From Cornfields to Deserts, Iowa Music Teacher's Visit to the Middle East: December 2013

Greetings fom the Middle East!

Most Thanksgiving holidays you will find me bustling about the kitchen basting the turkey or maybe peeling enough mashed potatoes for a small army. This year I knew it would be quite different. I was really missing my family. Sitting around and staring at my four walls wasn't going to be an option! There are always people to cook for. They might not be your family, but sharing a home-cooked meal, especially during the holidays, is one of the finer things in life. So a friend and I each roasted an eight pound turkey and made dressing and gravy. We put up a sign in the elevators that Thanksgiving dinner would be served at two o'clock and to please bring a dish to pass. Twelve people showed up. We had a beautiful meal, great conversation, and most of us staggered away from the table stuffed as we have ever been back home. I was just thinking that a year ago at this time, eating Thanksgiving dinner in an apartment basement in Kuwait was about as far from reality as I could get. A year ago most of us didn't even know each other, but here we all were, far from home, but enjoying a beautiful and memorable meal. Sitting around the table that afternoon we had people from four countries: Cananda, New Zealand, Brazil, and the United States. States represented included California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, Georgia, Texas, Florida, and Iowa. It was pretty interesting trying the different regional specialties. This was the first of many more holidays spent away from home. I am already looking forward to the Fourth of July. I plan to be home for that one!

What a great time!

International Day

Every year Universal American School sponsors a fundraiser called International Day. Various clubs and classes put up booths and tents and serve food from countries all over the world. There are many, many restaurants in Kuwait that specialize in food from various countries around the world, so finding the food to serve is never a problem. You might be interested to know that in the American tent they seved up hot dogs, (beef, of course) chips, and Pepsi. What, no apple pie! Boy, everything was either deep fat fried or soaked in honey...that, of course, didn't stop me from sampling much more than I should have. And, of course, I couldn't turn down that hot dog. That would be down-right un-American!

A tent filled with Kuwaiti young people doing traditional drumming.

My Classroom

My last school was in Baxter, Iowa. I taught K-12 vocal music there for nine years. The band instructor, Christine Heintz, and I shared a room. Finally, after all these years I have a classroom of my own! No offense to my dear friend, Christine, but having a classroom totally dedicated to elementary music is quite wonderful! I didn't have room to bring much stuff for my walls, I had to create everything from scratch, although I will say I got a little help from Pintrest! I've been working at this for a couple of months. All my old stuff was pretty shop-worn, so I guess starting from scratch was probably a good thing.

When I first walked into the room, it was pretty much a big train-wreck. It had been a few years since they last had a "real" music teacher. I guess I'm a scarce commodity in this part of the world. The up-side to that, is that they treat me very well here! The down-side is that I had a lot of re-organizing to do. The equipment is great. There's more Orff instrumnents than I have ever had and a wonderful Kawai piano. Finding all the great stuff was like going on a treasurer hunt...new things to unearth each day.

Problem was, there was a lot of old, useless electronic equipment that is hard to dispose of. I hate looking at piles of old cords, speakers, and stuff I don't even know how to describe, so I decided we would moves shelves and bookcases around and create some storage space. Now I have this wonderful walk-in storage area. I will let these before and after pictures tell the rest of the story.