Yo, SEALS & KOALAS,

Just a quick note to let you all know that I love reading your posts -- even the ones that make me wish I'd stuck around to keep the old group going and help get the new group started -- and if I hadn't been so busy myself trying to make drama work over here in Kuwait, I'd have written a lot more than I have and said just how much I miss you all.

I don't laugh as much over here as I should. You guys were very good at making me guffaw, sometimes with embarrassment (need I mention Ian & Teava?), but always with great heart, wicked wit, and support for one another.

Cherie just sent me a long note filling me in on what she's been up to, so she's inspired me to write a bit about what I've been doing.

The school drafted me to be one of the Forensics coaches this fall. Forensics is their way of saying "speech and debate" -- it doesn't have anything to do with bones or dead bodies. Not much, anyway. We had our tournament this past weekend and did all right. Two of my actors in the Serious Duet category took first place overall with a script that one of them had written. Two other duets in that category made it into the finals as well, but didn't place. And I had one Comic Duet make it into the final round. They were cheated out of a place, I think -- they were very good and very funny -- but I won't tell them that. (One of the judges was from the winning school. Go figure.)

On Thursday, tomorrow, I am going off to see a "pantomime" at a local theatre with about a dozen of my colleagues. This is not "mime" but is a musical comedy at Christmastime in the British tradition. Pantos (as they're called) are musicals usually based on fairy tales, made contemporary with references to society, new lyrics, and with the tradition of a guy dressing up as a woman: sort of Variety Show meets Mother Ginger from Nutcracker.

On Friday, I will be playing the choice role of Santa Claus for our faculty Christmas party. As I told Cherie, the Santa suit that they gave me to wear must have belonged to someone the width of Carter Nakamoto. When I put on the shirt, I look like Shaka Santa down at Honolulu Hale. Gotta go buy a red t-shirt for underdressing, otherwise I, and a whole lot of impressionable children, will be scarred for life.

On Saturday, off I go to the races! What races? Camel races! And the cool thing about that (as if it isn't already cool enough) -- they use itty bitty robot jockeys. They used to used children, but apparently the kids kept falling off and getting trod upon and someone thought better of doing that. Here's a picture of what they use:

The little robots, I'm told, actually spur the camels onward with miniature whips. Now there's something for our robotics teams to consider!

Lastly, for Winter Break (we don't do Christmas over here in Kuwait, of course, but we do have Christmas trees, Christmas parties, and bad Santa suits), I will be heading to Thailand. Of course, things have been a mite exciting in Bangkok of late, but then, it won't be much different than a SEALS Leadership Meeting, I suppose. I go from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and then back to lovely Kuwait -- where the temperatures have been below 50˚ this past week. In fact, right now at 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning, it's only 7 degrees F. above freezing.

Brrrr!

Keep in touch, you guys.

Uncle Steve (or Mr. Swag or what you will)

Swimming Through Rough Waters

Hey Everyone,

The Academy club is going through a bit of a tough time at the moment, so I thought I'd post something here.

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Dear Koalas,

I know we don't have an advisor, despite my looking for one. I know that my father's after school schedule is erratic and so we never consistently have a room. I know that we've lost some members. I know that we're always finger-pointing and scolding.

But hey. That's not going to stop us, no way. If anything, that's just a little turbulence in our seafaring (seal-faring?) voyage. So, cheer up, everyone. Mr. Swagenseller has always said that WE are the club, and I wholeheartedly agree with him on that. If anything, our only true impediment is our self-maintained defeatist attitude.

Every one of us wants the same thing: for the club to be fun.

I may have founded this club alongside a handful of you, but frankly, it doesn't really matter all that much whether you're a longtime seal or a new recruit. Every one of us has helped make this club what it is, ups and downs. I know that we're all worried about what lies ahead of the club, but enough blaming. Less work, more play. Less speaking, more listening. Less worrying, more improv. We're trying to hard to live up to what the club was last year, in middle school, but we may not have to.

Do not stress about living up to an old legacy. Let us create a new one.

I love you all,
Michael

P.S. Teava, get back in the club. I/we miss you.

Marching to the beat of the Harlem Fake

So hi guys it's Nathalie...

Anywho I remembered that this blog was also going to be a way to tell Mr. Swag what's going on in our lives. And I really wanted to tell Mr. Swag (I'm sorry, I don't think I'll ever be able to call him Steve) that I SURVIVED MARCHING BAND. And it was so fun. I mean, my outlook towards marching band has changed quite a bit, as I was put off by (okay not happy with) the idea we were forced to do in freshman year. (Seriously super fun!)

**Nostalgia Alert** I remember being a little skeptic about CLS in the beginning. But I eventually found a family with you guys and had a blast. Sure we didn't get along all the time and were super dysfunctional but that what family's for right? In marching band, I similarly now have a (sorta) family within my pitlets and my drumline people. Even though I embarrass myself almost daily in front of those guys.

