Category Archives: Photo

Back Home, At Last

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Finally home! Settled again, we swiftly joined the Ramadan time, and are enjoying our moments of calm now. It’s summer, so no school for Dori, and fasting, so not much activities going on except the iftaars at my mother-in-law, which is always loud and vivid experience with so many family members gathered at once, starved and longing some Vimto and a piece of food. My MIL cooks great and enjoys a lot of rice and مرق, sambusak, spicy soups, herbs and bread. Quite traditional Arab cuisine, but really tasty – especially in Ramadan!
It’s our third day back home and sand already got up to greet us as well, so today no open-window-heater-style I do time to time to warm up the ACed room of mine.


The routine view from my window

Half of Ramadan is still in front of us and قرقيعان was celebrated yesterday and the day before, with kids dressed up in traditional Kuwaiti attires singing a song for treats, door to door – a bit comparable to Halloween or Easter in Czech, but more traditional and definitely not a derivative of any of mentioned above, but a very old tradition. Although I have to say that the maid armies kind of spoiled the traditional feeling, as well as some parties were simply going in jeans and T-shirts, so shame on you families! – قرقيعان is a nice tradition and Kuwait should take care of that heritage in a proper way, it would be such a shame to forget it.

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Wet Summer

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Almost since the day we came it keeps on raining in Czech – small drops, big drops, dense or here and there, misty or haily, that’s the weather we get. At least Dori’s not sorry that she can’t go out much yet. We started to go out short walks to forest now, but the rain comes sometimes quite surprisingly, even storms.






We usually take a short hike up the hill over the town, there eat a bit of peas from the field, and go back. It’s steep at least, so we can exercise a little bit. Not really much of a summer yet, with all that frowny skies we get 12 – 15 degrees of Celsius top, while in Kuwait is well over 40.
Gonna be a shocker coming back, I’m telling ya.

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Chicken from the Box named Chickenpox

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A week flew by, we didn’t do much so far, except informative stuff and some visits to doctors. That includes yesterday’s visit of ER after kiddo got fevers and weird blister no her neck; which resulted in knowing nothing for the rest of the day (the doc said he can’t say anything yet) and today’s quite sure option of chickenpox, as the one weird blister cloned geometrically into dozens and dozens and they’re still coming in bunches like immigrants to a new promised land. So tomorrow’s another doctor, now for powder to cover the spots and hope for Dori not to scratch them bloody. She got – most likely – infected in her build-from-a-box school the last days she was there.


To the highest mountain, Boots!

My old childhood game “Big noses”, made from maple seeds.

View from the “highest mountain” above the town

Castle garden in town

Randomly quack!

We managed to get out quite nice though and Dori seems to enjoy the nature rather a lot, even gave up on screaming on every bug and fly and spider she sees. She landed heads first in a park and obtained a roughly scratched elbow with a lot of cry, but now carries it as a trophy of her adventures. (I’m small Dora, you’re big Boots.) I’m quite positive she will miss that outing back in Kuwait, although she started to miss her daddy here as well, and is now torn apart between these two options.

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Report from the Czech Front (Yes, we’re back!)

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Well; we arrived at Czech on Friday evening after an exhausting trip, but alhamdulilah safe and sound. It’s summer in Czech so the temperature is around Kuwaiti winter or (that very short) spring, quite bearable even though there is no AC here. Dori’s enjoying her green trips now all around the little town, into the forest, watching leaves and trees and river; we caught some ducks as well as – to my very surprise – an otter in the pond here. Definitely some different stuff unlike in Kuwait. No more sand in places before unknown, few dried up bushes, thirst-suffering palm trees and some kind of durable broad-leaved tree which won’t give up even in the insane heats. We’ve got trees, rivers, meadows, animals, flies, bees, bugs, mosquitoes, ticks and other fun things in here.


Dandelion fun!

Worried otter

Virgin Maria praying for safety among building materials on the lower floor of our house. (Look at her, hijabi, they get everywhere these Muslim punks!)

So far I’ve just run few enquiries about my business here, half of which i know now, and other half yet to be asked and perhaps even solved. If that goes well I’ll have to run the stamping marathon again, now for two papers, but inshallah at that point it won’t be such a problem anymore. At least I know where to go and what to bring now, since it won’t be my first time, right… Like 50CZK stamp for Ministry of foreign affairs, which I didn’t know I should have, and had to run around the Prague Castle Court to find a post office which would be selling such a thing. I did, but I bet I’ve sweated down at least a kilo of my body weight.

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