The pool has challenges every month.  This month’s is swim the distance from Bahrain to Saudi Arabia (we just call it Saudi) during the month of April.  The distance is 20,000 meters, which is 400 laps.

I signed up today.  Already  I have done 1500 meters.  And that’s just in one day.  I put a ticker on this blog so everyone can keep track of my progress (and help keep me motivated).  Look at the bottom of the sidebar to see the ticker.  Only 18500 meters to go!

Last year it rained some.  This year, it’s only rained once before that I know of, unless it’s rained during the night sometimes.  That’s possible, but I don’t get up in the middle of the night to check.  The one time before last night that it rained was the 8th of February and it rained for only an hour, but as I got caught outside in it, I got wet.

Last night I started hearing noises that sounded like thunder.  Since it NEVER thunders here–at least so far it hadn’t–I thought it couldn’t possibly be thunder.  Fireworks, perhaps?  But then when I went to the bedroom for something and happened to be standing quite close to the window, I heard it again.  It was definitely thunder.  So I opened my balcony doors and listened.  The wind was noisy–not unusual–but I thought it sounded like maybe rain too.  It was too dark to tell, though.

The gloomy day along with a view of the fountain that is hardly ever on. When I peeked outside I noticed it and decided to get a picture even though it's not a nice day for photography.

I don’t know if it rained last night (I think it did), but I do know that it rained today!  Today dawned overcast and very gloomy.  Gloomy is unusual here in Bahrain.  We have sunny much more often.  I’d thought I left gloomy back home in Illinois when I last lived there.  But here gloomy was.  And it thundered off and on.  And then around 3:00 p.m. (don’t remember exact time) it started pouring down rain!  I watched it come down.  I couldn’t go out because the wind was blowing it in on our balcony.  In just a couple of minutes we had an inch of water on our balcony.

Almost as quickly as it began the rain stopped.  Since then it’s been gloomy again, although the weather feed I get from the Muharraq airport says it’s “Mostly Cloudy.”  It looks “All Cloudy” to me, so I don’t know what’s going on in Muharraq, but from here it looks the same.  In fact, for most of the day I’ve been barely able to see Muharraq, and if you look at a map, you’ll notice it’s quite close.  (Muharraq is the north-east island that’s “almost touching” the main island.)  That should tell you how poor visibility is.

The mud on my balcony after the rain

Part of the low visibility is due to the dust we have in the air.  Dust is nearly omnipresent and yesterday the sky was hazy with dust.  Sometimes it gets so bad it looks like yellow fog and that combined with wind makes a dust storm.  Even without wind dust still gets everywhere.  Washing your car regularly is a necessity here!  So part of the gloominess of the sky today was due to dust haze.  And when it rained we got rain mixed with dust–which makes mud.

But now I’m well and able to do more than stagger to work in the morning and then stagger home at night and go straight to bed.  But posts will probably be sporadic as I still need to study EXW.  I really need to get my pin.  (EXW=expeditionary warfare specialist: it’s a military qualification I’m required to get.  The pin is proof I got it and something I get to wear on my uniform.)

As you can see I updated my theme.  Not sure about the picture; I may change it.  Right now it’s showing a view of the Bahrain financial harbor (bunch of office building skyscrapers) as seen from my apartment’s balcony.

I’ve decided on a focus for my blog.  Ever since I started it in November 2007 I’ve been writing about whatever whenever.  Mostly I’ve just been trying to figure out what I’m doing with a blog and getting used to the idea of what it is and how it works.  But now I’ve decided that I need to have more of a focus.  And while obscure holidays was a lot of fun to do over the Christmas holidays, it’s not something I think would make very good subject matter for a blog over the long run, particularly since I was/would be pretty much paraphrasing from and even copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

So I thought about what I could say that maybe not very many other people were saying, and I came up with the obvious–Bahrain.  So I decided I would focus my blog on Bahrain.  And that’s why I changed the subtitle of my blog–to make it more obvious that this blog will be about Bahrain.