So (I guess) what I'm trying to get at here, is that the good comes along with the bad. And you might struggle up a mountain but at the top you'll find that it's better up here and you're glad you came. I seriously miss the good old days (I almost teared up looking at those photos, Erica) but I have KOALAS now. And it's not necessarily better or worse, it's just different.

So Mr. Swag, next year if you happen to find yourself hearing the marching band rehearsals, listen for a clumsy and awkward bass drum/cymbal.  That (hopefully) will be me.  :)

(Wow)(Iusedparenthesesalot)

Ubiquitous Underrated Uplifting Updates

Hi guys!

In case you weren't aware, I'm proud to announce that things in the Academy are going swimingly (get it, cause seals are marine mammals?) With the support of the fabulous and currently bearded Mr.Kiang, we've claimed M201 on Friday afternoons. The room is great and we are very fortunate! The rule is that the class/group/teacher using the room at any given time can do whatever they want to the chairs/tables and the next class/group/teacher is responsible for rearranging however they like. This means we have had the fortune of arranging the desks in stage formation and using the chairs as props, cars and sometimes... lethal weapons (i'm so sorry, Nat.)

Audrey has been elected as Sorta-Kinda-Not-But-Almost-Temporary-President-In-Charge-Woman and she is amazing! We are really really grateful for her planning even though we don't always show it and are constantly trying to talk over her :)

But fo realz, to everyone in the KOALAs (keiki oka aina laulima aloha) meetings: Thanks so much for coming! Even though not everyone can make it to every meeting, and some of us don't come at all *cough* T-va *cough*, we are keeping the flames of improv burning in the Academy.

I've taken some pictures on my iPod of our scenes, but now that I have a real camera I might get some good ones and post. Hopefully, Steve will see them.

Until then, here are two of my favorite pictures of all time...

Credit to Marie for staying off-stage to take this ;)

I miss this show! More importantly though I miss having everyone together. 

Alright, that's all for now. Stay exciting mammal friends.

- Erica, Urca, Eatatoe, Ito

This Isn't Meaningful But It's Kinda Nostalgic

I felt like ^^ needed to be said first off.

So, I was thinking about the CLS club. As the previous procrastinator of my past personalities, I learned to be way ahead than way behind. So I am. Yay. And I realized how awkward it must've been for the 9th graders. Because, heck, it is REALLY awkward to lead. I'm not sure if it was Mr. Wag's aura of security in the club, but I feel like (literally) the club is kinda falling apart. We're the most disorganized, discombobulated, and disfunctional club. Ever. And this time, not in a good way. I think it's because last year, you guys didn't have personalities that clashed often. Or less often and kept it somewhat hidden anyways. We fight, we yell, and we go crazy. That's VERY true for all of us.

I honestly have doubts about the club this year. After how terrible it's going. Woop. So much for keeping the legacy going. I think it's because Mr. Wagenseller put the club into his schedule. For Ms. Mazzullo, not so much. She works around it. That makes it hard to schedule anything, get any rooms, or any of that. I feel like she's raining on our spirits. Or, at least mine.
And after that, she's taking away my power to buy food. Nobody get's it. I WANT TO BUY FOOD EVERYBODY!
And everybody misses Mr. Wagenseller. I'm not sure if you guys know this, but about 30% of the kids dropped out after they found out that Mr. Swag didn't come back. And all the 8th graders I talk to about the club (meaning the ones who aren't in the club) all say the same thing.
I only asked for Improv because Mr. Wagenseller was fun.
I only wanted to do CLS because Mr. Wagenseller was fun.
I'm not joining either of those anymore.

I guess in the end, this spiel does kinda turns nostalgic, but I miss the good old days. The days when I didn't worry about what games we had to do. When we didn't have to worry about getting bread. The days that I could just enjoy the club as it is, and actually meaningfully participate. Now, I feel like I have nailed my hands into the wood. I'm stuck.

So my point is, if anybody has any suggestions on how we could keep the club and possibly get more outside attention, please comment. I'm desperate. We're desperate. Seals need Koalas to thrive.

The only 8th grader who posts, and too often at that.
-Marie

Early Morning Muezzin Musings

It's 4:21 a.m. and the muezzins at the nearby mosques have begun their morning call to prayer. It's more a religious battle of the bands (battle of the "brands"?) and occurs several times during the day. The fellow at the Shi'a mosque -- the Iranian mosque with the minarets that light up in green at night -- has the better voice: fluid and mysterious. His call evokes images of crowded bazaars in the casbah, women veiled from head to toe, and Sufis whirling like dust storms in the desert.

The Sunni guy from just down the street bellows like a cow giving birth. This tends to dispel the romantic visions which would otherwise be my payoff for getting up so early to work on this post.

