Happy National Day, Kuwait! :)

In honor of Kuwait's National Day today and Liberation Day tomorrow, I thought it would be fitting to give everyone a little background information on this little country I now call "home". :)

On many old maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, this area was originally referred to as Qurain, but was then renamed "Kuwait". Kuwait actually means "fortress built near water". Although this area of land has been occupied for thousands of years, Kuwait wasn't declared an actual independent country until 1961. The current ruling family, the Al Sabah's, first began ruling in 1751 with Sheikh Sabah Bin Jaber.

Most people now-a-days associate Kuwait with $$ and oil. However, the history of Kuwait originally relied on pearl diving in the Arabian Gulf. Oil wasn't discovered until 1937, and up until then the region's main source of income was from the pearls! Surprising, eh? I didn't even know that until I moved here!

Ever wonder why all the Arab countries around Kuwait have the same colors in their flags? Well ok, maybe you didn't, but just in case you did, here's why! The Pan-Arab colors are red, white, green and black, hence all Pan-Arab countries having these colors in their flags. Kuwait's colors however hold specific significance and were based on a poem by Safie Al-Deen Al-Hali: "White are our deeds, black are our battles, green our lands, red are our swords" so Black - the defeat of the enemy, Red - the color of blood on the Kuwaiti's swords, White - purity, Green - fertile lands.

National Day is celebrated every February 25th and Liberation Day every February 26th. National Day celebrates the country's gain of independence from the British in 1961, while Liberation Day celebrates Kuwait's liberation from Iraqi forces in 1991. Kuwaiti's have a very intense sense of national pride and go all out in the few weeks leading up to these days. I have seen gigantic houses completely covered in equally gigantic Kuwait flags, miles and miles of light ropes in the national colors of red, green and white lighting endless apartment buildings and government offices, and countless spotlights illuminating walls again in the national colors. The Kuwaiti's have a love of spray foam and buy boxes and boxes of the stuff to spray during the celebrations. These people love their country! :) I have to say it's great to see such pride! :)

On the flip-side though, we have been warned to stay in our building during these two days as we are not Kuwaiti and could find ourselves in some unpleasant situations. Many of the young men seem to take this as an opportunity to basically riot and cause trouble, spraying windshields with thick foam while driving down busy roads, opening car doors and pulling the occupants out to spray them with foam or throw eggs at them or in their vehicles, basically just being ridiculous and rowdy because they can. I have been told that last year there were issues with people putting acid and hair remover in the spray cans and then spraying people in the face with it causing a lot of damage. After asking MANY different people here about it, most warn to stay inside and just hunker down for the next two days until the celebrations have died down. I have talked to my girls at school about it too and they seem to be split 50-50 with regards to the safety factor of me going out and experiencing it. Gotta love it when a small percentage of people wreck it for many others, eh? So.......I think this year I will just stay indoors and see how everything unfolds. :) Maybe next year I'll venture out and see what all the fuss is about, but for now I'll play it safe and stay in the building.

For the last day of school this week we took the girls to Shaab Park, which is a big amusement park in Kuwait. I had been told that it is a Kuwait Spirit Day for the girls and that we're supposed to wear Kuwait-themed "stuff" and have fun with it. Here is a picture of me showing some Kuwait spirit for school!


Funny enough, I assumed all the teachers and students would dress up for this spirit day as I had been told that's what we were supposed to do, and you know me - I live for spirit days at school and go all out! But..........nope. Apparently, the high school campus is not really into spirit days at my school. I was the only one in all of the high-school staff that went "all out". Yup. I felt like the girl who had been invited to the costume party, the plans change, no one tells me and I show up in full costume......LOL! Ah well, at least my girls appreciated the effort I went to, to show some Kuwait spirit! LOL Here they are showing some love.........sigh.........these girls make my day, everyday! :)

Lastly, Khalid wanted to tell all my friends and family back home about his national holiday, so here is his video clip! LOL

So to all my Kuwaiti friends - Happy National and Liberation Day!!!! :)

Beijing - Part 3: The Temple of Heaven, Beijing Opera and Random Weird Food!

The final place we explored for awhile was the Temple of Heaven. It's grounds are even larger than those of the Summer Palace! It had freshly snowed the day before so there was still some kicking around by the time we made our way there. Here's one of the main gates.....

And here's a snowy view of Qinian Dian - Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests....

Once inside the grounds there were again many more buildings with the same type of architecture and decoration as the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City.

This is the view from on top of the Round Altar where they annually used to sacrifice for the winter solstice. Apparently, it is a popular spot for a 'touristy" pic so we had to wait in line for 5 minutes just to snap a quick pic!

I laughed at the guards' way of "snow removal"......a bunch of guys shoveling the snow into a pile, then shoveling it onto a large piece of canvas and then literally running it across the courtyard to take it down the steps. I have to admit, it did work well!

And here's a snowman!!!! LOL

We had an opportunity to attend the Beijing Opera one night. It was a short show but the costuming was beautiful and the style of singing extremely unique! I was glad we got to go! :)

Some of the weird and random types of food we came across........first night in Shanghai we were STARVING and as no one at the restaurant spoke ANY English, we ordered from the menu by pointing to pictures. We knew that we ordered a chicken and chilies dish and when it came to the table, it looked amazing! It tasted amazing too, except there were a lot of these little bones in the chicken chunks......came to find out after we had devoured the entire plate of food, that we had just dined on chicken's feet. I'm not going to lie, they were really tasty, but after finding out what it actually was, I changed my mind. Here's what they looked like - would you have guessed that's what they were?

