Busy busy

These past two weeks have been a blur of fasting, teaching, praying, iftars (meals after you break your fast), behavior problems, reading Quran, lesson planning, attending taravee prayers and (a little bit of) sleep. Let me first start off by apologizing for not updating this more regularly but as you can see things have just been a little hectic over here in Hawally.

Alhamdullilah I am having a wonderful Ramadan. Several of the teachers from Fawzia Sultan have invited me over to spend time and have iftar with their families. There was a period of 9 days where I did not eat in my apartment... I would wake up, go to school, come home for a couple hours, get picked up by a co-worker, eat and pray at their mosque and then get dropped off to sleep and do it all over again. MashAllah many of these women are amazing cooks and I have had the opportunity to try many different types of food. Two of the families that I have spent some time with are Syrian so I have tried at least 6 different kinds of kibay (no idea if that is spelled correctly) along with many other delicious meals. I've had Egyptian, Syrian, Arabic and even some Mexican and Chinese dishes throughout the last two weeks of being invited over to people's homes for iftar. It has been really nice having the support and friendship of these teachers and being around their families has helped me not feel quite so lonely.

I think I underestimated how stressful your first year of teaching can be. Add on to that living and teaching in a new country, being away from all of my family and friends, fasting and being given a challenging class to start off with. So far most of my students have been well behaved. We had a nice honeymoon period of one week and then my eighth student came back who completely changed the classroom dynamic. My students are very loud and like to instigate one another. I find myself constantly trying to shhh them and trying to juggle allowing them to share the stories that they so desperately need to tell and moving on to get through our lessons. I've gone through a few days of feeling like a failure and not seeing any progress and wanting to come home. Luckily I have made friends with the school psychologist who has been really supportive and I was pulled into a meeting with the school principal this afternoon to hear that she has been really impressed with my teaching and classroom and wanted me to know that. InshAllah (God willing) things will get easier.

Today we had our Girgian celebration which was really fun. Girgian is similar to Halloween in that children dress up and go around and collect candy. Instead of costumes they wear traditional Kuwaiti dress and sing an Arabic song instead of saying trick or treat. All of the elementary students were given the opportunity to go around and sing and collect candy from the high school students. Students and staff were asked to dress up for the celebration. I have posted pictures so please take a look.. my boys looked so handsome in their dishdashas. Tomorrow night is Open House where I am looking forward to meeting my students' parents. This coming Sunday we are having a school wide iftar at a local resort on the beach. It is a potluck and we are expecting 80-100 people to attend. I am part of the Social Committee at school and am responsible for helping organize and set up for the event. I will do my best to bring my camera to that event as well.

Like I said these past two weeks have been a blur. I feel like I have been on an emotional roller coaster, some days really enjoying it here and others wanting to buy a plane ticket home. I feel very fortunate to have met some wonderful people here in Kuwait who have been kind enough to invite me over and make me feel like I am a part of their families. I am enjoying the food and being less than 2 minutes walking distance away from a mosque and (for the most part) my students :) It is hard to believe that Ramadan is almost half way over. InshAllah I will post again soon.