boat cruise

looks like the lenny zakim

cool little tug boat

one of the ferry boats that takes people up and down the river, tourists and locals a like

hall of buddhas

i really liked all these statues of little guys

close up of enamel flower

close up of the little warrior guys that surrounded the entire base

thai diet coke

"everyone must follow the rules..."

after witnessing raids on bootleg dvd guys while walking down main roads in salmiya and being asked to censor the student handbooks so that israel was not mentioned, i knew things were different in kuwait. censorship is everywhere, from the maps in our classrooms with the persian gulf blacked out to the movies that jump scenes because there was hand holding or pork was portrayed as "delicious."


however, even here in kuwait with its strict views on acceptable (or legal) social behavior, banning of books, and conservative dress code there was one glowing, neon, over-priced bastion of 'free speech.' the virgin megastore. ahhh yes. full of over priced lonely planet guides for an odd assortment of travel destinations, pop music cds, and (perhaps the most shocking...) dvds --which are technically illegal in kuwait because they cannot be censored. we all relish the leisurely post dinner stroll through virgin, amusing ourselves with the fact the our students are paying more in KD for their PS3's then they cost in US$.


everyone thought it could never happen, although we joked about it all the time. virgin seemed too big, too powerful, too brazen to be stopped by the ministry. but thursday night the ministry proved even the mighty can fall and that everyone must follow the rules. now if only someone would tell that to my students...


Headline News
Virgin Megastore shut down by Information Ministry
Published Date: April 28, 2007 By Nawara Fattahova, Staff Writer

KUWAIT: The Virgin Megastore at Marina Mall was shut down late Thursday by inspectors from the Ministry of Information. Fistfights also broke out between teenagers gathered around the store to witness its closure. Officials charged that "it is not only the small stores that do not respect the ministry's rules and regulations, but even big, renowned stores are resorting to breaking and openly flouting the laws". The inspectors pasted red stickers of the ministry stating that it cannot be reopened unless approved by the Ministry of Information on all entrances and exits of the store.


Along with the stickers, a copy of the resolution detailing the reasons for closing down the store was also pasted on one of the showroom's windows. People surrounded the place from 9:30 pm till about 11:00 pm, until after the inspectors left. Curious onlookers were heard asking the inspectors the reasons for the closure of the store and for how long would it be closed. Unsavoury rumours were also beginning to circulate over why the store was shuttered.
Hussein, one of the inspectors, explained that the reason for the closure was due to the store breaching the regulations of the Ministry of Information and not cooperating with them. "They keep selling banned items like magazines and CDs here," he said. He added that they were given several warnings and reminders in the past, but they went unheeded. "We are here to enforce the law, as it must be applied on all," he told the Kuwait Times.


The period of the closure is still not known yet. "We are not sure till when the store would be closed. They will definitely have to pay fines and all illegal items they were selling will be confiscated. They have to communicate with us, even though they are an internationally renowned store. Everybody must respect the rules," Hussein asserted.
On why did they chose Thursday night for the closure, although it is a government holiday, and whether they did it on purpose to attract the attention of the large number of people who were present, the inspector smiled broadly but was noncommittal.

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=ODY1NDI4MDM4


and for some fun pictures....

http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/virgin-marina-mall-shutdown/

kids say the darndest things version 2.0

yeah, kids are weird... that's about all i can say.

5th grade osama: miss, i don't have a pencil or paper

me: well, you need to copy down what's on the board so what do you think you should do?

osama: call my mom!

this is an interesting one, because this student is known to all staff as "pervert talal"

7th grade talal: miss, can you back up a little? you're in my personal space. if i'm going to be that close to a girl, she'd better be my girlfriend.

my desk are all labeled with famous playwrights (shakespeare, aurthur miller, etc.) in

response to the question who are the people who's names are on your desk...

a 6th grader: your family, miss?

6th grade dalal: miss, do you like to eat? because i don't

me: yousef, go out in the hall. i warned you, you are disturbing class.