This dish, on the other hand was delicious! Apparently smoked pork (aka - bacon) and dragonbean. I have never seen this vegetable before, but I love it!! :)

And seeing as we can't get any real pork in Kuwait, we ordered another pork dish - pork in brown sauce.........it was pretty good too! :)

My first Starbuck's coffee in China!!! :)

After accidentally eating chicken's feet and also pig intestines..........don't ask........we decided to hit up McDonald's a few times. LOL

Red Bean Pie???? Weird, but good!

Also, instead of a side of fries, they have corn!!! It was really good, as was the Pineapple Pie! :)

We ate a really good dumpling restaurant in Xi'an.......tried over 20 different kinds of dumplings!

Us eating the famous dish - Peking Duck!

And onto the weirdest food...........Bill was determined to try "scorpion on a stick" so we hunted and hunted and finally found a big one!

He said it tasted like he was eating shells..............LOL! We found some much smaller ones later, but couldn't convince him to try those.....LOL! :) Check out the seahorses........and there are giant grubs on sticks, squid, and goodness knows what in the next picture!

This lady was awesome at making these crepe-like rolls with egg, dried pork and spring onions inside. Her tiny shop was hopping! They had a very different taste, but really good and hot first thing on a wet, cold morning

And then we saw these in one of the grocery stores and wondered what exactly you would use these for food-wise.......maybe for flavor in soup?

Would I go back? DEFINITELY, but in the summer months when it is much warmer and the landscape is green. It was beautiful in winter, so I can only imagine how much more beautiful it would be in the summer months! And 5 blog posts later, that's it for my Grand Adventure in China! :)

Beijing - Part 2: The Great Wall and Summer Palace

While touring around Beijing, we ran across many different people who suggested that when going to see the Great Wall, we do not go to the famous Badaling section, as it is very touristy and over-crowded most days. Instead we were recommended to travel further north to the much older Mutianyu section. I am so thankful that we did! It was first thing in the morning, it was quiet, peaceful and only a few other tourists were there. :) We had to drive about an hour and twenty minutes out of Beijing into the mountains, but we had a great driver, Jack, who assured us it was well worth the driving time. The temperature there was A LOT colder than Beijing! We had to take a chair lift up to the Wall because it was so far up the mountain. Glad I had my fuzzy green toque and my warm Canada mitts! :)

I was ridiculously excited!!! Afterall, this was THE site I had traveled all the way to China to see and experience! :)

This was the first real glimpse of the wall as we got to the top of the lift......

And this is the view from the top of the Wall! :) It was simply breathtaking. I was very overwhelmed with where I was standing and what I was standing on. By far, my most memorable and most moving experience of the entire trip.

We walked a ways along the Wall to one of the lookout towers and took a bunch of "proof that I was here" pictures............LOL! :)

Here's a few taken from peering out the windows of the lookout tower......makes me wonder who else back in the time of Mongol invaders had looked out this same window and saw almost exactly the same landscape I was seeing.......I love that intense feeling of history some places evoke!!! :)

The Wall went on seemingly forever! You can see it move east in this pic.........following the ridge and then northwest in the next pic.

If you look really carefully, you can see it snake along the mountain ridges in the very far distance - I had my camera on maximum zoom for the second one. It's amazing to think of all the years and lives dedicated to the construction of such a wall in such an extremely rugged environment!

Our next stop that day was the Summer Palace, located within the city limits of Beijing. It was the home of the crazy "Dragon Lady", Dowager Cixi. She was the grandmother of the last emperor of China. There was a reason they called her "Dragon Lady"......she was extremely power hungry and controlled the throne by virtually controlling the emperors. Whenever she saw that her power over them was weakening, she would have them killed. This included her own son! Nasty, eh? She ended up selling Hong Kong in order to finish furnishing her Summer Palace. So needless to say, she is not popular amongst the Chinese people.

Back to the pics! The temperature seemed to drop throughout the day and by the time we arrived at the grounds of the Summer Palace, I seriously thought we might end up getting frostbite or hypothermia. The sun still hadn't burned off all the fog, so the air is still a bit hazy in some of these pics......

Here is one looking in the opposite direction. You can see the bridge of 17 arches connecting another part of the Summer Palace grounds to a nice building on an island.....if only we had come in the middle of the SUMMER.....LOL!

Walking along the shore to get to the main buildings. Passed by a sweet looking gate! Not sure where it led to, but I thought it looked pretty! :)

Us at the bottom!

Getting a little closer....

Starting up the last of 5 huge flights of steps..........

The view from part-way up! :) Looks cold, eh? LOL It assure you it was!

And the view from the top! :)

There were a lot of different types of mythical creature statues all over the grounds. Here are some of them! They each have significant meaning and were placed in their positions for various purposes.......I'm not going to lie, I can't remember what they were! LOL

Alright, I have one more post to do and then you've seen it all!