Author: Robin Chartier

A thing I never thought I’d do . . .

My car is doing weird things. It smells like it’s burning when I’m driving, but not the normal burning oil smell, something electrical or chemical. Anyway, it needs to go in to the mechanic, but my kids also need to go to their previously scheduled activities. I was thinking through the options and realized that I could call the boys’ driver and see if he could pick them up at the house and drive them to soccer practice. By the time they are finished, Josh will be off work and will be able to pick them up and bring them home.

So I What’s App’ed him (since Bahrain’s world revolves around What’s App) and 5 minutes later I have a confirmed ride for my kids tonight. We are slowly, but surely becoming more Middle Eastern by the day. Next thing you know, kindergartener Camille will be heading out with Sitare to bring her to a playdate (that’s totally a thing here). If you ever hear of me doing that, then it’s time for an emergency extraction.

I’m not going to know what to do when we get back to the US. Uber maybe?

globetrotters

First of all, I survived another day of CF. It was a blur of sprinting 1 kilometer, then using up the remaining minutes lifting 66 pounds over my head as many times as possible, then doing it all over again, but substituting pull-ups for the weight (I can’t do a single pull-up, but there’s a substitute exercise that is just as painful). Overall, it wasn’t a terrible one. I’ve experienced much worse.

The big news in our house this week is that Carter is off to Germany! Yes, traveling is one of the things that keeps us here in the Middle East. Calvin has been getting go to Germany with school the past 2 years and now Carter is getting in on it too. He came home a few weeks ago and said, “Mom, I’m going to apply to go to the Junior Leadership Seminar in Germany. If I get accepted, can I go?” I looked over the application and asked, “Did you know you have to write essay answers to all of these questions?” thinking that would be a deal breaker, but he said, “Yes, I’m going to do it. I just need to know if you’ll pay the 200 Euro for me to go if I get accepted.” Baby, I’d pay 200 Euro for anything that gets you to write an essay, so YES!

Kid knows what he wants. He sat down, wrote two pages all about his leadership experience, what he hoped to get out of the seminar, and his thoughts on what makes a good leader versus a poor one. Out of 15 applications he made it to the final 4: the interview round with the Assistant Principal and some other staff. He wore a suit to school, answered their questions, and as a result he’s on his way to Germany tonight! And wearing his Bavarian hat to get into the spirit of things. 

It’s going to be chilly (especially compared to our normal 95 degree days) so he had to scrounge for warmer clothes from both his younger and older brother. We realized he had no pants so Calvin donated two pairs of his very skinny jeans that he had outgrown (that I still had to take in at the waist) and Caleb let him borrow a long sleeved T-shirt. I better start shopping for some clothes for our Christmas vacation or we will all be freezing! 

They left after midnight (like all flights from here seem to do) and stopped over in Istanbul before arriving in Germany the next day. He and the two other students from his school will be meeting up with Middle School kids from the other base schools from all over Europe.

Very tired future leaders!
So far Carter was able to text me to tell me that they had arrived, that he had eaten dinner, and that he was almost out of money on his phone. Oops, I should have checked that before he left. All that means is that he can’t text me as often. Bad for me, but good for him. This is where he’ll be this week:
“Oberwesel is located on the Rhine River, approximately 50 miles from Wiesbaden.  It is an historic town situated on the site of an old Celtic settlement and a Roman military service point.  It has many points of interest including the Schönburg Castle, the city walls, the Ochsenturm (Oxen Tower) and the Haagstrum.  The Youth Hostel is a part of “Schönburg Castle”. 
There will be over 140 middle-level students from DoDDS Europe schools.  The staff is composed of over 25 DoDDS educators.”
Sounds like a fun place, doesn’t it? At the end of the week Carter will come home and Calvin will take off with the Cross Country team to compete in Wiesbaden, Germany. He qualified last week as the 6th and final member of the team. All those very early morning runs paid off!

Do hard things

I have a love/hate relationship with CrossFit. I hate doing it, but I love what it’s doing for me. I’ve had a few people lately mention that I’m looking fit, both slimmer and stronger, but that’s not it. I mean, that’s great and hopefully I’ll continue to pull it together, but what I’ve found that’s really valuable is how it stretches me mentally every day. I started working out get my body in shape, but I’m loving that it’s strengthening my mind.

Each morning I have to go do things that I don’t think I can do. Every day my brain says, “There is no way you can do this” and I have to fight that feeling and do it anyway. Some days I succeed and do the impossible, other days I fall short. Either way, it’s excellent practice for my brain.

As a rule for life I don’t do things if I’m not 100% sure I’ll be able to do them. I avoid failure and any sort of risk. But this exercise is a revolving door of impossible tasks and I don’t have a choice but to try. Practicing uncertainty over and over again takes away the power it has over me. And it makes everything else relative: “I did 50 back squats this morning (lifting 110 lbs each time) — finding my way to a new place to meet a group of people is a cakewalk in comparison!”

My brain is learning the lesson that I can do hard things and is having to find a new set point for impossible. It’s also learning that trying and failing is OK too, but that I fail a lot less often than it predicts I will. Every time my brain tells me that something in life is too hard, it is faced with an arsenal of proof that I’m a lot tougher than it gives me credit for. It probably seems funny to talk about my brain as if it’s not me, but some days it really does feel like my brain is the devil on my shoulder, whispering (or shouting) at me to give up. Thankfully these days its voice is a lot quieter, but just because I’m not currently mentally ill, it’s still a constant practice to keep it in check and to muffle those words of discouragement that it would be eager to feed me if I gave it a chance.

