Our Last Few Weeks in Kuwait…

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Whew. What a whirlwind few weeks. Busy, but so, so good. Being exam time, I tutored more than ever, plus we made time to do several special meet-ups with our closest friends, and I managed to sneak in several nights out with my girlfriends too. During the days that Miss G and I were not busy making memories with friends, we sorted, organized, and cleaned our entire apartment top to bottom. Important stuff made its way into our Canada shipment bins, some items were sold, and tons was given away. In between, we cleaned a disastrous apartment a couple of floors up, moved the majority of our furnishings up, and set everything up for a new family coming to Kuwait. We made scrapbooks for our closest friends, snuck in quick trips to some of our favourite spots around Kuwait, and were totally spoiled by our desert family. On our very last full day in the country, several of our friends met us at the Jumeirah Beach Resort for a day of sunshine and swimming. It was wonderful. Afterwards, I snuck home to tuck Miss G in bed, did a few final jobs, snuck in a shower, and wrote a CBC post before heading out the door to a friend’s place for one last night with my mama friends. We ate sushi, drank wine, gossiped, and said goodbye, and that was that. Another chapter of adventures comes to a close… Goodbye, Kuwait. We’ll miss you.

Pizza making with friends.

Poolside

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A Visit to the Kuwait Towers

4 / 8 / 157 / 25 / 16

It’s hard to believe that we really only have a couple of months left in Kuwait. The last time we left, I had a feeling that we may return one day {though I had no idea it’d be so soon}, but that’s not happening this time around. Our time here is nearly done and there will not be a round three. So, with that in mind, we’ve been trying to get out and enjoy Kuwait as much as possible in these final months.

Beach Days at the Hilton Kuwait Resort {our sanity saver}

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For a brief period of time, I told myself that I could make it through the last few months of our time in Kuwait without a Hilton membership once it expired. Then I came to my senses, visited the manager to arrange for a pass that would take us through to the summer, paid the ridiculous fee, and breathed a sigh of relief. I also arranged for a pass for Brad’s mom to use while visiting, and I’m so glad I did. It sounds dramatic, but this place is our sanity in what can be a somewhat chaotic country. It’s where we escape the unbearable heat and spend hours in a chilled pool. It’s where we come to use a safe and clean playground. It’s where I come to spend some ‘me time’ walking at night. It feels normal and oftentimes, that’s exactly what we need.

A Cloudy Day at the Beach

3 / 20 / 154 / 5 / 15

The weather forecast called for rain and a dust storm, but we did let that come in the way of the beach day we’d planned with friends. Instead, we packed up family-sized bento of snacks and our bag of beach toys, convoyed out to Khiran, and hoped for the best. The afternoon worked out perfectly – the weather was warm but not too hot, the kids played happily, and the rain held out just until we were packing up to leave around 5 o’clock. It was a lovely day that ended with a filthy munchkin and a long bath, but all good days should end that way, shouldn’t they?

Yarmouk Recycled Art Park

3 / 6 / 153 / 19 / 15

After months and months and months of wanting to go, we finally made it out to Yarmouk Recycled Art Park this morning. I’d love to say that it was due to my motivation to get out and see all of the things we want to see before leaving Kuwait in June, but we actually were invited to a birthday party in the park which provided all the motivation we needed. {Friends, a cool park, and sunshine? Yes please.}

The Scientific Center Kuwait

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Gracen and I quite like The Scientific Center here in Kuwait… It’s an aquarium, discovery centre {much like a science centre back home}, and IMAX theatre all in one, and a great place to visit when you’re wanting to avoid the inevitable dust and heat that comes with living in the desert. We usually make a morning of it and arrive for opening {I love that it opens for 9 instead of 10 like most places do}. We roam slowly through the aquarium, then move onto Discovery Place, and finish off with a walk outside to see the dhow boats and a stop at Starbucks at the end. Ooh – and then a stop at the gift shop on the way out of course – this may just be my favourite part as they have all kinds of really cool things. It’s sort of sad to say, but unlike many places in Kuwait, The Scientific Center is very well-kept and always clean, which is a nice change {and why we’re happy to go so regularly}. We enjoy it so much, in fact, that we just buy the annual memberships and visit once a month to every 6 weeks or so. For us, if all we do is the aquarium and Discovery Place, we’ve paid for our memberships in just 5 visits, so it’s well worth it. Not to mention that having a membership gives you 20% off of all the very cool things in the gift shop, which is a pretty big deal if you love non-fiction books, miniature creatures, magnets, and other awesome things.

Here’s today’s visit in photos… The Discovery Place was closed due to an exhibit change, but we still had a great time and will be back to check out what all the ‘Bon Appetit’ theme will include very soon.

