Robin Chartier – Page 166

Every day, I'm shuttlin'

Right after I posted yesterday, Josh sent me a message saying that the work vehicle we were using had to be returned — something about how the policy that allowed people moving to Bahrain access to a car for 30 days had expired and hadn’t been renewed. I’m sure the paperwork will go through eventually, but not in time for us. Oh well, 10 days is better than nothing. Josh looked into renting a car until the Montero arrives (it still hasn’t left Oman), but the rental company is charging $650 for a month’s use of a Toyota Camery-ish sized car and I’d rather have a latte every day for the next 5 months than pay for a tiny car that we’re all going to have to squeeze into anytime we want to go somewhere.

Besides, we don’t really have to drive anywhere right now. We’ve already finished our house hunting, there’s a shuttle that runs every hour from the hotel to the base and back, we can walk to a neighborhood full of restaurants near the hotel, and if we have to travel beyond that, then we’ll grab a cab.

Today was our first shuttle experiment — Caleb is panting because he runs up and down many, many flights of stairs every time we leave or come back to our room. He and Carter have started racing the elevator and they take off while we’re waiting and then they hit as many call buttons as they can on the way down trying to stop our elevator as many times as possible between our floor and the bottom.

Killing time, waiting for our bus . . .

The shuttle came and we made it to base in time for the movie. Free movies on base = cheap way to keep cool and entertained.

She takes her entertainment very seriously. At least for the first 10 minutes. After that she wandered around the back of the theater and climbed up and down testing all the seats. I could tell she was getting tired so I put her in the Ergo on my back and she slept through the rest of the movie.

And was still sleeping an hour and a 1/2 later when we met Josh at Taco Bell (in the base food court) for a late lunch.

Another day, another lunch with Dad. Since it was crowded we ate outside in the heat.

The nice thing about being close to base is we can still get together for lunch — even without a car.

In limbo

It’s like we’re on vacation, but without the touring. Josh is working every day so we’ve been hotel bound. Not because we don’t have a car, but because I have no idea where I’m going.

I took the boys to register for school yesterday and I was really glad I had Carter with me. Even though we’ve driven by it a million times I still needed help: Go down this one way street and where you see the graffiti, turn left . . . No photos of the outside of the school for security reasons (it even says no photos), but it’s not much to see from the outside anyway. It looks like a prison with high cement walls and barbed wire fencing. The school is in a Shia area (or borders a Shia area — not sure, just that there is a lot of graffiti and tire burning going on) so they aren’t messing around.

I’ve been bouncing between contentment and feeling disorganized and unmotivated. It’s not like there’s anything I *can* do, my only job right now is to keep the kids from tearing up the hotel room and each other. And really, both of those are pretty impossible tasks.

I invented a new game for myself because I have to find some way to entertain myself in spite of all the stupid movies they show on the English language channels here. It’s more of a compulsion actually — I can’t help but try and figure out what is playing. With my best friend Google I haven’t been beat yet. Even the vaguest details like: “young Reece Witherspoon wild horses song” gives me “Fear” (poor Reece makes out with a scary Mark Wahlberg). Or “George Michael arrested” gets me the actor’s name and then it’s a quick “Michael Cera blue haired girl movie” brings me right to “Scott Pilgrim vs the World.”

It’s not like I want to watch any of these movies, I just keep flipping channels in hopes of finding some American tv that isn’t According To Jim or Rules of Engagement and like a train wreck, I can’t look away from the B movie until I figure out what movie Katie Holmes was in with that guy who looks familiar . . . (“Katie Holmes movie sitting against tree” — The Romantics — isn’t Google amazing?)

While I’ve been playing stupid tv games the boys have been building a fort in their bedroom, creating monster bubble baths using all the hotel shampoo, and working on an art project. They aren’t always this motivated, it’s the result of a 48 hour electronics ban.

around town

One thing that is easier about living in Bahrain is Saturday here is actually Saturday. Josh had the day off so we spent the day exploring some other areas of the city. But first breakfast at our new favorite restaurant, Lilou’s.

It’s this adorable french styled cafe with great food and coffee.

Fresh juices — not like in the states where they just squeeze the juice out of the orange. Here they take the entire fruit and it goes through a machine that crushes and squeezes the entire fruit. This way you get pulp and orange oil from the rind and it makes for juice that tastes more orangey than anything I’ve ever had. They also do strawberry, lemon mint, pineapple mint, pomegranate, and more.

The boys love the pain perdu (French for French Toast). Who wouldn’t? It is covered with fresh whipped cream, strawberries, blackberries and even a chocolate twirl.

We came for dessert and coffee the other night. Everyone picked a chocolate dessert from the case and we shared them all.

My favorite was the chocolate dome with the gold ball on top. Inside the chocolate dome was cake, custard filling, more chocolate . . . it was divine. The triangle cake on the left and the hazelnut trifle on the far right both rocked too.

Caleb, picking out his favorites for next time

After breakfast we decided to drive out to see where one of the churches meets and to go to the animal shelter that is nearby. Cause you know, this International move thing isn’t challenging enough. I really need to throw a new pet into the mix to keep me on my toes.

This area of town has a lot of the Shia protests, as evidenced by all the graffiti.

Really, really beautiful villas — the walls marred by ugly protest messages. Josh said when he came in May at least they tried to cover it up with neutral colored paint. They must have run out of “sand tan” because now they are slapping any old color over the graffiti. Not pretty.

My favorite message (that I didn’t get a photo of because I was laughing too hard) was a spray painted message of “Stop Vandalism!” Hello, irony.