I don’t know how good I’ll be at this.  I’ve been having problems getting pictures off my camera, so I don’t know if I’ll have many photos.  And I may be too busy to do much more than report on what the newspaper is reporting.  By the way, anyone can read it any time they like–it’s online at Gulf Daily News.  (And it’s in English.)  There are other newspapers, too, but that’s the only one I read.

So here’s my first bit about Bahrain:  The weather is absolutely lovely today.  I sat outside for a while and read.  It’s sunny, around 70F/21C, and when sitting in the sun, feels good with short sleeves.  It’s warm but not hot yet.  Perfect weather.

Jeremy and I have taken her around to see various places.  We took her to see several historical sites: a couple of old, traditional Arabic houses where the rooms are built around a central courtyard and to some ruins: notably the oldest mosque in Bahrain and a 4,000 year old village, and an old fort that the Portugese built and also to the Burial Mounds, which just look like mounds of dirt but are actually graves thousands of years old.  We also took her to the zoo where I got attacked by a bird–I’ll try to post pictures later.  We took her to church and she and I also went to base to watch Jeremy play football (American football, not “real” football).  We haven’t gotten to see everything, but we’ve done a lot.  Other sailors are always telling me there’s nothing to do in Bahrain and they wouldn’t bring their families out because there’s nothing to do.  I don’t know what they call “something to do” because I find plenty to do.  We haven’t even taken Mom to see the museum or the other two forts or the Barbar Temple or the Grand Mosque or the Tree of Life yet.  So if anyone wants to come visit us, there’s plenty of stuff to see–unless you don’t like historical things–then maybe not so much.

One way Mom’s been a real blessing here is that she’s been helping me get organized.  I couldn’t get the whole week off, but they did let me work half days, so I would come home at noon and Mom and I would work around the house getting clothes organized and books shelved and boxes unpacked from our move back in the middle of August.  I bought some plastic organizer drawers at the NEX (Navy Exchange), and we used those to organize the clothes.  I have closets and some shelves but very little in the way of drawers, and things like socks go better in drawers, so putting things in the plastic drawers has helped a great deal.  My clothes storage area looks so much neater now.

So I’m glad Mom came.  For those of you in Illinois–thanks for letting her go for a couple of weeks.  I’ve heard that a couple of you (I won’t name names) think she’s been gone an awful long time, but for me it seems that she’s been here just a short time.  I wish she could be here a bit longer.  But I’m glad she could come for the time that she has.  Now if I could just get the rest of my family to come visit me….  (Jeff and Betsy, we should talk about this…)

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.

I promised you I would post the winner of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  I know it’s a little late, but work’s been crazy lately.

 So the winner is (drum roll) Ferrari’s Felipe Massa who is from Brazil.  He won last year too.  The race was 57 laps and his time was 1 hour 31 minutes and 6.970 seconds, according to the Gulf Daily News. 

Bahrain felt like it won too.  Saturday there were record crowds at the race–33,500 people attended, which was up 7,500 from last year.  And on Sunday thre were record crowds again.  One of the officers from my command attended Sunday, and he said the place was packed.  The three day attendance total was 99,981 people.  That’s very close to the 100,000 they were estimating.

So Felipe Massa was very happy to win.  Ferrari was very happy to win as well since another teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, won second.  BMW’s Robert Kubica, who is Polish won third. 

I won’t give you more details of the races, simply because I don’t know much about racing and so don’t understand much of what I’m reading in the paper.  For example, I don’t know what “pole position” is, but it says that Kubica “started from the first pole position of his career.”  Is that good or bad?  So in order not to mess up any of the details, I’ll let you go online and read about it yourself if you’re interested.  You can access the Gulf Daily News here or the Gulf Weekly here.

