the authentic way of eating machbouse. You gotta dig in there and eat it with your hands.

I don't think I quite mastered the technique, but it was a really good time getting my hands messy and watching as the Mister tried to keep the rice out of his beard.

After dinner we went to a local school to watch a British Christmas theater tradition: the Pantomime.

No, it's wasn't a full-length feature show done entirely silently (though that would have been interesting to see attempted). No, a pantomime is a British theater term for a holiday comedy show that features a woman playing the lead boy and a man playing the lead female with lots of topical humor and innuendo in between.

It was a very cultural experience. British theater with a middle-eastern audience. We spent a few of the scenes looking at the back of fellow audience members' heads and watched in horror as children ran across the stage and played with the keyboard during intermission.

Theater audiences in this region have a ways to go, but I'm glad we get performance opportunities like this!

Then I came home to get a little FaceTime with my sweet niece on her one-month birthday.

Vicariously yours,

So...this is a thing...

This Mister and I have had fresh-from-the-camel camel milk before. It was pretty gross. So you can understand why my initial reaction to seeing bottled camel milk in our local grocery store. It's probably not a fair reaction. Afterall, the camel milk we drank was totally un-homogenized, un-pasteurized...it was probably a miracle that we didn't get some sort of virus or pathogen from the milk.

Fresh milk. That's no strange, right? Camelicious. Creative name. Fresh is generally a good thing when you're referring to dairy products...

But if you look reeeally closely at the date flavored camel milk, you see that THIS variety is pasteurized. Which begs the question: does that mean the fresh milk is not pasteurized?!

Yikes.

Vicariously yours,

It rained a little bit.

The kids have been all abuzz about this storm all week long. They were already stoked because we were surprised with a day off today (Tuesday) because the government wanted to relieve traffic for the Arab-African Summit that is in town.

"Miss! We're not coming to school tomorrow, either!" they said on Sunday.

"...no, just Tuesday is off. Tomorrow is Monday, so we have school."

"But it is going to rain! So we won't come to school."

Anywhere else in the world, that logic would make no sense. But here, the hard ground of the desert doesn't absorb the rain as quickly as less arid places. And the people have zero clue as to how to drive in the rain. So it's not unheard of for school to be called on account of rain. The school where the Mister and I used to teach once called it on account of forecasted rain (and according to my facebook feed, they did it again this week!).

So yesterday was CRAZY because...well, I assumed the barometric pressure was working some kind of voo doo on my kids. Plus they were so excited any time a single drop feel from the sky.

At almost exactly dismissal time, the skies opened up. Just in time for the afternoon traffic.




To say the local population responded to the event safely and maturely isn't exactly accurate. Here is a link to video of Kuwaitis being dragged behind an SUV riding an inner tube. There are also photos of the flash flooding that popped up all over the country. The drainage system in this country just can't handle a downpour like the one we had yesterday, even though it only lasted about 45 minutes.

One cool thing I noticed about thunderstorms here is how different the lightening looks. It's going to sound stupid, but the lightening looks more electrical here. Like the white-blue spark you get when you blow up your adaptor/converter after it's had too much voltage (maybe that's too expat-specific of an illustration, but it's the best I've got). Also, the lightening seems shorter lived. You know how at home you'll see a solid white line of lightening that will flash a few times? It's quick, but you can definitely discern it from the surrounding clouds. Here, it's more like a camera flash. Really really fast and maybe just a teeny part of an electrical arc, but no long spindly bolt that connects the ground to the clouds. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, but that's reserved for another kind of blog.

Vicariously yours,

I've got good news and bad news...

I knew this school year was going to be a rough one emotionally when we boarded the plane to come back to Kuwait in August. My sister was due to deliver her first baby in November and I was going to be missing all the fun and bonding that comes with such a huge family event. I was not prepared to be handed the emotional roller coaster we've been dealt since we got back, including the crazy day we had yesterday.

Within 24 hours, the hubs and I lost a grandfather and gained a niece. 

Tyler's Grandaddy had just been admitted to the hospital two days before and we were warned that it didn't look good. We hadn't been given any prognosis on how long it would be before Grandaddy passed, so it was very sad to get The Call at 1am on Thursday morning. 