Yes, this is the animal shelter. Makes you want to take them all home, huh? At least any dog we get will be used to the desert heat since they are all housed outside. One reason I was OK with going to visit the dogs is because I knew we couldn’t get one today. Ha ha. Once we’re in a house, a trip out here will become much more dangerous.

The dogs looked well taken care of in spite of their shabby quarters.

Bob fell in love with this little guy named Fuzz.

The only problem is he’s a puppy and I’m not sure how big he’s going to get. We were trying to go smaller this time. Maybe if he’s still there a month from now we’ll have a better idea of how he’s growing. We got Jonah thinking he was 4 months old and when it turned out he was only 8 weeks, we knew we were in big dog territory (he ended up being 95 lbs big). His paws don’t look that big, so maybe he’ll be a good size for us. I’m already calculating how much it’s going to cost to fly him back to the US. The bigger the dog, the bigger the price tag.

Some other puppies — wadi dogs. We call them wadi dogs in Oman (the native dogs that run wild). I am trying to avoid a wadi dog because they tend to be wild and somewhat unpredictable. I have enough unpredictability in my life — I need a calm, relaxed dog. I’m sure Fuzz is part wadi dog, but he looks less so than these guys.

Trying to keep cool in the pool . . .

Posted on each kennel were laminated cards with info about the dogs: name, age, sex, how long they’d been at the shelter and a photo so you could pick them out of the crowd. I don’t expect to get into our house for several more weeks, so who knows which dogs will be at the shelter next time we visit. (Unfortunately for them, probably most of them.)

house photos

I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about house hunting. Frankly, I’m sick of talking about it, but it’s either that or a story about how the kids (Carter, really) blew up the Wii by plugging it into the wall here at the hotel. 220v strikes again. And since I just told you that story, all that’s left is the house . . .

As we were driving away from the villa last time, a red slide caught my eye as I looked down one of the alleyways. “Is that a park?” In all our driving around the island, I haven’t seen any neighborhood parks, so I was afraid it might be part of a school or private club. We arrived a few minutes early this morning to check it out. Oh it’s a park. A good one with lots of space to run, soccer goals, a basketball court — the kids liked our house choice before they even saw the house.

She’s mad. Camille wants to go swing and Caleb is blocking her progress because we have to head the opposite direction to go to our meeting. Don’t worry, little girl. You’ll have plenty of time to play at the park.

Inside the front gate: date palms

Not much outdoor space, but at least it is green. And with the park within walking distance, the need for outdoor play space becomes much less important.

living room — Josh and the landlord chatting it up in Arabic.

It’s a big space — not pretty, but lots of room for their indoor soccer games.

The entire downstairs is open

The kitchen looks out on the living room — the glass door behind the stairs leads to the pool

Again, not pretty, but tons of storage space. It looks better in the photos than in real life. It’s pretty dated, but at least it has a gas stove.

Those of you who visited in Oman remember how big our bedroom was there — this one is just as big. I think I’m going to put a sewing/craft table in here, but haven’t told Josh that yet. :waving: Great idea, right? There’s plenty of room for it, Josh’s treadmill, our bed, a home theater, an amusement park . . . it’s a wonderland of emptiness at the moment.

Second living area upstairs. This is where Carter is finagling to put an X-box. The kid blows up the Wii and sees it as an opportunity to upgrade his gaming system. I told him I thought we should turn it into a library with lots of books. He wasn’t impressed. Oh, and we decided we actually like the carpet. It’s a lot nicer than what we remembered (we saw a lot of icky carpet in our housing tours) and I’m not asking someone to tear up perfectly good carpet. They’ll probably have to tear it up when my kids get through with it anyway . . .

There’s also a rooftop “patio” that doesn’t look like much at the moment, but it does have one of those great big shade awnings (like they put over pools) so we could easily turn it into a nice outdoor space. We’re moving ahead to finalize things with this place — there’s also a guest bedroom downstairs that will be ready for visitors as soon as we move in. Book your dates now!

Dear Santa,

Next in the house hunting saga comes the negotiation phase. We are still looking at other places: in fact, Carter and I saw a beauty today, but it doesn’t have as much character as the place that is still our #1. It’s hard to explain: it’s older and not nearly as nice, but it’s bigger and has a really nice flow.

Tomorrow we meet with the landlord and hand him our wish list. They tell you at the housing meeting to ask for anything. If you don’t like the tile in the kitchen, ask them to replace it. If you want a home gym, ask them to provide gym equipment. If you want a pool and there isn’t one, see if they’ll put one in for you. Whatever we want, now is the time to ask. Since military members are desirable tenants (the landlord is pretty much ensured a 2 year occupancy with guaranteed monthly payments) they are likely to be pretty accommodating.

I feel weird asking for stuff, but since there isn’t much furniture in the place and we are renting it “furnished” we will start with things like beds for the kids, a living room sofa, locks for the doors and gate that lead to the pool and an American size washer/dryer (the European style machines wash and dry small loads and take 4+ hours to complete a cycle).

If we get ambitious we may ask for the carpeting upstairs to be replaced with some sort of hard flooring — the boys are hard on carpet and if we get a dog, I’d much rather have hard floors. Oh, and with a potty training toddler in my future, hard floors are much better.

We meet with him tomorrow morning and then head to check out the church services on base. I have to get used to an entirely different weekend since we’re now on a Friday/Saturday schedule. I spent all day thinking that because Josh has off tomorrow that it would be Thursday and we had another day before church. Just when I was finally getting used to Oman’s weekend . . .