Today is the third and final day of the Bahrain Gulf Air Grand Prix.  The event is huge here and officially started on Friday, continued on Saturday, and will finish today, Sunday.  It is Formula One racing.  For those who don’t know, Formula One is the “funny-looking race car” racing.  It’s the kind, when you got one as a Matchbox car as a kid, and you said, “What’s this funny looking car?” your parents said, “It’s a race car.”  It’s the kind that looks like somebody squished it.  But I like them.  I think they look cool and very fast.

So all this week Bahrain prepared for this event.  The hotels and restaurants raised their prices.  Normally a hotel room is around 40BD for a night ($106.40USD), but for this event they charged 200BD ($532.00USD).  Ouch!  That’s a lot of money for one night.  It’s called “price gouging” or “charging what the market will bear” or “supply and demand” depending on who’s doing the talking.  It is clear that Bahrain understands capitalism very well.

The government was hoping to cash in on the money coming into the island as well.  It was reported in the Gulf Daily News, an English-language daily newspaper, that “Big-hitters in charge of assets worth more than $1 trillion” would be at the event.  It went on to say that, “Bahrain is hoping to convince them to invest some of that cash in the country, said Economic Board chief executive Shaikh Mohammed bin Isa Al Khalifa.”  We’ll see if Bahrain managed to draw any new investors.

The drivers started arriving the week before the race started too.  They were met at the airport by dignitaries and given VIP treatment.  Their pictures were in the Gulf Daily News.  I was going to name them here, but there’s too many.  They all arrived Wednesday and Thursday and then participated in meet and greet sessions, dinners in their honor, and other typical VIP “wining and dining” events.

Fans started arriving Thursday.  And there are a lot of them!  It’s estimated that 100,000 people are attending the races.  It seems that most of those people arrived via the Saudi Causeway from other Gulf countries like Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia.  That means they all brought their cars.  And that means they were driving on our streets.  And that means that traffic, which is usually crazy, was downright insane.  They even came into Juffair.  Juffair is a part of the city that sits on a peninsula, so it is kind of separate from it too.  It is where I live.  And it is a fair ways from “the action.”  But there were a lot more people in Juffair Friday than usual.  I guess they came looking for restaurants that weren’t outrageously expensive.  American Alley or the Juffair Strip, a section of street which has a lot of fast food restaurants, was busier than usual too.  It is usually very difficult to drive on that street owing to its normal high level of traffic, lack of parking (so people park on the street), and narrowness (so there’s no room to park on the street without blocking traffic).  Friday, when I attempted to navigate that street, it was insane!  I was driving so slow I could have walked faster.  Literally!  Even though there were a few traffic jams I managed to get through without hitting anything or anyone hitting me.

By the way, in case anyone cares, it was reported that George Lucas would be at the Grand Prix.  And, before anyone asks, no, I haven’t seen him.  But he did get his picture in the Gulf Daily News.

There’s all kinds of other events associated with the race.  There’s a lot of parties, both private and for the public.  There’s concerts and performers–like jugglers and stilt walkers on tall bicycles.  Race attendees will also get a chance to drive a Formula One car at a simulator.  Some schools and three universities–Bahrain University, the University College of Bahrain, and Gulf University–are giving their students Sunday off so they can attend the race.  The newspaper said that Bahrain University was expecting a lot of students to attend the race anyway.  Other schools will still have class but will let out early.

The Bahrain International Circuit is expecting tickets to sell out.  The Grand Prix in 2007 was sold out, and they are expecting the same thing this time.  By the end of Thursday, 90% of the tickets had been sold.  In case you were wondering I did not go to any events.  I did not want to deal with all the crowds and all the expensive prices that the various thieves vendors would be charging.  I’m not that into racing anyway.  I just mentioned it here because it’s such a huge event here.  Most of this information has come from the newspaper.

Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll be able to post information on the results of the race.  I’ll get that from the newspaper too.  Of course anyone who wants to beat me to it could probably look it up online.

Happy racing!

• I don’t want to cook tonight.
• I have a coupon for McDonald’s.
• I rode my bike to work this morning, so that means I don’t have to try to drive and park on American Alley, which is where the closest McDonald’s is.

