Rachel’s Reflections

I miss writing my blog, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to do it.

I have several posts about our vacation back in May that have been sitting in my drafts folder in the admin part of my blog all this time.  Someday I plan on posting them–it’ll probably be in the archives section.  What held up my posting originally was putting pictures on the blog.  It’s not that easy to put pictures on but when you have to deal with Linux and servers and Picasso it’s harder, and it also takes a lot of time.

And then we moved this summer.  And then I’ve been working 12 hour days, 60 hour weeks at work all summer, and it’s only getting busier.  And I’m trying to get my EXW pin.  And Jeremy and I started Arabic classes 4 hours a week.  We’re only doing 2 now, but it still seems a lot.  And I’ve been doing a lot of swimming, and I’m still doing taekwondo, so I’ve been very busy.  Also I got to see my cousin, Lawrence, several times this summer.  He’s in the Navy and the ship he’s on pulled into Bahrain for a port visit several times.  It was real nice to see him.

So this is why I haven’t been writing my blog.  But maybe I can find time to squeeze out a short post now and again.

For an update on what’s going on in Bahrain:

It’s almost Eid Al-Fitr or The Feast of Breaking the Fast.  This is three days that’s expected to start 30 September.  Our building has been putting up lights in preparation for it.  So have a lot of other places.  Eid Al-Fitr, or Eid as it’s called, celebrates the end of Ramadan.  Ramadan is a holy month to Muslims and has lasted the entire month of September.  (It starts 11 days earlier every year due to the Islamic calendar being a lunar one instead of a solar one.)  During Ramadan Muslims pray extra and read the Koran extra and fast.  They abstain from eating, drinking (including water), smoking, chewing gum, and having sex during daylight hours.  After dark they can eat.  And they do.  The meal is called Iftar (breaking the fast–the same word as for breakfast).  They all work fewer hours during Ramadan and the restaurants are closed during the day.  And while non-Muslims are not required to fast it is a civil offense to eat, drink, smoke, or chew gum in public during the day.  If caught you get a big fine and if non-US military (because of status-of-forces agreement) you can get thrown in jail and you stay there until Ramadan and Eid is over.

I think that a lot of the Muslims stay up all night partying with their families and sleep during the day.  Or at least they take a nap during the day.  I forgot to mention that they also all eat a meal just before daylight.  And sometimes they eat one in between Iftar and the morning one, but sometimes they combine the last two.  I forget what they’re called.  It’s definitely not uncommon for them to stay up past midnight.  And it seemed to me that they were doing a lot of shopping too.  But I should say that these Bahrainis like to stay up late any day of the year.  I think they all take naps.

I’m glad Ramadan’s almost over, but I’ll probably miss Eid.  I’ve been working until 1800 (6:00 p.m.) every night for the last several weeks and that won’t change very soon.  In fact in the short term I’ll probably have to work longer.  The locals are surprised that we aren’t getting off for Eid since it’s a big time of celebration and the whole country essentially shuts down and everyone visits their families and has fun.  But we only get American holidays off; we don’t get local holidays off.

One more thing I want to say and that is about the weather.  It’s been very hot during August and September.  The temperatures got up to the 40s Celcius with heat index (how it feels) in the 50s.  I think that’s around 130 Fahrenheit.  (It was not uncommon for the daytime temperature to be 108 or 117, etc., but the heat index was higher.)  And that’s not a dry heat–it’s humid in Bahrain.  Often when I go from air-conditioning to outside my glasses fog over and it’s a good five minutes or more before they unfog.  Sweat would just pour off of you after you’d been outside for more than ten minutes.  I mean literally pour.  Sweat would drip down your back, arms, legs, face, everything it could drip on.  It’d get in your eyes and sting them.  And you carry water around with you everywhere you go (unless you’re going somewhere off-base during the day during Ramadan, of course).  Even so, I don’t think it was as hot this year as last year.

But now it’s cooled down some.  It’s probably in the 90s F during the day and maybe it gets down to the high 80s at night.  I was walking outside tonight, and I thought it warm, but pleasant.  It was probably either low 90s or high 80s.  (So any whiners out there who think 90F is hot–come see me next summer.)

