Halloween 2015

I love Halloween!!!!

We're not allowed to celebrate it or acknowledge it at all at school. :( I guess the could a couple years ago--like, the year before I got here-- but the ministry came to school when they were celebrating it and our school got in trouble. Or that's the story I heard.

Last year a lot of parents (or maybe it was a just a few really loud ones) were upset when the school said we wouldn't celebrate Halloween because they had bought expensive costumes in Europe over the summer. The first week of school, when I asked my class what they were most excited for in the 2nd grade half the class said Halloween. We tried to get around the no Halloween rule by having a Book Awareness Month and allowing the students to dress as their favorite book character.

This year we weren't even allowed to do that. No costumes at all. Turns out it wouldn't have happened anyway with all the rain. *update from the last rain post: the ministry cancelled school for the students on Thursday. Our school still required all the teachers to go in for professional development.* We would have missed any dress-up day because of the rain.

I LOVE to play with Halloween makeup and I love scary/gory makeup. I think it's fun to figure out how to do it (YouTube is amazing! and Amazon where I bought my special effects makeup over the summer) There was an adult party that some teachers were having. This gave me the opportunity to do something a little scary. I did a sewn-up Chelsea smile. *from Urban Dictionary: A torturing term used all around the world but originating in Chelsea. The victim's hands are tied or held and the sides of there mouth are cut slightly breaking the strong lip structure. The victim is then kicked very hard in the nuts or in the case of a woman a leg is broken and as the victim screams the cuts rip creating the Chelsea Smile. I made big X stitches and stuck the needle through the ripped skin. It took me about 2 hours to do. I think it turned out pretty good. :)

For our church party I toned it down a little and just went with scars. I bought this special effects stuff called rigid collodion. You just draw your scar with a pink lipliner and then apply the rigid collodion over the top of it with several layers. The stuff REALLY stinks, but it makes your skin pucker and gives your scar a 3D effect so it looks totally real. I had fun pretending my cats got me. :)

Rain rain...

It almost never rains here. When it does it is cause for much excitement. If it is more than a slight drizzle for any length of time it is likely to start flooding.

This morning I woke up around 4:40 to slight rumblings mixed with the call to prayer. I listened for a little bit trying to determine if it was thunder or the street cleaner guy with his garbage can. I determined it was thunder and when I got up I noticed some lightening. Cool! I love storms! The cats were meowing (like they do every morning) so I got them some food but they wouldn't eat-- not normal. They were kinda freaked out by the storm.

We sat and watched the lightening out the window but there was no rain. We waited about 20 minutes and then it just barely rained and seemed to stop. I thought, "Wow, that was a lot of show for nothing." Then, about half an hour later and just in time for school, it started to pour.

What'sApp messages were flying- asking if we really had to go to school in this? are you going to drive? can I get a ride? In one group with people outside my school a person's apartment was flooded and someone else was without power. Still no official message from school so we headed in. Right before going in I see this on Facebook:

and Sinae sends me this: 

Great. This should be fun. I roll up my pants and head in. We were able to avoid wading through water by carefully choosing our path through the middle school to the elementary. Teachers and some students are trickling in. We are told all kinds of conflicting information- kids go to the multipurpose room, no they stay in your room with you. Half the building loses power. More kids are coming in.

This is what it looked like:

Rumors fly that the Ministry has said school is canceled so we have to cancel school and send the kids back home. This proves to be a good lesson for the 5 kids that are in my room. We had just started a lesson on researching yesterday and I had talked to them about making sure your source is credible. They all got excited thinking school was going to be canceled but I told them, until the principal says it is, we don't believe those things.

They did not cancel school and we were to try to actually teach. I had anywhere from 8-10 students. A couple students came VERY late and a couple students were picked up by older siblings after a couple of hours when the older siblings and the parents decided it was a waste of time for them to be there.

Luckily I had just taught that lesson on research and I had taught them how to look up topics on Britannica Online. I let them research whatever they wanted and then present the information to the class however they wanted. They researched flowers, sharks (two groups) and dogs. Three groups used iMovie to present and one group did a drawing and showed a video they found. I had them write words for my word wall and then we watched WALL-E. I tied WALL-E into our new unit with the central idea: Change Over Time Impacts Relationships. It was fun to see them watch it with a new lens and they were making connections, asking questions, and generally getting more out of it than they had before.

Oh-- and in their religion class the teacher was talking to them about sharing and caring for others, how other people need our help. I piped in and said I had some really good images to show them and we showed them these images. I had posted the link on Facebook earlier this week. Amazing images of the migrant workers here in Kuwait. http://www.faisalthef.com/#/friday-gathering/ In the middle of looking at these images one of my students said, "Ms. stop! I'm going to cry. Please stop!" I told him it was ok to cry and this is a really sad part of Kuwait. It was neat that he had such a strong reaction.

I'm going to end with my favorite What'sApp message of the day. This is in a group for the place that Sinae and I work at after school and where we did summer camps. Sinae posted a picture of the flooded tennis courts.

