My Story

I’m Alison, and as cliche as it is, I view life like a blank canvas.

It’s vast, can be filled with any combination of colours, shapes, textures… but ultimately it can be whatever you want it to be.

Over time my canvas has included mountains and valleys (both literally and figuratively), bright colours and shades of gray. It has evoked joy, sorrow and everything in between. It has been painted one colour, and then painted over again and again; sometimes seeking to stay within the boundaries, sometimes not. Yet, in all of the different versions that this canvas has taken, each new edition has become more and more full of life; more and more unique.

I grew up in Ontario, Canada (near Toronto) living within a 20 km. radius from where I was born, never quite expecting life to be vastly different than what I had experienced in my childhood impression of reality. Then I met my awe-inspiring, go-getting, quick-witted now-husband, Peter, and had a life-altering, earth-shattering heart-to-heart on the roof-top of a mall in Budapest, Hungary and we both had a hunch that life would never be quite the same. We moved west in Canada; not once, but twice. We found ways to get adventure in the cities in which we lived – ice skating on frozen rivers, climbing mountains, even traveling far and wide on holidays to savour just another piece of the great wide world in which we live. But it was only the beginning.

We had the education we needed on paper (you know, the ones that cost four years of your life and loads of money), so why not use them to take us around the world getting the most phenomenal education we could ever have?

So that’s what we’ve done. We quit our completely secure jobs (like so many others of our generation), followed the passion placed deep within our hearts, and embarked on a journey to live in The Middle East (Kuwait, specifically). We’re re-painting the canvas all over again and it’s even more breathtaking than it has ever been. We see new places, we eat new foods, we meet new friends, we learn from small children and through it all our story continues to unfold.

FAQ: Kuwait Edition Answers to some of the most frequently asked questions we receive about life in Kuwait.
School! A summary of our jobs as primary school teachers, including video footage of us at work.