Landed in Kuwait with all my luggage!

Off I Go!

Tonight I fly out to Kuwait to start my new teaching contract. There I'll be teaching High School girls Art! I will also be joining my wonderful sister and her family in Kuwait City (different schools and apartments of course).

So the bags are packed (60 pounds each), the ticket printed, the passport is there with the new obtained visa.

Like usual when I land in a new country I may not have internet for awhile, but for now just assume no news is good.

The suitcases. They may have been rolled out to the car on a dolly.... Which does go against my motto of only pack what you can carry. But this seemed easier. 

Other Things I've Been Up To

All the Hoits got together for the first time in 9 years. It was much over do, and it was a lot of fun. 

I hang out at the lake a lot. But rarely in the lake, its too cold for that. What is with this summer weather? I'm not a fan of this drop to 10 degrees at night. Its supposed to be July after all! 

I've started doing art again. However I'm still unsure where the location is of half of my paints. This is what happens when you decide to store all your stuff in your parent's basement and then go travel the world. 

Other stuff includes, seeing friends and family. I haven't seen as many as I hoped, it turns out not all careers get the summer off, weird. Also my lack of owning a car does not help. But the friends that I have seen its been great to see them. 

Shopping. I'm basically replacing my entire teaching wardrobe because almost everything I own is too scandalous for new school. They don't embrace showing off shoulders and knees the same way that my school in Philippines did. So I'm on the hunt for long skirts and tunic type shirts that won't make me look like I'm wearing a bag. If you find some, let me know. Also there's the standard stock piling of my own personal Shoppers Drugmart. Anyone who's lived aboard knows that sometime you just want Buckley's cold medicine, or have a huge need for anti-frizz curl defining hair products. 

Getting all of my favourite foods. Good quality beef, we have it. Real milk, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, fresh berries, Kawartha Dairy ice cream, good cheese, orange juice and bacon. Every time I walk into a grocery store it makes me so happy, and I'm overwhelmed by the choices. Luckily Kuwait should be slight better than Subic Bay, except when it comes to pork products, thats banned. 

Ottawa

I visited our nation's capital. This was all in the attempt to obtain my work visa for the coming school year. Yet another joy of international teaching. So I cashed in some of my airmiles for a hotel downtown. Which turned out to be super fancy. And I'm definitely become a hotel snob, because despite its luxurious spa bathroom and huge king size bed I was kinda disappointed by the lack off pillow menu and daily free water. Oh well, I didn't really pay for it. 

I was in Ottawa for about 2 and half days, most of which was spent running around from the Kuwait embassy to various government buildings getting things signed, authenticated and finally submitted. The people at the embassy were super helpful and on my last night there I got a message while I was at a play that my visa was ready for pick up. So following the conclusion of 'The Book of Mormon' I  made my way at 11pm to pick up my passport from the Kuwait embassy. Just your average friday evening in Ottawa. 

Upon further inspection the next day it appears that I was mistaken issued the wrong visa, this issue has yet to be sorted out. On the bright side I can get into the country. Now its only once, for two months. But we'll figure that out later. 

While in Ottawa I also had the chance to go to some of my favourite spots. One of those being the National Gallery. As an art teacher and a sorta artist I always love making it to galleries every chance I get. It always gives me new inspiration for myself and the classroom. While there I also found a great book on Contemporary female artist from the Middle East. Perfect for my students. And brings my grand total of text books that I'm bringing to Kuwait to too many. I'm hoping that I can negotiate with the baggage counter guy that as a 115 lbs woman I should be allowed a couple of extra pounds because I'm under the assumed 160 lbs weight of each passenger. And hopefully he'll overlook the fact that my suitcases are going to be over weight. In my experience it works about 75% of the time. 

 Also while in Ottawa I was able to see the annual military performance on parliament hill "Fortissimo". Various military bands from the various branches of the Canadian forces perform musical numbers ranging from classical numbers to the Jackson 5 to the Game of Thrones theme song, all along with artillery fire just to make it extra exciting.

I was told about earlier in the day as I walk past parliament hill on my way to one of my many government building stops. It started at 7:30pm so that evening I got take sushi brought my book and got the hill at 7 in order to insure a good seat. When I got there it seemed like everyone else in Ottawa had this same idea. 6:30 may have been a better choice. I was resigned to the standing area unfortunately. However, it was a great show and it left me feeling very patriotic. Once it ended at 9:30, it was only half an hour until the light show started, I stuck around, and luckily several people left the bleachers, giving me a chance to get a seat. Following my evening I was filled with a great since of Canadian pride, so I did what any Canadian would do and headed down to the ByWard  market (quickly to try and avoid the large line) and got my self a Beaver Tail. It was delicious and there needs to be more of these around.

I also explored the ByWard market, did some serious shopping, saw the musical 'The Book of Mormon' (it was hilarious), and had dinner with an old friend from high school who was in the area. After my 2 nights in Ottawa I headed back to the lake, for some serious family time. 

Pottery "Camp"

Next year I will be teaching a course in Ceramics. In the past couple of years I've done clay work with  students, however because the school didn't have a kiln or a wheel we did only hand building using air dry clay. Now at my new school in Kuwait I'll have access to kilns, wheels, there's a whole studio set up for this. Which is exciting.

However I realized that I hadn't been on a wheel in about 7 years. So to freshen up on my skills I signed up for a week long intensive pottery course at Flemming College in Haliburton. My sister referred to it as "Camp". Unfortunately it was a little less exciting than camp and far more challenging. I had completely forgotten how hard it is to throw.

The entire time you throw on a wheel you are trying to force a ball of clay into the centre of the wheel into a small area. Meanwhile, the force of the spinning wheel is forcing the clay out and off. So what might be a 1 pound ball of clay actually requires around 20 pounds of pressure to keep it where you need it. Once the clay is centred it's stable and you can then begin to pull the clay up into various forms and vessels.

The hardest part for me has always been centring because I'm small and weak. To make centring easier you need to lock your body and arms in place by bracing your elbows against your body. Because of my size and how wheels are designed my arms are too far from your body, so it actually requires more physical strength for me. Which is where the I'm weak part comes in.

Well I struggled. And I was by far the bottom of the class. But the end of the 6 days I had managed to create some bowls and plates in the end a gravy bowl. I was very soar, but very proud of myself.

The load form the final kiln fire.

Now most of the impressive stuff is from my fellow classmates. But the white plates with the green/black edges are mine. 

Back in Canada

So I've been back in Canada for a little over 3 weeks now. It's felt cold. I've spent a lot of my time visiting friends, family and just hanging out at the lake wearing far too many layers. I have just under a month left here in Canada before a leave for Kuwait, there's been a lot of running around trying to fit everything in before I go. One thing for sure is that not everything will get done, but hopefully my work visa is one of the things that does!

Off To The Beaches

Gili Island, Lombok, Indonesia 

Trying out paddle boarding

There are no motorized vechiles on the island, if you can't walk, you take a horse cart.

A little reminder of home

Unloading building material from a ship, aka, rock

Off to our snorkelling adventure. Our glass bottom boat may have hit coral and abandoned us in the water, but we survived to join another boat. Saw coral, a ship wreck and most importantly sea turtles!