Citizens build community

The theme for our first unit is "Who We Are" and the central idea that we inquire into is "Citizens Build Community." Basically we talk about the different communities that we are a part of (home, school, city, country) and what our responsibilities are in those different communities. A big emphasis is usually on how we can help each other to make our communities better.

I showed my students this video that my amazing mentor teacher while I was student teaching- Sandy Tolbert- showed our class. It fits perfectly with this unit. 

The kids LOVE that video. They literally asked to watch it every day. It became my little carrot to dangle-- if you sit quietly while you eat your snack I will play the video. My kids loved it last year too. Last year they asked if we could make our own version, but I hadn't thought about that video until the end of the unit and we just didn't have time to do it. 

When we watched it this year I asked them how we could do the same things in our school community. We came up with ideas of what we could do to help each other in different areas of the school. I told them that my students last year wanted to make their own version of it and the kids this year loved that idea. So we spent some class time talking about specific areas of the school and how we can help each other in those area. Then we made a list long enough for each student to have a part. 

When I handed out the list of who was helping who with what, one of my students said, "Miss, this is called a script." Their previous teachers did such a great job teaching them! We also talked about extras on set so when it was not their turn they had to be extras in the background. 

It was kinda ambitious and I wasn't sure we'd be able to do it the way I was picturing it. When we practiced it I had to take the whole class in a group to the different areas and practice it in chunks. The day we filmed it I had recruited teachers that had a prep period and people from the leadership staff that didn't have meetings. Our tech coach, Matt, did the filming on my iPad. Matt studied film making so that's a HUGE reason why it ended up as awesome as it did. His filming made all the difference. I was so proud of my students too. We did just a couple takes and we got one with very minimal mess ups. 

After we filmed it we invited all the other 2nd grade classes and our parents to come to a "world premiere" of our movie. We showed it in the school auditorium (something the students asked if we could do) and then we put it on the school YouTube channel (something else the students asked if we could do) so now you can see it. It's only viewable to those who have the link. 

Enjoy! 

Shooting the souq and driving through dust

Last weekend we went to the old souq for the photo club and the explore Kuwait club. I brought my big camera but I forgot the card so I ended up shooting with just my point and shoot. (all the photos posted here are totally unedited- no lightroom or anything to make them look better- I was feeling too lazy to do any of that)

I'm still pretty uncomfortable shooting around local people. I'm afraid they'll get mad. Looking at the very few pictures that I took I think I needed to wait some things out a little longer. There were some good opportunities but I needed to wait longer for the right moment. Part of that is because I felt like others didn't want to just sit and wait so I didn't allow myself to wait. The other part is there just wasn't that many people at the souq so it didn't look like the shot I wanted was going to happen. I didn't realize that the souq closes in the middle of the day and reopens later. We got there just before it started to reopen so it was pretty empty, but the lighting was awesome.

We ate at the little food court area there and then started to head home. As we got up to leave we noticed some lightening and thought that was cool. It might actually rain- yea!! About 2 minutes later, half way to the car, the dust storm hit. We hadn't noticed that's actually what those "clouds" were. It was very interesting to be out in as the shop keepers frantically tried to close up shops and get inside. We had been hot and sticky and now we were being coated in dust. Nice.

When we made it to the car, it started to rain a little. Rain + dust storm = mud storm. It was dark, dust everywhere, visibility was low. I couldn't tell where we were because I couldn't see the buildings around us. We had to pull up Google Maps just to find our way home. It was crazy- but I kinda love those things. I think it's the journalist in me. :)

a friend posted this pic of the dust storm moving in

Playing with fire in the desert

Happy New Year!!

It's Islamic New Year so we were given two unexpected days off of work- yea!! With this little gift, the photo club decided to go play with fire in the desert. We reflected on the experiences from Eid and we finally had all the kinks worked out. We have working equipment and a good location. We did have some challenges finding more steel wool but when we found it we bought bags and bags of it, so I think we're good for awhile. :)

Since my car only fits 7 people max we ended up going out two nights in a row to accommodate as many people as we could. I really like working with the random graffiti wall that is out there- I think it really adds to the pictures- but that road is still somewhat busy. I think they have a big kegger going on out there or something. The cars coming and going.... it just feels like there's a kegger going on. It just gets a little annoying because we have to wait for cars to pass so it slows us down. It would be nice if we could find a beach location with the water--- that would be cool. I'm going to find that for the next one.

Here are pretty much all the pics we shot. The first night we just kept trying different ways to spin the wool and different angles to shoot it from. The second night we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the umbrella shots look how we wanted them to. We never REALLY got what I wanted with that. We'll have to do that again.

*btw- I don't remember if I mentioned how this is done before, but basically it's that fine steel wool inside a metal whisk that is attached to a leash. You light the steel wool and fire and then spin it. Sparks go flying out. It looks cool in the photos with the long exposure. It's cool in real life but now as dangerous as it looks in the photos. More like a sparkler.