I’m going to go now as I need to get to bed.  I don’t want to, but I have to be at work at 0530 (5:30 a.m.) tomorrow. (Yuck.)  Hopefully I can start writing this blog again.  I’ve been asked by several people to start doing it again, so hopefully I can find (make) the time.  For the last year it has seemed that when I think I can’t get any busier, then I do get busier.  (shakes head)

P.S.  For the record we did a fun run September 11, and it was real hot.  It was a 5K.  I ran it in 37:18.  Again, let me say it was real hot, even though it was early morning.  But I didn’t quit; I kept running.  That last lap I was the only one still running.  Everyone else had either finished, quit, or was walking.

(Again, hover over the picture to view the caption.  Click to make bigger.)

It was actually cold getting off the plane in Alaska.  We were wearing sweatshirts, but after living in hot Bahrain we didn’t have much in the way of jackets (and no coats at all), and we didn’t bring any anyway.  But it wasn’t too bad, and we didn’t have long to wait until the airport shuttle came and got us.  As I was getting into the shuttle I stepped on the grass and the ground felt spongy under my feet.  That is so different from what I’m used to.  I don’t know if the ground in Alaska really is spongy, especially at this time of year, or that I’m not used to walking on actual dirt anymore, as the ground here in Bahrain is dirt, yes, but quite hard.

It was also interesting how much light there was.  It was after midnight when we landed, and the sky was not entirely dark, although it was black in most places.  It turns out that there are only a few hours of darkness in Alaska at this time of year.  For example at 10:00 p.m. the sun is only just starting to set.  And in June, from what I was told they pretty much have 24 hour daylight.  Of course in winter it’s dark a lot: I was told the sun doesn’t get up until after 10:00 a.m. and it’s down by 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

So we slept a few hours and then got up to get ready for the wedding.  Jeremy’s sister, Jessica, was getting married.  We got to the church in plenty of time to meet the family, talk to them, watch everyone else finish getting ready, take the family photos (very important), and eat lunch (also very important).  Jessica married into a very large family.  Her new husband has 10 brothers and sisters.  The youngest is 4.  And everyone was there for the wedding, including the already married brother and all the college kids.  I really enjoyed my time with that family.  They were really sweet and a joy to be around.  They were very friendly and very accepting; I felt real comfortable around them.

The wedding itself went well.  I think Jennifer, another sister of Jeremy’s, took about 1000 pictures, mostly of Jessica, while she was waiting to walk down the aisle.  Jessica was very beautiful, and her groom, Abraham, couldn’t stop grinning.  It was a very sweet and nice wedding.

After the wedding and after we sent Jessica and Abraham away the rest of us “family” cleaned up and then we changed clothes and went to the mountains and went on a hike.  It was really fun.  We got to see a waterfall and some snow.  Snow in May!

Sunday we went to church there and went to the pastor’s house afterwards, who is Abraham’s dad.  It was real nice to spend more time with Jeremy’s family and Abraham’s family as well as the three members of the bridal party that weren’t technically family but were embraced as if they were.  It was real nice fellowship.

Monday we had to leave to go to Canada.  It turned out there were parks and things to do and see in Alaska.  And we got along so well with the people there, that I wished we’d made plans to stay.  I didn’t really want to leave.  But we had fun in Canada too, and someday we’ll go back to Alaska.  After all, we’ll surely visit Jeremy’s sister.  I just hope it’s in spring or summer.

(There are more pictures in the sidebar.)

On the sidebar is a new page called “Polaroid Washington, D.C.”  It displays my Washington, D.C. pictures, which can be seen in the post Leave and Washington, D.C. or on the page Washington, D.C., as Polaroid pictures.  Jeremy thinks it’s cool; I think it’s stupid.  I’d like your opinion.

Do you like it?  And no, you don’t have to agree with me.  If my readers like it, I will keep it and publish other picture pages that way.  If my readers don’t like it, it will go away.

So let me know if you want me to keep it or not.

Sorry this blog has been quiet for so long. I’ve been busy with things that took precedence. First Jeremy came home for about two weeks. Then when he went back to the ship I got busy cleaning out a bunch of boxes we’d never unpacked. I got a lot done, but I didn’t have time to do anything else like blogging. Then I got sick and then Jeremy came back and we got ready to go on leave.

(Note: I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting pictures to post properly. To see the captions hover your mouse over the picture.  Click on the picture to make it bigger.  You can also see these pictures on the sidebar on the page titled “Washington, D.C.”  On that page there’s also a slide show option.)

