And I thought Junior Doctors worked a long week...

When I added up my total working hours this week, I came to the grand total of 80 hours, which included, teaching, parents' evenings, and escorting a school trip to Kuwait.

The Parents' Evenings went well and it was good to meet all the parents and to hear some very nice comments from them about what the children have been saying about me, which is very gratifying.

We left from school at 8.30am on Thursday, 18 young people and 2 staff and arrived in good time at the airport, unfortunately, the aircraft wasn't so co-operative! It arrived late from Dubai and so we were delayed in our departure for 2 hours. This meant that we only had an hour on the ground in Dubai and so were met of the plane and rushed through to our connection. You would imagine that being on the ground for less than 45 minutes would mean that nothing could go wrong! If you think that then you have never travelled with a group of teenagers. We arrived at the gate for the Kuwait flight and one of my 12 year old girls told me she had lost her Pakistani Passport! Thankfully, she is a dual national and was entering Kuwait on her British Passport, there was however, a problem to overcome as she needed her Pakistani Passport to re-enter Pakistan! More on this later.

So after the race through Dubai and the missing papers we arrrived in Kuwait and then had a two hour wait in immigration whilst the non Pakistanis had their visas processed, there really is no rushing goverment officials.

We were meet by British School of Kuwait's (the host school) staff and taken to a reception at the British Embassy, where we meet HE The British Ambassador to Kuwait, and enjoyed food and a couple of presentations from some of the BSK students. After that we went to the school and and the students were assigned to their host families. All my students ended up staying with Madame Vera (the school's founder) or one of her children. When my lot returned on Friday morning they were full of all the things their hosts had done for them, it sounds as if they were being spolt rotten!!

Well its nearly 10.30pm and I have been up for over 36 hours with only a few nods on the plane, and I have school in the morning, so I will tell you more tomorrow. And just to whet your appetite, there are more problems with passports to come...