My first weekend here in Kuwait I volunteered with the school’s Green Ambassadors Club to clean up a beach. It was great to hang out with the high school students in a relaxed environment. They reminded me of western students. They listened to rap, played on their phones, gossiped about classmates and teachers, and discussed the American boy who was suspended from his school in Texas for making a clock. That sure wasn't a great image, America. They were great to talk with and had good advice on restaurants to try and things to do here. The beach cleanup itself was tough. It was about 110 degrees, the sun was bright, and it’s Kuwait, so we had to cover up and not show too much skin. Continually bending over to pick up trash in that heat made me lightheaded. Someone from the American Embassy took pity on me and gave me some sunscreen (I haven’t found it here yet) and I guzzled some water before realizing that there aren’t a whole lot of public restrooms in this country… uh oh. There were none on the beach. I survived (in part thanks to the driver taking pity on me and letting me hide in the school bus for a 15 minute break in the AC) and, in the end, was glad I went. I love nature and being outdoors, but can't claim that I was a fierce advocate for the environment in the US. It seems more important here. People litter regularly in this country. It’s not weird to see people just drop trash on the ground in plain sight. Though there are technically laws against this, they’re just not enforced. Grocery stores use thick plastic bags and wrap smaller items in plastic before putting them in bigger bags. Many people use plastic water bottles and keep buying new ones instead of reusing them. Gas is extremely cheap here, for obvious reasons. A teacher at my school mentioned paying 2KD (about $7) to completely fill up her tank. So there isn’t much of an incentive to carpool to save on gas money. All of this makes me wonder, if I go back to that beach in a few weeks or months, will it be just as dirty as it was before we started cleaning? I’m interested to learn more about environmental education here, about desertification, the impact of the war on the environment, and public awareness of these issues. I hope to spend more time with the Green Ambassadors Club once I get my feet under me with everything else that’s going on at school. Experiencing the beach clean-up, and walking around Hawally my first week here was discouraging. The heat, sand, garbage, the abundance of electronics stores (Hawally is the technology district of Kuwait) are a depressing contrast to green, mountainous North Carolina. I found myself pining for Umstead State Park, where I used to go hiking with my brother. Two things saved me from homesickness this week. First, a second-grade teacher confessed that she felt the same way when she moved here years ago. She challenged me to go out with a camera and find something beautiful each day. Second, my assistant principal took me to her fitness club on the gulf and I felt truly comfortable for the first time in Kuwait. There was actually grass there! The trees, beach, and facility were gorgeous. Once inside the club, I could dress like I would in the states, a sleeveless top to workout in, a suit at the pool. I took a cardio hip-hop class and danced like a fool to American music with other expats. So all in all, the landscape in my neighborhood is a bit depressing, but I'm finding beauty here, and I know I've only seen a small part of Kuwait, and of this part of the world, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else is here.
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A week ago around this time I arrived in Kuwait to start my job teaching at the Universal American School in Hawally. The middle school principal and a few teachers picked me up from the airport late at night and brought me to my apartment in a tall, chalky blue building near the school. My new home is a good-sized one bedroom with Ikea furniture, beach-inspired coral tile in the kitchen, and a flowery fleece on my bed. It’s eclectic, and sure, a little garish, but it’s a step up from where I was living last year with two roommates near campus, desperately saving for grad school. Speaking of which, look what finally came in the mail! Call me Master Zappia. That’s a thing, right? A title change comes with a Master’s? ; ) Teaching full time last year and working on my Master’s was really challenging, but it undoubtedly made me a better, more passionate educator and I’m so glad that had that experience. Back to Kuwait. My principal said that I could take the week to transition into my classroom to take over for the teacher who had been covering for me. “Make it into school at some point tomorrow, whenever you wake up,” he said. My response: “When does school start? Seven? Okay, see you then.” Like I’m going to sit at home and twiddle my thumbs (okay, sleep, go shopping, settle in, etc.) when someone else is teaching my students! Pssshhh. Above: My view from the rooftop of my apartment building before the first day of school. Below: Universal American School,"You know, that big blue building in Hawally" is what you say to taxi drivers. The first two days were really rough. I hardly slept at all because I was pretty jet lagged, was ferried off one day to try to get my Civil ID, and I foolheartedly jumped right into teaching. At one point the school sent me with a driver to go shopping for food and my driver pushed my cart around for me! I even hosted parents during Open House my second night here. I managed to put together a presentation and really enjoyed meeting the parents of my students. The kids are very talkative; I’ve been told it’s part of the culture, but I think it’s also just part of being a fifth-grader. I moved my desks from rows into table groups so my students can work collaboratively and talk (when I’m not talking, that is, we’re still working on that). They love helping each other and it’s a better use of the space in the classroom than all of the room the rows were taking up. Here’s a “during picture” from when I was rearranging this weekend. (I am a bad photographer. I forgot to secure the before and after shots.) I’m teaching a self-contained fifth grade classroom, so that’s also a lot to get used to. I teach all four subjects (math, science, language arts and Kuwaiti social studies) and have my 29 students all day save specials, lunch, and Arabic class. Last year when I taught 6th grade in North Carolina I taught the same lesson (or sometimes two different lessons) in four, one-hour-long periods. That’s going to be a big challenge for me this year.
There’s so much more that I’d love to write, but those are the basics for now. I'll leave you with the Arabic Word of the Week: Some of you have probably been expecting an update on my teaching adventure in Kuwait, rooftop views of the cityscape, a picture of my new classroom, descriptions of authentic Middle-Eastern dishes I’ve tried. Don’t worry, those pictures will come, and I still plan to write about my experience teaching overseas, I’m just a few weeks behind. Though I was scheduled to start my new job a few weeks ago, I’ve been stuck in the States waiting on my VISA. (If you didn’t realize I’m teaching in Kuwait and want to know why, read my initial post on this decision here.) A Kuwait VISA requires an FBI background check, several medical tests, a letter from a doctor, authentication of your degree(s) and background check from the Secretary of State in your home state, authentication of documents through the US Department of State, final authentication from Kuwait’s embassy, and, in my case, basically becoming the customer-of-the-month at the local Fed-Ex. Although I began the VISA process in early June, something went gone wrong almost every step of the way. Now that I’ve gone through the entire process, I understand better how to navigate the red tape and I feel like I could accomplish this task in a much shorter amount of time, but I made many mistakes along the way in order to get to that place, like sending my fingerprints to the state federal bureau of investigation instead of the “real deal” FBI, or looking over the fact that even though my degree was notarized, it also needed an apostille from the Secretary of State in NC before the US State Department would authenticate it, or even things that were out of my control, like my medical forms “not looking official enough.” In the end, I learned that one can pay a private organization ten times the money to accomplish in two weeks what the government will do in three months. It’s been tough missing orientation and the beginning of the year, and I know it will be a challenge to jump in and start teaching students who have had a sub for two weeks, but I’m ready to get over there and dig in. As of this morning, I have all the necessary paperwork to get over there and will fly out tomorrow! Wish me luck. Summer Highlights: |
Jill Zappiateacher, grad student, bibliophile Archives
October 2015
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