Grandaddy was our family's All American Hero. He and his twin brother flew missions in World War II and Grandaddy went back for more when his country called during the Korean War. He loved his wife with a devotion that has always brought tears to my eyes. He aged with a grace that most men could only wish for. His sweet smile and simple pleasure to just be in the company of the people he loved was what I loved most about joining Ty's family for their annual reunions in Alabama each year. He would find himself a comfy chair in the corner and watch with delight as a scene of organized chaos unfolded in front of him. He always put his family first and took delight in watching the people he loved have a great time. He stayed as active as possible, restoring vintage cars as long as he possibly could. I am so happy I got to join his family and hear his sweet stories for as long as I did and I will miss his gentle smile every summer.

Once I was awake at 1am, I texted my sister as I waited for my eyes to get heavy again. Imagine my surprise when she responded and said she was on her way to the hospital! We were called again at 4:30am by Tyler's family and when we told his dad that my sister was in labor he kind of chuckled and said, "Ah, the circle of life."

It was a struggle to drag myself out of bed an hour later to get ready for work. This marks the third family funeral that the Mister and I will miss this year. To say 2013 has been a rough one is an understatement. To add to the guilt I already feel for not being there to comfort my family, I had to deal with the guilt of feeling so delighted with my impending premiere as an Aunt when I should be focusing on letting my husband grieve. I was exhausted, I was sad, I was ecstatic. I was a mess.

So I went in to my principal's office as soon as I got to school. I basically told him sorry-not-sorry for being wildly unprofessional when my sister called on FaceTime to let me be the first to "meet" her baby. I had selfishly requested that my sister call me first so I could see her and the baby before the onslaught of grandparents and well-wishers came into the room. I told my principal that as expats we get very few of these kinds of privileges to be involved in big family events and, dangit, I was going to take advantage.

After I finished my rant he simply said, "Of course! You'll have no argument from me!" I'm so glad to work with such supportive administration. Our principals' understanding in all of our hard times this year has made it such a blessing to work here.

I wavered between highs of joy and lows of sadness all day. Thankfully I didn't have many classes to teach that particular day, so the kids didn't have to watch me break down in front of the class like I did after my aunt Jackie died. During a grade level team meeting, my FaceTime fired up and I was greeted by the face of my very exhausted sister. 

I'm an aunt, y'all! After 9 hours of labor, including 4 hours of pushing, with no pain medicines AT ALL, my badass sister delivered a healthy, beautiful, baby girl. Even though she and her husband were both completely drained, my sister made sure to call me before she went to sleep so I could have a much needed ray of sunshine.

It was blurry and dark, but I was instantly in love. 

Tyler and I are so excited to spoil the crap out of this little angel. She doesn't realize how badly her aunt and uncle needed her arrival that day. She may have been born ahead of her due date, but she was right on time as far as I'm concerned.

Vicariously yours,

...And just because I'm a new aunt and everyone should have the opportunity to oooh and awww at my niece, here are more screen shots of her precious little face. This is how expats meet new family members.

What do a bunch of teachers do with a day off from work?

We get on a boat!

The Ministry of Education declared that we had to take November 5th off in observance of the Islamic New Year, so a group of us decided to rent a yacht to celebrate! A lot of other people must have had the same idea, so we had to drive about an hour south of the city to a marina in Al Khiran so we could meet up with our boat. We sailed out to an island called Om al Namal (the mother of the ant) and tooled around on the lovely waters of the Arabian Gulf.

Here are a few photographic highlights.

We towed our little boat behind us. There wasn't a dock or anything at the island, so one of the boat pilots had to give us a ride to shore.

We commented on how crazy it is that early settlers headed out in hand-powered boats with nothing but this view in front of them with no knowledge that there were islands out there.

Crazy.

We took a little time for a dip.

...and of course had to take a few high dives off the roof of the boat.

Hi, Mister! The water was so nice and blue!

If you didn't know better, you'd think we were in the Caribbean! 

Our vessel for the day.

The Arabian sunset brought the day to a lovely end.

Vicariously yours,