Car Safety at Qout Market

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Living in Kuwait comes with many challenges, one of which is the traffic / driving. Road rules are certainly not for everyone here, and it’s not at all unusual to have someone just a couple of feet off of your bumper flashing their {obnoxiously bright} high beams at you as you cruise down the highway at 130 kilometres an hour. Add into that the fact that many people are texting, taking selfies, and watching YouTube videos {not joking – seen it many times} while driving, and the roads are an interesting place. To say the least. That being said, driving in Kuwait is much more sane now than when we first arrived in 2007 {congestion = slower moving traffic}, and for that I’m thankful.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the fact that the majority of people seem to have no regard for child car safety. It kills me. Kids teetering out of sunroofs while parents race through crowded roundabouts, children piled on top of one another in SUV hatchbacks, babies in the arms of nannies as cars weave their way in and out of traffic along the highways – it’s all a daily sight. Very, very rarely do you see non-Western expat kids in carseats. So, when I learned that December was ‘Kid Car Safety’ month at AUK and that students are working to educate people in Kuwait about car safety for kids, I was thoroughly impressed. We stopped by their booth at the Qout Market today and the girls running it were really lovely. They had a colouring station for kids, a pledge wall for those willing to commit to buckling up their kids, and a foam cut-out car for photo ops. They’ve also been spreading the word via the aukause instagram page and the hashtag #BeKauseImLoved, so hopefully word will spread. If you checkout the hashtag, you’ll see that there’s still lots of educating to be done {especially when it comes to the fact that carseat straps need to be done up / pulled tightly, newborns need to be rear-facing, and booster seats are truly only safe for children of a certain size}, but it’s a start and a definite step in the right direction. I’ll take it.

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Fall Mornings at the Hilton

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While everyone else may have stopped visiting weeks ago, I think fall may be the Hilton’s very best season… The season of playground play and beach exploring! Both are pretty much out of the question during the hot spring and summer months, so Miss G and I are taking full advantage now that we can bear to be outdoors without being in a pool. This morning we had all kinds of fun on the beach digging for creatures, collecting treasures, and writing and reading words in the sand, and next week we’ll try doing a little playground tour with Miss G’s bike. ☺

Here’s our morning in photos…

‘White Day’

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This afternoon we headed down to Fahaheel for some fun around the fish market and fountains before sitting down to an outdoor dinner at Paul….

An Afternoon in Khiran

10 / 4 / 1410 / 29 / 14

Today we kicked off Brad’s week long Eid vacation with a family trip out to Khiran. We love it out there. It’s peaceful and beautiful and you really don’t feel like you’re in Kuwait while there, which makes for a nice break from the everyday. Of all of our visits, today was by far the busiest with around 25 others spread between several groups {great minds think alike, apparently}, but it was chill and lovely, as always.

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Saveco Indoor Play Area

9 / 29 / 1410 / 17 / 14

While driving all the way out to 4th Ring Road and the 55 to pick-up groceries isn’t my favourite thing {especially when the drive takes an hour and 25 minutes like it did today!}, gosh do I ever enjoy shopping at Saveco… The bright white interior, the wide aisles, the specialty and organic selection… It’s all so lovely and civil. Gracen loves it too. Not only are there adorable mini shopping carts for munchkins to push around, but there is also a pretty awesome indoor play area for munchkins upstairs. It’s part of the Hamad & Shahad toy store and it’s very much like the Hilton’s playground that Miss G loves so much.

Q8books

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Besides nature and long days outdoors, one of the things we miss most while living in Kuwait is hanging out in libraries and bookstores. Back home in Canada, Miss G and I visited our local library weekly. We’d make a morning of it, curling up to read several books before selecting 25 or so to take home. She’d sign them out at the check-out computer herself using her very own library card and then we’d do it all again the next week. We loved our library routine. On top of that, many rainy mornings were spent visiting our local bookstores. We’d browse, play, read books, and then pick one or two favourites to take home to add to our collection – a pretty fine way to spend our soggy days, I’d say. Here in Kuwait it’s not quite the same. While there are {some} bookstores and small libraries, most are filled primarily with Arabic books {rightfully so} and the English books that do exist are often of the cheap, generic variety. There is, however, Q8books, a very cool little used bookshop we finally made time to find and this afternoon.

A Birthday Celebration at Play

8 / 29 / 149 / 5 / 14

Though we had an early doctor-themed birthday party with our families back in Canada a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be nice to get a few of our Kuwait friends together for a real birthday celebration after a long summer apart. Since we’d already done the big party thing, I knew I wanted to keep this one small, super low-key, and easy to put together, which preferably meant not hosting it in our apartment {oh the disaster that can be created by a clan of little ones in a short amount of time!} While I did consider hosting it on the beach at the Hilton, it’s simply too hot to do that right now – even early in the morning. So when the opportunity to have it at Play {a fun indoor play space in the city} came up, we jumped on it! We love Play and visit regularly, so we already knew that we could expect a fun {and clean!} play space that all of our guests {aged 18 months to 6 years} would enjoy.