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...

old tombs and residences

mosaics in the church

zoom in of one of the figures

another zoom in, this was one of the more scandalous mosaics

pillars made of blue marble

view of the cliffs with 'clouds of doom' rolling in

collapsed pillar that looks kind of like it's melting

the cathedral... it's about 50 meters tall and 48 meters wide. it's a 45 min to and hour hike up small, winding steps, up a mountain. jeff and i rode donkeys up. it was an interesting and rather horrifying experience. more on that later...

the souvenir stand/refreshment shop by the cathedral, high up in the mountains

views from the cathedral, up in the mountains.