Maybe in the future I will have different thoughts, particularly about the supposed advantages to riding my bike to American Alley as opposed to driving there.  I mentioned this place in an earlier post.  It is right outside the base and is a strip of fast food stores and restaurants.  It is only about the width of a typical American residential street.  So those of you who live on such a street imagine that people park on both sides of your street.  Now imagine that people, quite a few people, are trying to drive in both directions down the street, in between the parked cars.  This is done, of course, while other cars are trying to enter and leave these parking spaces along both sides of the street and while people are getting out of said car and entering and leaving the store and crossing the street, etc.  And also, don’t forget about the poor foreign workers who are trying to earn a few dinars by washing cars or selling watches.  Now imagine that in addition to all that there is construction going on.  There’s always construction going on, seemingly everywhere in Bahrain.  And for some reason, the Bahraini government/road people, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put a concrete divider in the middle of the road near the end of it near the base.  As a result of all this it is hard to avoid hitting people or other cars when driving down this road even when you are going slow.  And it is not uncommon to have to slow down to 5 miles an hour on this road.  Oh, and I didn’t mention that the intersections of this road don’t have any traffic control devices: no stoplights, no stop signs, no yield signs, nothing.  Of course if there were stop signs that doesn’t mean anyone would heed them.  But Bahraini driving is a topic for another time.

So now maybe you can understand why I don’t like to drive on this road, especially if I were trying to find parking (the very limited parking there is is always full) and especially since I don’t really know how to parallel park.  Those who know my driving record can really understand why I might not want to try to drive and park on this street.

So I thought, I’ll use my bike.  Then I don’t have to worry about parking.  I can ride on the sidewalk; it’ll be fine.

First, I have to get to the corner.  I misjudge that there is more room between a group of people standing around talking and the bus that is approaching straight at me.  (Did I mention that I have really bad peripheal vision and distance/depth perception as a result of the thick glasses I wear?  My husband thinks that is why I have such a bad driving record.  He may be right.)  So it turns out there wasn’t as much room as I thought, and so the bus has to slow way down, and I end up basically walking my bike between it and the people.

Then I go to ride through the taxi stand that’s at the corner so I can cut behind the dumpster there and get on the “sidewalk” between the buildings and parked cars of American Alley.  No such luck.  The dumpster is gone, and they’ve got that whole area blocked off and torn up.  I don’t know why.  The Bahrainis are always building new buildings and tearing up the streets around the old ones.  Again, I have no idea why.  I think they can’t not tear something up.  So I swerve to avoid the construction which means I have to swerve to avoid this big green truck sitting there.  This means I ride out into the street.  This is at an intersection where traffing is going three ways, one of the ways has the divided concrete barrier thing, and there are no stop signs or anything.  Cars just go when they think they’ve got a chance to.

Fortunately I don’t have to cross the traffic as McDonald’s is on the side I’m already on.  So I ride in the street with parked cars on one side of me and moving cars on the other.  Now technically I’m on the wrong side of the street because all the cars are coming towards me, but there is no way I’m going to cross the street, ride on the right side like I’m “supposed” to, and then cross back over when I reach McDonald’s.  I look for an opening in the parked cars so I can ride up onto the sidewalk.  What I see is a ditch, a gutter, between the road and the sidewalk.  I realize I’ll have to stop the bike, lift it up, and lift it over the ditch.  I ride along until I get to a dirt section.  The dirt section used to be part of the sidewalk back when I got hear in June 2007.  It was all bricked over and was like a patio with tables and chairs.  Then for some unknown to me reason they pulled up all the bricks except for a narrow strip along the buildings.  So now there’s dirt areas which are empty except for the motorcycles of the restaurant delivery people (all fast food restaurants deliver in Bahrain, including McDonald’s).  What they ought to do is take away the curb and the ditch and let people park there.  They could put angled striping in and that way they could get more cars in and that would ease some of the congestion of the road.  But unfortunately the Bahraini road people, in their infinite wisdom, are simply not that bright.

