Month: November 2012

Days of Thunder

One of the fun things that the boys did with the grandparents this weekend was Go-Karting!

  

I was home with a napping baby (totally worth it) so these photos are from Josh and Barbara. There is a  professional race track here (I don’t do NASCAR or anything, but I know it is big enough to hold Formula One races) and part of the complex is a Go-Kart track. They have separate tracks for kids and adults. The boys went through the short introductory video briefing and then they were ready to suit up!

Getting ready to get into the cars — Calvin is on the left, Carter on the right.

They drove in two racing sessions. Josh said you could see a big improvement in their driving skills from the first session to the second. The boys kept a tally of how many other cars they passed. Caleb was proud that he passed up one other car, but then admitted, “he spun out.”

My drivers!

Having a ball

My sister reminded me that I didn’t post any photos from this year’s Marine Corps ball. She wasn’t sure if we even had a ball since we were overseas. We did and it was a great night of dinner and ceremony (usually we dance all night, but the DJ and I weren’t feeling each other. Maybe next year.)

It was especially fun to share the experience with Josh’s parents at their first Marine Corps ball. It’s hard to believe we only have a few more of these while Josh is still active duty.

I only have fuzzy cell phone pictures, but it’s enough to get the idea. Some people get professional ball pictures taken every year (like at the prom), but I’ve never been that sentimental and the first few years we didn’t even have the $15 to spare for a photo. Right about now, though, I’m wishing I could go back and see photos of us from all our past balls: my $20 dress from the Ross clearance rack, the one where I was pregnant with Calvin and had a fat face, the bridesmaid phase at Ft Sill when I wore my sister’s hand-me-up dresses back when she was in a wedding every other month, the Vegas era where we were lucky enough to have family willing to come in for the weekend to babysit in the hotel . . .

The best part about the current state of our ball experience is that we got to go ‘babysitter free’ for the first time since the fat face ball 14 years ago. The hotel was nearby so our in-house childcare provider took care of things at home while the 4 adults went out. If you want to come party with us next year, just let us know!

You know you’re not in Kansas anymore . . .

Please don’t read this and freak out. These things are all true, but the risk to us is low. 

. . . when you yell at your kids for walking on the side of the road and tell them to walk in the street with the cars because you don’t want them to stumble on any explosive devices.

. . . when you spend 20 minutes debating whether going to church would be considered “essential travel” since you’ve been told to stay put except for necessary outings. 
. . . when it turns out that it doesn’t matter either way since church has been cancelled because police have closed the roads leading to and from church. 
. . . when your 8 year old gingerly steps around trash lying in the street whispering, “that could be a bomb . . . that could be a bomb.” 
. . . when you wake up to check the latest security notices and see that your house is now firmly planted in the middle of the red zone, making it “off limits.” (we can still live here, but are supposed to do all of our shopping, eating, etc outside of the red zone.)
. . . when you laugh at this warning poster put out by the government:

(not because I think bombs are funny, but who wouldn’t report the propane tank with wires hanging off of it? Hello, obvious!)

. . . when you ask your husband to check twitter before driving anywhere because you don’t want to be stuck behind a wall of burning tires.

. . . when you have to have The Talk with the kids and it’s not about sex, but explosives.

The big development this week was in addition to the normal protests, burning tires, and road closures, there were 5 or 6 small pipe bombs that were planted in and near the area where we live. The closest one was a few blocks away. They were either disguised as trash or planted on the ground near dumpsters. One or two of them exploded and killed 2 people, the rest detonated without any injuries.

My resident expert is not concerned for our personal safety for several reasons that I don’t want to share publicly, but if you want to know his theories of what’s going on, email me and I’ll go into more detail for you.

We are just as safe here as we are anywhere else in the world. If they offered a voluntary evacuation at this point, as much as I would LOVE to go hang out in California for a few months, I wouldn’t take it. We are fine. Things are fine. I miss Oman and I miss California, but that is more about missing the beach and the mountains than being worried that I’m going to get blown up.

I could have ignored this subject entirely because I know there are family members who don’t have a clue this stuff is going on (I’m looking at you, Kristy), but I know other people regularly get Bahrain news through Google Alerts and I don’t want you to be worried for no reason. I’m not, so you shouldn’t be either.

camel crossing

Even though Bahrain is a small island, I haven’t come close to seeing everything here. Today we went to two new places: the camel farm and the National Museum. The museum is beautiful and modern with displays of life and culture from the past that showed off historic fashions (the women were covered, but colorful), weaving of baskets and cloth, Bahrain’s history of pearl diving, and other ceremonial things unique to here (boys used to be (and might still be) circumcised between 3 and 6 years old — ouch!).
My favorite part of the museum, however, was a gigantic satellite map of the entire country on the floor of the main room. I stood in the map, found our house, and things started to fall in place from there. I told Josh I need to go visit there just to figure out where I’m going before I drive anywhere and I was only half kidding. I felt like Joey on Friends when they go to London and he keeps putting the map down on the ground and standing on it to figure out which direction he’s supposed to be walking. It’s the only way it makes sense to me. 

Something I didn’t know about Bahrain before we moved here is its long history of pearl diving. Bahrain was well known for quality pearls and this statue at the museum shows how they used to harvest them: nose clips, ropes to secure them to the boat and bare hands. They must have had fantastic lung capacity and better ears than I do (mine always hurt whenever I dive down any distance at all and nothing helps except coming back up).
The beautiful building behind the statue is the new theater that opens tomorrow night. We’ll have to check the schedule and see if there’s something worth going to. Placido Domingo is coming later this month, but Josh will be gone traveling for work. We’ll just have to catch him next time. 
 

She loves to run — she’s either running away from me or trying to beat me. 

Another place that is on the “must-see” list here is the camel farm. The camels are owned by the king or the prince (somebody from the royal family), but we had heard the farm was open to the public. We wandered in like a bunch of yahoos off the street and I kept expecting someone to stop us, but I guess that’s what everyone does since nobody even blinked.
The camels aren’t in cages, but they’re attached with a short length of chain so they’re not able to go anywhere. I thought the camels must be special ones for racing or for eating, but one of the caretakers told us that they’re just raised as a hobby. The camels just “eat and sleep. No racing. No meat.”   

This cute little one is only two weeks old. He (or she) was leaping around on his gangly legs. 
 
 

Mama and baby — settling in for a nap.

If things would chill out here, I can see us really starting to enjoy it. Bahrain isn’t outwardly beautiful, but there are some unique opportunities that we have here. We’ll keep searching for more of them!

Back from the dead

I’ve been sick, the grandparents arrived, and I’ve been sick . . . Did I mention I’ve been sick? I got knocked out by the cold of the century — body aches, sore throat, and coughing until I about turned myself inside out.

Thankfully the worst is behind me and my voice no longer sounds like I’m about to keel over, so we get to take the grandparents out for some “sightseeing” today. Not that I think there’s much to see here, but I forget what seems normal to me is quite different than daily life back home.

Weird stuff has been happening here lately (politically), but that’s all for another post. The short of it is that we’re fine, Josh isn’t worried, and we are just as safe here as anywhere else in the world as far as God is concerned.