Hallowe'en Party and other fun things

A quick update for you. Hopefully you have a chance to see these before they're gone. My friend came to the Hallowe'en Party on Thursday night and took heaps of photos. That was only the last stage of the party, 11:00PM and on.

To see some of the fun, please check out this link:

http://www.brickwalkfineart.com/20051027/index.htm

These pictures will only be up until November 5th, so check them out now. I feel like a salesperson.



Here are a couple photos to entice you.

I am a resident!

Well everyone, I am officially a resident of Kuwait- it says so in my passport. That means I can leave and re-enter the country without trouble. Alas, the trip to Oman for Eid is paid for and a definite go. I am so excited to go and to see the turtles hatch.

This has been a Canadian moment:
Yesterday a fellow Canadian was talking about a lobster fest she had been to in Ontario. A friend of hers had lobster shipped from Nova Scotia that day and until cooking time kept them in a canoe of ice. I had a huge pang of homesickness as she said that. How nice would it be to have a canoe full of ice and frosty beverages? Only in Canada...

Tonight at our apartments, we celebrate fitoor.

Fitoor (has several spellings in English because the Arabic to English translation is phonetic) is the breaking of the fast at sunset during Ramadan.

It's the singles' turn to cook and I will be presenting the fabulous Thai noodle salad that I suspect will become as much a legend here as in Tisdale. Yummy.

Weather report...the temperature has taken a dip down to 20some degrees celsius. This means it is nearly 30 degrees cooler than when we arrived in August. It is so fantastic. It feels like the first day of spring after an oppressively cold winter in Saskatchewan. Finally, the oppressive heat is over. It does actually feel quite cool, as in long sleeve weather. So nice, although the morning swims are a bit cool.

A lesson in Kuwait law: you can be arrested for PDA (public displays of affection) even as subtle as a kiss. But only if it's someone of the opposite gender. People of the same gender hold hands and kiss on the cheek (minds out of the gutter please) all the time. The culture sometimes baffles me.

So friends, I leave you with that and will update you when I have more interesting news to report. Possibly not until after Oman. Please keep writing and commenting. I do miss you and want to know how you're doing and what you are up to.

Namaste.

No business like show business

Greetings all!

After a week of intense rehearsals and performances at KLT, finally I am able to go to bed before 11:00pm again. We had so much fun in our show, and the cast party afterwards was excellent- we watched the video of the performance. Out 'til 3:30am and could have stayed up longer...I was so into the whole experience that I thought I would sign up for the next theatre production. Sadly, after reflecting further on my schedule, I realized that I would have no personal time if I did that. Things get pretty busy with concerts and other preparation and elementary school soccer practice, starting after Eid.

Eid (eed) is the holiday following Ramadan. It is currently scheduled to be five days (November 2-6)in length but may be extended as it apparently often is. Some friends and I have been planning to travel to Oman where we will watch turtles lay eggs one day and return the next day to watch them hatch. But as it goes, we probably will not have our civil IDs by that point, meaning we cannot leave the country. Poo on that. It's only two weeks away.

I have conditioned myself not to become too disappointed when things don't work out, so I am almost content to stay here and hang around with whomever is here, which will apparently be many of us since our Civil IDs are not yet processed. Dinner parties, brunches, walks, shopping trips to the Heritage Souks..okay, I would rather go to Oman where the beaches are more pristine and we could do some camping and see the turtles...but life will go on.

Not much else to update, school is going well and life is good.



Here is a picture from Mad Musicals at KLT- the Beauty School Drop out where the three of us in pink wigs were ravishing do-wop girls.

What's goin' on...

Sorry for the late weekly update. You'd think that having an extra 90 minutes every day would allow me some leisure time yet with Theatre rehearsals and WORK I have been busy and tired. I have managed to swim two mornings this week and drink cappuccino most days (best investment ever).

Some lessons in Arabic and Kuwaiti culture:

Yella: (a very common word here) hurry up, get going, let's go, etc. Example: My friend was waiting for me in her car early in the morning before swimming. The haras (building caretaker) was waiting for me to leave so he could close the gate. "Yella!" he said (half-jokingly).

Wasta: (rhymes with pasta as in paw-sta) influence or power. For example, if you get a speeding ticket but you are a Kuwaiti with some wasta, you can usually get out of the ticket. You can gain wasta by having money, coming from a family with lots of money, or, as we call it in Canada, brown nosing the people that have more wasta.

Haram: forbidden. Example: SHowing your shoulders in public is HARAM.

Diwanyia: (dee-wan-ee-ya) a place where you can sit to have tea and coffee, snack on sweets and smoke shisha (water pipes). Traditionally, a diwanyia is strictly for men, and public diwanyias are still open only to men. The furniture in a Diwanyia is a set of firm cushions on the floor and possibly a little table or two.