6th grade yousef: i'll give you a feather

me: i'll give you a puppy... what are you even talking about? go to the hall.

one of my student directors for my 7th grade trojan war play.

ibithal: achilles! you can't enter like that! you are an honorable warrior... not a belly dancer!

mubarak: he called me a sissy!

me: well, are you one?

mubarak: no... wait, what?

6th grade mohammad: miss, i need to go to the office.

me: why?

mohammad: i need to call my mom.

me: why?

mohammad: well, my shoe stopped working

me: what?! let me see

(mohammad shows me his shoe. the lace came out of the hole and he decided to tie it around the arch of his foot)

me: well, i think that will still work... you just need to put the lace back through the holes.

mohammad: oh miss... it's too hard

6th grade abdulrida: miss, are you married?

me: no i'm not

abdulrida: oh i thought you were because i saw you at the mall with a man

me: oh, well i'm not

abdulrida: then who is the man?

me: he's another teacher at the school. we just went to the mall together

... 15 minutes later...

rashed: are you coming back next year?

me: no i'm not

rashed: what will you do?

me: i'm going home to boston, to the US.

abdulrida: but miss, what about the man?!

me: what man?

abdulrida: the man from the mall. what will he do?

me: well, he's leaving to

abdulrida: to go to boston with you?

me: no he's teaching at another school, in south america

rashed: but not in boston?!

adbulrida: oh, miss...

shakira! shakira!

well, at least we got to see whether or not her hips lie (they do not), eat at the irish village, and be awed and amazed by the faux wyclef. jeff, jeremy, matt and i were disappointed but i guess that's what we get for thinking dubai could run a concert in any way better than kuwait could. as the kuwaiti dude waiting for our flight home with us said into his cell phone, "next time i want to go to a concert i'm going to the uk or the states!"

Dubai - Traffic chaos riles fans

Permanent link 45 responses Published on: Sunday, 25th March, 2007

Dubai - Despite being slammed by outraged fans angry at the traffic mayhem that led many to miss the performance, organisers of Shakira’s concert at Dubai Autodrome yesterday defended themselves, saying that the problems where out of their hands. After several hours on Emirates Road some concert-goers gave up waiting in the bumper-to-bumper queues and abandoned their taxis, in a bid to get home and escape the nightmare traffic.Others, determined to see the Colombian-Lebanese superstarplay her first gig in the Middle East, persevered, with some getting stuck in sand on the sides of the road, to arrive just as the last song was played. British expat Jane spent two hours in traffic before abandoning her taxi and heading back into Dubai, missing the concert.

“We were about ten to 15km from the entrance and the traffic was scarcely moving”, she said. “My friend sent me a text to say she was stuck in traffic further along in the queue than us. About ten minutes later we gave up, abandoned our taxi, and got another one back to Jumeirah. “My friend eventually arrived at the Autodrome but the gig had finished. Then she had the nightmare of getting back.” Another father-of-two, KS, who has lived in Dubai for 17 years, said: “I have been to many great concerts in Dubai but the organisers of this fiasco should be told. I don’t grumble but I watched my wife and two teenage daughters sob.

“We left Umm Suqeim at 5.45pm and arrived at the concert at 10.45pm. We saw two or three songs and then it was all over - though by the time we arrived we were too tired to enjoy it anyway. Thank God the police were on hand to help us, especially when we got stuck in the sand.”

But last night Thomas Ovesen, the general manager of Mirage Promotions, the oganisers of the gig, told 7DAYS they had met with officials from both the venue and Dubai police to plan traffic flow weeks before the concert. He said: “We said parking would be limited, early arrival was a must and we would put in place a huge food and beverage area, opening many hours prior to show time.”When it became obvious traffic was slowing many fans, Mirage say they ran an unscheduled satellite wrist-banding station on the Arabian roundabout side of the Autodrome - despite having announced wristbanding would only take place at the main entrance. And as the concert start time approached and congestion continued to stop people arriving, Thomas said the company asked Shakira to push back her start time.

He added: “Even people who left home late and got stuck in traffic got to see her - tell me what we can do to avoid traffic. Tell me where we can set up a fully-licensed concert arena, with no bad sight lines, that can safely accommodate the biggest technical production of modern artists with a 25,000 audience, without being affected by traffic or struggling road systems? If we had an annual car-free day in Dubai we would try and schedule a large concert then!” he added.

