It's back to Kuwait today. I must say, I'm glad to be back and in the cooler weather. I know that's not something typical one hears in Kuwait, but it's a cheery 19C degrees here. We are tired from our trip and I am in need of writing some lesson plans, so I will definitely get more pictures and stories up here toward the end of the week. Tomorrow is a school day!
We arrived to a hotel late late Wednesday night after a whole day of traveling:
We left our place after 3am to get to the airport for our 5am flight. When we got there, the Qatar Airways agent said they only had one seat left because they overbooked the flight to Doha (where our connection was). Thankfully, we checked in the night before and since we didn't have any bags to check (we're backpacking it), it wasn't a problem for us. We had to wait forever though, because a local and his 10 family members and 2 servants were on the same flight, and we were stuck behind him in line complaining about how the seats weren't all together. At this point in a week of craziness, we contemplated finding a same-day flight back to the US for good and just leaving all of our stuff at our apartment, but reason struck us.
After we made the flight and the short layover in Doha, we had a 4 hour flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Upon our arrival , it started to POUR, so that was interesting experience. We had to hop a series of buses to make it to the train station and catch the 7:30pm train out of Colombo to head south toward Galle. Due to the kindness of an upstanding gentleman, who told us which buses we needed (and even paid our 7 Rupees fare!), we made the train and took the 4 hour ride to arrive in Galle around 11pm. We rode in third class, but we got seats because we made it to the train station about an hour early, and were able to enjoy the cool night breeze coming in the windows.
We headed into the sleepy town in a took-took, a motorized three-wheeled covered bike of sorts, and stopped at the hotel where we planned to stay. All the lights were out and no one came to the door (these are small, 3 to 4 room family-run hotels mind you). Our driver took us down the street to another one of the same sort, and after ringing the bell and rousing the couple from sleep, we got a room. There was no A/C, so that made it a little muggy and inconvenient, but we were glad to have beds with sheets and a hot shower...today we moved to a room with A/C. God is so good to take care of us in each step and generally make things happen when we don't have a clue! The young couple that runs our hotel is super sweet and really helpful.
More about today coming soon after we do a little adventuring. Happy Thanksgiving and love to everyone at home.
In about an hour, I have my first round of parent/teacher conferences for the year. I enjoy being able to speak with the parents that usually come, although it's most often parents who are involved in their children's education at home and don't really need to be there. Tonight, we go for two hours, and then tomorrow we are at the school from 9am-3pm. NO Kuwaiti parents would think about showing up before 10 or 10:30, so I'm going to take a book and work on my lesson plans for next week, and I've made sweet potato casserole and apple/raisin crisp for our teacher lunch.
Starting next Wednesday, we have a six day holiday (sweet, huh?). The kids don't come tomorrow because of conferences, Sunday is a test review day, Monday a test on MacBeth, and then Tuesday we watch the movie. It should be a relatively easy week, except for the test marking. Then, Chris and I are headed to Sri Lanka on Wednesday morning. We will be there until the following Monday afternoon, enjoying the only real vacation time that we have off together this year. Because he teaches at a university, the breaks are between trimesters, and we don't get a winter vacation together. *sigh* But, we are going to take advantage of the quality time we'll have near the Indian Ocean in just seven days!
After that, it's back to work for a few weeks, and then we have the immense pleasure of hosting our friends, Mike and Destiny, for four days. They've won the race to visit us, although it does help that they live in India right now. (See what they're up to on their blog.) After their brief visit, my friend Darlene and I are going to Paris for a week, then it's back to Kuwait to enjoy the last week of winter break before we finish off the semester.
I feel like I'm experiencing "planning pains" already...but it will all be awesome.