And then we left for leave. We left our apartment around 11:00 p.m. Monday, 5 May. We boarded a plane around 1:00 a.m. Tuesday, 6 May. We traveled to London, UK, where I saw real grass for the first time in almost a year. Grass! Real, green grass! And I saw Queen Anne’s Lace too. It’s been a really long time since I saw any of it.

After a few hours in London we boarded another plane which took us to Dallas. Now why we had to go to Dallas to go to Washington, D.C. I don’t know. I really don’t. But our route took us over the southern edge of Greenland. That was way cool. The clouds parted just enough so I could see some of the land. It looked like mountains or hills with snow in the valleys between the peaks. I also saw rivers that were completely frozen. I even saw some glaciers. And I saw islands. There were lots and lots of islands. I had no idea the southern coast of Greenland was such a network of islands. And around and between the islands were icebergs. Literally millions of icebergs. Big ones,maybe ship-sized to small ones, almost too small to see from the plane. And some were far enough apart that you might be able to take a yacht between them if you were careful to those that were so close together you couldn’t even take a kayak through-you could walk from one to another. I thought it was really interesting how the icebergs made patterns in the water. They were scattered all over, but the close together ones were strung together in the water like ribbons of ice or like strings of pearls if each pearl was tiny and there were thousands making up the string. It was really beautiful.

Then we flew over Quebec and I saw a bunch of frozen lakes. As we entered Ontario, the lakes were beginning to thaw. I never knew before this that frozen lakes thaw from the edges first. Did you know that? Then we entered the U.S. and flew south to Dallas. Overall, we were in the air for 8 or 9 hours. That was a long time to sit in one seat.

We stayed in Dallas a couple of hours and then a little over 24 hours since we boarded our first plane we were boarding our last plane of this part of our trip. We flew from Dallas to Washington, D.C. We debarked, got our luggage with no problem, got our reserved rental car with no problems, and then drove and drove and drove. It took us three hours to get to our hotel. It turns out that traffic is insane in the D.C. area. In Bahrain we think a long commute is thirty minutes. In D.C. they apparently think thirty minutes is a short commute. And I thought it took forever to get anywhere in Jacksonville, FL. Jacksonville did take forever, but it was short compared to D.C.

So we arrived at our hotel midnight local time. If you add in the seven hour time difference and count from the time we left our apartment to the time we arrived at our hotel we had been traveling for 32 hours. That’s a long time! Even just counting the time spent in planes and layovers, it was 27 hours. That’s a long time too.

So we spent three days in D.C. This leg of our trip was a working vacation—Jeremy’s pursuing leads for possible post-Navy employment. In other words, he’s pursuing career options, possibilities for his future. So while he did that Wednesday, I went to Fort Meade (everybody in the military goes to another military base on their leave, right?) and read a book in this lovely park they had there. It was so restful. And it had grass! And I saw a robin. That was cool. We don’t have robins in Bahrain.

Wednesday night we went into the city and walked around some of the monuments. We walked around the Washington Memorial (it was closed, so we didn’t go up), and we walked around the World War II memorial and briefly saw the Vietnam Memorial. It was getting dark at that point and there were hundreds of school kids there, so we didn’t stay long. We also walked through this lovely park they have there and even sat on a bench and watched the ducks for a bit. It was so lovely and restful.  The pictures in this post are from this night.  Hover over them with your mouse to see the caption.  You can also click on them to see them bigger.  And they are also on a separate gallery page: look in the sidebar for the link.

Then Thursday I had a migraine so I stayed in the hotel room and slept and read. I had been intending to visit some museums, but my health had other ideas. Someday Jeremy and I will return to the city and “do it right.” Thursday night we drove around and talked. That was real nice.

Friday Jeremy went to a work-related conference.  I tagged along too even though it was all computer stuff and over my head.  Jeremy really enjoyed networking with the government employees he’s been working with over the last several months. We had to leave early to catch our flight to Alaska.

So on to Alaska!

The biggest blessing I’ve had this week is that Jeremy got to come home and stay for a whole week!  He’s almost done “playing Navy”, that is, being on a ship, at least for a little while.  It’s been so good to have him home. It’s amazing how my stress levels have been lower this week.

He bought me a new game for the Wii.  It’s called Sims Castaways.  I haven’t tried it out yet as I’ve been too tired and migrainy (I made that word up) but I plan to.