KD: the Kuwaiti Dinar, the local currency. Exchange rate is about $3.3US to 1KD and about $3.8CAN Example: A cappuccino at a cafe is about $1.3KD (you do the math- it adds up!).

Fils: the "cents" in the KD. 1000 fils make 1KD. A fresh juice at a cafe is about 750 fils (.750KD). It's always a large glass.

I have hired a maid. I know, a maid, maybe some folks are opposed, but hear me out. It costs about $90 Canadian per month (25 KD) and it's employing someone who needs work. She dusts and mops and cleans the windows weekly. Sounds like something I could do, right? Except that I am away from home about 12 hours a day and I haven't even gotten busy yet. And unless you have been here or some other desert country, you cannot possibly imagine the amount of dust everywhere. My apartment looked pristine when she finished on Thursday. And she also IRONS clothes. Hurray!

I went to a Canadians in Kuwait Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday. It was lacking in both Canadianism and proper Thanksgiving dinner items such as cranberries and pumpkin pie. The dessert was a raspberry mousse in a flan cake. How very Canadian? No matter, but I didn't realize before I committed to going that the dinner was going to cost 10KD- do the math, nearly $40CAN and the definitely did not include wine or any other such HARAM beverages. C'est la vie. The air conditioning in the hotel (The lovely Crowne Plaza) was SOOOOO cold that it was uncomfortable for a long time. Hottest country I've ever been in, yet I must always bring a sweater for indoors.

Today I saw a few clouds in the sky. Very light, small clouds, bows and flows of angel hair, but not enough to block the sun or rain and snow on everyone (catch the Joni Mitchell reference?) but it was the first time I've seen clouds since arriving in Kuwait. The sky is always blue or brown (on windy days and oil refinery smoke days).




The Happy 5th Grade Music teachers: Katie, me and Chad. We are in a traditional looking Diwanyia tent snacking on Arabic goodies the day before Ramadan. A Mardi Gras of sorts. Notice the coffee and tea pots and the skirt I had made here with fabric from Pakistan.

BLING!

Here we are again, another week at school. This Tuesday is the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Please note that this follows the lunar calendar so Ramadan is not a fixed time (sort of like Easter/Lent). Essentially, it is three weeks earlier every year.

Ramadan means that school will start at 9:00am (hurray!) and all classes will be shorter so we still finish at 2:30pm. Since it is a month of fasting for Muslims, nothing is to be consumed during daylight hours in public. Loosely translated, this means no food, water, gum, cigarettes are consumed from sunrise to sunset unless in the privacy of your own home or classroom. There will be classrooms set up at school for non-Muslim students to use for eating lunch during the holy month of Ramadan. When do people eat? Well, between sunset(6:30pm) and sunrise (4:30am) there is feasting, praying and family time. The city becomes a ghost town at the dusk call-to-prayer. Are you wondering what happens if you are caught eating in public? This applies to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Let's say, for example, that you are on the way home from school and you are parched. Instinctively, you take a big swig from your water bottle and suddenly you are pulled over by the police and fined. Or taken to jail. Legally, this is what can happen. More likely that you'd get a fine, bribe the person writing the ticket with a little sum of pocket change(this is called baksheesh) and be on your way. Restaurants that open during daylight hours...well, they just don't open. You can still get groceries from most stores, you just won't see people sampling the almonds, cashews, dates and figs.

The last week has been fairly uneventful. I did teach a yoga class last night in the apartment lobby but people couldn't make it for various reasons. So for you Corner Gas fans, it was a bit like Lacey's Pilates class in Dog River, except I had 3 students. I found it rather funny but nobody else had seen Corner Gas so they didn't get the reference. I'm sure business will pick up.

On the weekend I spent a couple hours at the gold souk with some friends (all girls, of course). I found one lovely turquoise necklace that I cannot stop thinking about. Medium sized turquoise beads around the neck, a bit larger of a neckline (not a choker style) and a large (perhaps 2cm by 3cm recatngle) medieval-looking silver pendant with a few inlaid turquise beads. Not surprisingly, it is very expensive. I am sure I can find a way to justify puchasing it. Although it's not a timeless piece, it is something that (as my friend Jen put it) comes back into style every five years or so. Most things at the gold souk contain too much of the Kuwaiti's favourite element, BLING!, for my liking. Bling is the sparkle in an item, and Kuwaiti (women) are all about the BLING! There should be at least a fine dusting of sparkles (sequins?) on every outfit, if not every article of clothing from shirts to skirts to shoes, even if the shoes are Birkenstocks. So jewellery is the sure fire way to have some BLING! in your wardrobe. If the preceeding did not make sense to you, then you simply haven't spent enought time in Kuwait.

Looking forward to a bit more R&R this month. Except that next week we have extra rehearsals and the performances for KLT. Should be fun, though. I am anticipating getting in some extra swim time during the holy month as well.

Hope everything is good wherever you are. Please consider visiting Kuwait, you really have to see it to believe it. Perhaps more on the fashion next time.