My Girls and My School! :)

Ok, I finally have some pictures of my girls and my school for you to see! Yes, the Girls Campus is a little sketchy looking (the Boy's Campus definitely looks nicer...), but hey, it's 'home' and I like it! It has character. :) I am very blessed to have a classroom on the third floor down the new wing. My classroom looks pretty decent structurally, compared to others on the lower levels, as theirs have been around for a lot longer so are definitely worse for wear.

On with the tour!! This is the front of the school.........the "lovely" sliding glass doors that have a mind of their own. They like to suddenly and VERY quickly close WHILE you're walking through them. My hips have a few bruises to prove it!

These are our two amazing and super sweet security guards. They will quite literally do anything for you including standing out in the middle of traffic to hail a taxi, order food to be delivered for you, and try to convince you that walking to the Boys' Campus is ridiculous. Side Story - I needed to go the Boys' Campus one day and refused to take a taxi seeing as it is maybe a 15 minute walk from the Girls' Campus. They had a point, it was 42 degrees, loads of traffic, I wasn't exactly sure which street it was on and they couldn't understand my requests for a map due to my limited Arabic AND this is a country of no sidewalks.....however, I was dying for some exercise and was determined to simply walk there. They were appalled by my determination (remember this is within a society of people having personal drivers), thought I was crazy and desperately tried to convince me otherwise. I did go and find it without any major incidents, and they never cease to tease me about it daily! Anyways, we are sooooo fortunate to have such great guys on guard! :) They were tickled to have their picture taken and had to make sure they looked tough for the picture! LOL It's funny, because this is one of the only times I have ever seen them without huge grins on their faces! :)

Here are some of our maids taking a well deserved break - they are very shy and turned away just as I was snapping the photo! They do an awesome job and are super sweet as well! :)

The building is designed with open-air architecture due to the lack of rain here! We're talking maybe it will rain 2-3 times a year, if we're lucky! Which it did today for like 2 minutes.....it was exciting! It's funny how much you start to miss everyday things like rain when it simply doesn't happen!

Anyways, the school building is designed so that the first two floors' hallways are open on the side that faces the inner courtyard. The tarp-like covers are sun screens so the elementary girls can play on the playground and in the courtyard during recess without succumbing to heat stroke! LOL This grade 3 class earned some free time so were playing while I was taking pics.

This is Miss Kerry, my next door classroom neighbour.......it's just us two and the mosque room down the new wing. Good thing we've got each other to chat to! LOL

Speaking of mosque.........in this pic you can see the green sun screens which shade the back courts and one of the three neighbourhood mosques. If you look closely you can see on the top of the parapet there are loud speakers. Know what comes out of those 5 times a day? You guessed it - the call to prayer!!!

You can imagine how loud the call to prayer is when it goes off. On the other side of the school is another mosque which also has someone singing the call to prayer, and another block away there is yet a third mosque with yes, another singer! It literally comes at you from all sides in this city as there are mosques on almost every corner. What is really funny, is at around 11:40am when the mid-day call to prayer starts, you can hear all three mosque singers belting it out and it literally sounds like they're trying to outdo each other both in loudness and niceness. Proper etiquette requires the teacher to stop talking, the girls to sit quietly and wait until the call is over. So everyday, when we hear the call start, we jokingly call it "the dueling mosques time" and try not to giggle as the three singers battle it out and we quietly listen. LOL One of these days when I figure out how to post a video on here, I will put up a good one of the mid-day call to prayer so you can hear it.

Alright, back to the pictures.......Looking across the courtyard out one of the third floor hallway windows, you can see the line of air conditioning units for ONE hall of classrooms......there are 19!! One could only imagine how much power those things draw!

Here are some pics of my amazing ACA Grade 9 girls!! We have A LOT of fun - I love them! :)

I hope these pictures give you a good idea of what it's like where I teach here in Kuwait........I am definitely thankful to be here and excited to see what God has in store this year! Take care for now!! :)