I just got the kids off to school and I’m waiting for the alarm to tell me it’s time to put on my shoes and go do more hard things. I’m dreading it because today is the hard coach, the one who not only makes me do all the things, but tells me to put more weight on the bar and then babysits me to make sure I finish every last bit of it. It’s terrible. And wonderful. I’m totally dreading it. My legs are already dead from those 50 back squats yesterday, but he’ll laugh and say that it’s nothing. I have no idea what we’ll be doing today, just that it will feel impossible and that somehow I will get through it and be glad that I did it, but not in the way athletes are happy they worked out. I’ll be happy in the way that people with a phobia of flying feel when they’ve touched down at the end of a flight and are tempted to kiss the ground: “We made it! I’m alive. Hallelujah. It’s a miracle.”

Fall fun

This weekend Josh and I went to the Navy Ball. A first for us since we’ve never been stationed on a Navy Base before moving to Bahrain and since we always go to the Marine Corps ball, I thought it might be redundant. But a group of friends were going and asked if we wanted to join their table so we thought we’d give it a go, especially since it might be our last chance to go to one. 

I took this photo because I was trying to check my hair in the car on the way. I went from the shower to the car and was trying to dry my hair with the air blowing in from my open car window. Making sure it hadn’t blown all over the place. 

I decided the Navy Ball is super fun because it doesn’t matter to us. It’s not a work event so Josh doesn’t have to make the rounds to say “Happy Birthday” to all the VIPs and no one is there from his office to get him sucked into the latest work drama. Much less stress and lots more fun. 

We made the rounds and said “Hi” to the people we knew that weren’t at our table and Josh got lots of compliments on his new uniform (because it stood out from the sea of Navy ones). He better get all sorts of compliments for how much it cost. He was promoted 8 years ago and avoided having to buy it until now. I was hoping he could get through 2 more balls without the purchase, but he said it was time. Don’t make me calculate the cost per wearing or I’ll sign us up for every ball that comes along over the next two years to get maximum usage out of it.

The ball was held at the newest hotel on the island, the Art Rotana. In addition to the beautiful ballroom and lobby they had a toasted marshmallow station as part of the cocktail hour with a guy who would hand out toasted marshmallows for us to dip in chocolate. 

Nice job not getting any chocolate on the uniform!

My dress is one that I had made when we lived in Oman. My mom picked out the fabric on one of our shopping trips to the souk. 

The Navy ceremony is similar to the Marine ball, but less serious/formal. And there’s a section of toasting to the President, the King of Bahrain, the head of the Navy, the Army, the Marines, the Coast Guard, basically to everyone and their mother. Surprisingly the Marines don’t have this at their ball, since they seem to find drinking to excess almost a badge of honor, but Josh said they save that for their Marine-only formal dinners. I guess to keep it respectable in front of the general public.
Let’s do this again in a month! (November: Marine Corps Birthday Ball)

The food was excellent. Best ball food in a while. Filet with sautéed mushrooms and asparagus, salad with feta, watermelon, and basil, and desert of creme brûlée and salted caramel chocolate. 
And then we danced until the end. Josh and I have been watching The Voice with the kids for the past 18 months or so and thankfully the show has kept us current with pop music. 95% of the music played has been featured on the show so we were right in the middle of it, singing along. And laughing every time the next song started playing and we were able to identify it: Pharrell! Adam Levine/Maroon 5!   
The next day Josh had a holiday, but the kids were in school so after we went to CrossFit together (yes, I’m still making myself go every day) I took him to this hole in the wall restaurant that I had been to with friends the week before. 
The draw is that they serve an amazingly cheap Arabic breakfast that is eaten sitting on the floor and you can leave your mark on the walls if you want. They repaint every month or so and the fun begins all over again.
From our feast last week: fresh flatbread (hot and chewy), eggs with tomato, dal (lentils), eggs with sweet cardamom noodles (my favorite!), grilled flatbread with cheese and honey, and fried donut holes with date syrup and sesame. 
Josh was happy with my menu choices. I need to find a reason to go back for more donuts, eggs with sweet noodles, and the cheese/honey quesadilla thing. Maybe I can take the kids when they have a day off from school. 

Sleeping beauty

When Camille was a baby and wouldn’t sleep I used to tell people that she would go from 100 miles per hour to zero in a single second. She never drifted off — she’d go from screaming to out cold. 

I guess she hasn’t changed too much. I went to check on her last night and found her snoring under a book. 

And two nights earlier she was yelling for me to help her put on her pajamas, but when I came upstairs, I couldn’t find her. I looked all over and under the beds (because we’ve found her sleeping there before too) and right before I woke up the boys to help look for her I discovered her passed out by my closet. 
It’s exhausting going to a full week of school after the EID holiday. Good thing the next 2 weeks also have holidays in them. Yay for Optional School October. That’s not a real thing, it’s my joke because of where the Islamic calendar holidays fall this year — last year was No School November. I was trying to think of one for next year to go with September, but I just realized we may not be here then and my reflex emotion was sadness. We are almost at our 5 year anniversary of life in the Middle East. Completely not what we expected, but better than we could have planned for ourselves. 
I don’t know if I’ve said this here, but it looks like we have 3 likely options for next year (Josh’s last year before he is eligible to retire): move to Abu Dhabi for 2 years and retire at 21 years of service, extend here for one more year, Calvin would graduate from High School and Josh would retire, or be sent back to the US somewhere and Josh would retire at the end of the year (summer/Sept 2017).
That’s the “plan,” but we also only “planned” to be in Egypt for one year. Josh’s goal in retirement is to be hired by a company in this region that will utilize his Arabic language and experience, so he would like to retire from here or UAE to make the job search easier. We shall see what the next few years bring …