I am drinking a cup of coffee flavored with cardamom. One of my colleagues (Ahmed) suggested that I try this Turkish style of coffee. It has an interesting flavor -- something Starbucks might try as a special for a month and then decide not to offer for several years. I drink it mostly for the caffeine. It probably also works as a breath freshener.

Soon I will have to end this post and get some material prepared for today's classes. At the American International School of Kuwait, classes start at 7:40 in the morning. School ends at 2:30 p.m. There are six periods a day with only a half-hour for lunch. There is also one 15-minute "nutritional break" in the morning for the high schoolers. Classes are about an hour in length and there are no study halls.

These folks are serious about pushing the curriculum, believe me. Because of this, I have yet to find a time that will work for starting a SEALS franchise here. Maybe later in the year. I've already been drafted to coach several events for the school's Forensics team. (Here, "Forensics" means "Speech and Debate", although with the number of kids I'm coaching — more than half the team of 20 — it may take on the CSI meaning if I don't survive all of the after-school practices.)

In less than two weeks, I will have another birthday. Since Oct. 12 this year falls within the Eid al Adha holiday, I'm flying off to Luxor, Egypt for a week. This is where, I'm told, the original inspiration for Shelley's "Ozymandias" poem can be found. Apparently, the poem has recently been used in "Breaking Bad," so I'm pleased that I will have a pop-culture reference to put onto Facebook for those who think that Luxor originated in Las Vegas.

Just so you know, SEALS also changed my life, but in ways that are hard for me to explain. Things like getting up at 5:30 a.m. so I could speed over to Safeway to buy doughnuts and bread before school started -- why would I do that? Craziness. Giving up three lunch hours a cycle so that I could meet with weird kids who did things like giving birth on the floor, blabbered in strange accents, and escaped from islands using spatulas and thumb tacks. Craziness. Continually having to put props back into the Prop Box because some of you just had to play with my toys, even after I'd already put them away. Craziness. An initiation ceremony that vacillated between a medieval inquisition and a sketch by Monty Python, topped off with the chicken dance.

Craziness.

I'm missing me some crazy, can't you tell? Keep posting. I can't say that your posts keep me sane, but I never was all that sane to begin with.

Missing you all very much.

Mr. W.

Academy Updates

Seeing as this blog is an improv blog, I thought it'd be appropriate to share some updates with everyone (people who haven't been to the meetings/people who aren't in the Academy/people who are on the other side of the world - you know who you are).

I figure bullet points will be effective. Am I right? I guess we'll see.

• The Academy chapter is now the KOALAs: Keiki Oka Aina Laulima Aloha to any outsiders who ask what it means, but there's actually a super-secret abbreviation that KOALA really stands for. Maybe we'll share it here eventually. Hint: the L is for Loser.
• I, Audrey, am now the meeting leader person because we still don't have an advisor; that means I send out emails and lead meetings and keep everyone organized. Michael is the diplomat communicator person; basically the Benjamin Franklin of the KOALAs. You know, if we were in the middle of a Revolutionary War. Which could be a good analogy for high school. Anyways.
• We're going to stick to practicing improv; no performing yet until we're either really professionally good or until we're seniors because at that point we'll have the advantage over everyone else so ha ha ha you can't laugh at us even if we fail gloriously. Although at that point Michael will be graduated. *head spins from thoughts about the future*
• We're not adding any new members because we don't have anyone to teach about improv yet and we don't exactly wanna teach it ourselves. Yet, anyways.

... that's kind of all we decided. Oh well. We knocked out everything on the agenda anyways, so we must have decided something important.

I'm really missing 7th grade improv right now. Those were the good, simple days, where I honestly didn't care what anyone thought about me. No, dang it, Audrey, this wasn't going to be a deep post to make all readers sob and applaud to their computers about your deep, John Green-worthy words. Yeah, I guess you're right, other me. I guess that's all for now. I'll continue to bring you all the updates and snark from the Academy improv club! (Although Keith would probably do snark better than me. Let's be honest, Keith does everything better than me. Keith does everything better than everyone. And he's not even paying me to say this. Let's be honest again, the K in KOALA stands for Keith. I'm serious on that one. It actually does stand for Keith. Not sure what we were thinking on that one. Well, maybe I do. Is there a limit to how much stuff you can put in one pair of parentheses? I'm supposed to be finishing my World Civ homework. Sorry, Mr. Peer. There are more pressing matters at stake here.)

A great man once said, "Farewell friends, thanks for reading my post. I'm out, lol peace." I'm pretty sure it was Aesop. Or wait, maybe that was me. (Let's be honest for like the third time, I'm pretty much the same person as Aesop anyways so what does it matter.)

Anyways, I'll leave you with two quotes:

"Thanks for reading all the way down to here. You're awesome." ~ Aesop

"Slow and steady wins the race." ~ Audrey Boyle

Signed,

Aesop Audrey Boyle