Random things I miss about home

before i came to kuwait i knew there would be things about home i missed. family, friends, normal diet pepsi that didn't cost a fortune, current american tv shows, real booze, etc... there are some things i miss that came as a total surprise, either because i had no idea i could ever miss such things or it never occurred to me that certain things would be absent from kuwait. hopefully this will give you all an idea of the day to day annoyances and irritants of living in kuwait. so here they are, in no particular order.

-accessible ATM's... this is quite possibly my biggest pet peeve here. the country itself is very cash driven. meaning you can't order take out, buy things from the bakala, etc, with a debit card. this would be fine if there were ATM's. however, there are no ATM's in my part of town so in order to get cash i have to take a cab into salmiya. not the biggest tragedy, but still a bummer when you have no cash and just want pizza hut for dinner.

-pretzels... there appear to be no pretzels in the entire country.

-drug stores that sell more than just drugs

-convenience stores... bakalas are nice, but they don't have big bottles of diet coke or toilet paper... forget about mac and cheese or ben and jerry's

-accessible toilet paper... culturally "the hose" is more popular so the only places to buy toilet paper is at the big, more western supermarkets... not so helpful should you accidentally run out

-diet pepsi... i drink diet coke here because the diet pepsi is so weird tasting. me... 'nuff said

-large bottles of any beverage... 2 liter bottles of soda are 2.25 liters here and they are HARD to find, unless you want pepsi or miranda.

-normal tasting tap water

-mexican food, especially burritos... i would kill for a baja fresh at marina mall, or in my apartment building

-draino

-soda machines having diet soda in them

-cheese cake factory

-boston drivers... kuwaiti drivers are sooo bad it makes us look amazingly skilled.

-completed sidewalks

-baked ruffles, lays, cheetos, etc...

-real trees... palm trees only get you so far

-recycling. it's all faux recycling here and the only things they make an attempt with are paper and plastic water bottles, but i'm pretty sure none of them make it to the plant.

views of amman, specifically jebel amman

jerash

jerash is another area with ruins. here they are roman. jeff and i both thought it was larger, better preserved and more impressive than rome

the theater

jordain gaurds, playing scottish music of all things...

my camera ran out of batteries, so i'll have to get the rest of the pictures from him.

petra!

now you'll be able to see why petra is the biggest tourist attraction in jordan and why it's nominated to be one of the new 7 wonders of the world. petra was mostly built by the nabataeans, who used it as their capital city. they settled in petra around the 7th century BC. also, around the time of christ and rome the city flourished for more than 400 years and it was occupied by the roman legions of emperor trajan in 106 AD. petra was "lost" from around the 16th century until 1812 when a swiss explorer "found" it. the explorer is pretty interesting. he renounced his country and religion to live in the middle east and be muslim. he ultimately became sort of a muslim holy man.

any way, petra is beautiful and HUGE! it's referred to as the rose red city because of the colors of the cliffs when the sun hits them. it is pretty amazing.

these are some photos of the walk into petra. from the front gate it takes about an hour to get to the treasury (one of the main sights in petra)

tombs, homes, and stairs carved into the cliffs.

the siq

the siq is the entry way to petra. it was created by seismic activity, not water. it's a winding path through the cliffs. the pictures may not show the magnitude of this but the cliffs on either side are HUGE! walking through the siq really makes you feel like a little ant. there are still old water tubes on the sides of it that were put there in ancient time to bring water to the city.

the start of the siq. notice where there used to be an arch... i think that would've given away the sneaky location of the city though.

close up of the striations on the walls of the siq

portions of the path through the siq are paved. this is some of the original paving that still remains.

remnants of a statue

possibly the most famous petra picture... the moment you first see the treasury through the siq.

the treasury

one of my better camel pictures. although it's cheapened by the fact that it was a pretty tame camel, used for camel rides.














close ups of the inside of a residence carved into the cliffs. the color is pretty amazing.

jeff, in all his shaven head and kafia wearing glory, with the treasury in the background

pictures from the street of facades...