Sunday was “Husband Appreciation Day” according to the sign on the door of the base library.  I meant to write a post about it, but didn’t do so as I was busy appreciating and enjoying Jeremy.  So here’s my late post:

Some things I appreciate about Jeremy (in no particular order):

1. He’s really good at computers.  This includes troubleshooting as well as being knowledgeable about software and the Internet.  When he gets back for good, I’m going to have him help me write some technology related posts.
2. He’s good at research.  If I want to know something and am having trouble finding it, he can usually do so.
3. He’s smart.
4. He’s very gentle.  I really appreciate that.
5. He’s very forgiving.
6. He’s patient and longsuffering.  Sometimes I need that.  <grin>
7. He’s not a complainer.  For example, he’s never complained about my cooking. (There’s been a few “burnt offerings.”  Hey, you try cooking on a Celsius stove when you’re used to Fahrenheit.)  He’s not critical.
8. I love his sense of humor.  He says the most random, funny things sometimes.  He’s crazy, but in a good way.
9. A correlary to the above: I love it that we can be silly together.
10. He accepts me.  I feel that I can be myself around him.
11. He loves me.  And he values me.
12. He’s an eternal optimist.  One of his favorite expressions is, “It could be worse.”  Since I tend to be pessimistic, he keeps me from getting too negative.
13. He sees the best in other people and has been teaching me to do that.
14. He’s my friend.  We have some good conversations.  I love it that I can share my soul with him.
15. We have a lot of the same interests.  This is good as this means we can have fun together.
16. He’s a hard worker.
17. He’s very persistent.
18. He’s a good leader and can make decisions.  Since I have trouble making decisions sometimes, this works out great.
19. He has a vision for the future.  He’s not wandering aimlessly around “like a lost soul.”
20. He loves God.

I could go on, but twenty is a good number.

I love you, Jeremy!

Today is my youngest nephew’s birthday. He is four years old today. He is my brother’s son. His mom regularly writes a blog called “Where the Wild Things Are.” There’s a link to it in my sidebar. I’m sure she will be posting birthday greetings. You can also see pictures of “his cuteness” there. I’m glad somebody in our family was born in April as that’s my favorite month.

Some things I know about Caden. He’s very active. He likes to climb (like his Uncle Timothy when he was his age) and explore, and he’s very athletic. He also has a good mind. I got to see him last May. It was so fun interacting with him. Preschoolers can be great fun.

So Happy Birthday, Caden! I hope you have a lot of fun today!

I love you,

Aunt Rachel

Every month the base does a “fun run.”  Usually it’s around a holiday, but April doesn’t have a holiday, at least not at this time of the month, so they called this one the Fitness Fun Run.  It is 5K.  That is five kilometers or a little over three miles.  It is four laps around the base.  Our command makes us participate every time.  So it is not “fun” for us unless you like running.  We call it mando fun (mandatory fun).

Today I ran mine in 33:50.  The last time I did one was in February (I was gone for the March one), and I did it in 32:40.  So I did it a little slower today.  But it was raining today, and the pavement was slippery.  I always sprint at the end of a run, and I couldn’t get up speed today because of the slipperiness of the pavement.  Just so you know, it wasn’t pouring–it was more of a drizzle.  But it still made everything wet.  We always get a free T-shirt out of it, so I have one more for my collection.

I also did a “fun walk” today.  April is sexual assault awareness month, and so they had a base walk to raise awareness about SAVI, which is the Sexual Assault Victim Intervention program.

• The Dept of the US Navy SAVI Program is a comprehensive, standardized, victim-sensitive system to prevent and respond to sexual assault Navy-wide.
• SAVI Provides:
  • Awareness and prevention education
  • Victim advocacy and intervention/direct services
  • Data collection
• The US Navy is the only service with a defined Sexual Assault Program with dedicated staff and funding at both headquarters and installation level.

The above bulleted information came from this website. You can also go here to find out more information.

We got a free T-shirt to wear and carried signs and walked around base shouting cadences.  Well, some people shouted.  It was more like chanting slogans.  They were based on actual Navy (running) cadences.  Like the following:

• Sexual assault is a crime
• If convicted you’ll do time

or

• “No” means no
• Not “maybe so”

or

• Everywhere we go
• People want to know
• Who we are
• So we tell them
• We are the advocates
• SAVI SAVI advocates
• We’re here to help you
• We’re here if you need us

After the walk SAVI sponsored a free barbecue for the base, so we got free lunch.  My legs were sore and so were my feet all the rest of the day.  But I have two free T-shirts now.