So I rode up onto the dirt area, lifted my bike over the ditch, and proceeded to ride along the sidewalk until I got to McDonald’s.  When I got there I looked around for some place to stash my bike but there wasn’t one.  Nor was there really anywhere to lock it up at.  I stood there thinking for a bit and then decided to see if I could take it inside.  I didn’t know if I was allowed to, but I didn’t want to leave it unlocked outside either, even though I didn’t expect to be long.  So I opened the door of the restaurant and this guy standing just inside actually helps me bring my bike inside!  He said, “You want to bring your bike inside?” and he held the door while I did.  So that was interesting.

So I ordered my food.  This went without incident.  By the way, in case you were curious, when you order a value meal here you get a small drink and small fries (the box, not the bag).  If you want medium you pay extra for it.  So when I got my food I put the bag inside my bookbag and the cup into the mesh cupholder on the outside of my bag.  Fast food cups don’t usually ride too well in the mesh cupholder and today proved no exception.

So I rode my bike back down the sidewalk toward home.  When I got to the end of the street, I lifted my bike over the ditch and got on it to ride home.  Again, I was between parked cars and moving cars.  Well, just as I was almost to the construction, I happened to pass too close to this customer at the DVD man’s table.  The DVD man, for those who are interested, sells movies for real cheap–but they bootlegged, i.e. the kind that haven’t “duly compensated the artist(s) for their work.”  They’d be illegal in the U.S. in other words.  Here, maybe technically illegal too, I’m not sure.  Anyway, when I brushed by this man the cup fell out of my bookbag’s cupholder.  I heard it fall and manage to get my bike stopped and parked several feet on, next to one of the construction barricades.  So here I am, getting off my bike in the middle of a busy street, kicking down the kickstand, and going back to get my drink, which this guy graciously picked up and is holding out to me, looking rather bewildered.

So I put it back in my bookbag–same place–there is no other place, and I can’t ride a bike one-handed–the last time I tried that I fell down, rather spectacularly.  I ride the rest of the way home and as I am transiting the parking lot under my apartment building I nearly get run over by this car transiting the same parking lot a little too fast.  So I thought I was home safe, right?

Wrong.  I entered the elevator without incident.  I ride up to my floor without incident.  Now you need to know that I have my bicycle with me in the elevator.  This is because I always take it up to my apartment, ever since another person who used to live in this same apartment building told me he got his bike stolen even though it was parked outside and locked up at the time.  Besides, if you leave your bike outside it gets real dusty.  You also need to know that the elevator is small enough that the only way the bike fits is if you put it in diagonally, which means you have to wheel it in and then lift the back end around to make it fit.  Reverse the process for getting out.

So everything went fine until I tried to get out of the elevator.  I had my bike halfway out of the elevator when for some reason the lid of my cup popped part way off and the coke inside started to spill on the floor.  I had my hands full of bike, so I didn’t know if it was completely emptying or what.  I propped the bike against the open elevator doors and slipped my bookbag off one shoulder so I could reach the side mesh pocket where my cup was.  I replaced the lid, but by this time the elevator was tired of its doors being opened.  It also, as it turned out, had been requested by another floor.  But it can’t shut its doors because the bike was in the way.  And I don’t want my bike to get squished, so I push the “open door” button on the elevator.  And I kept pushing it because the elevator doors kept trying to close.  So what we had for a few seconds was a confused elevator, a frustrated human, elevator doors going open and shut, open and shut, against a bike half in and half out, propped against what has now become a moving support, and with coke all over the floor of the elevator.  I was having trouble getting the bike out of the elevator because of the doors moving.  I’d try to move the bike and they’d try to close and I’d get scared I’d get squished (even though I know they won’t close on my–still, I didn’t want them to touch me), and so I’d pushe the button to open the door which worked only long enough to grab the bike but not quite move it.  It was definitely frustrating.  (I had a very stressful day at work today, so stress levels were already way high.)

When I got the bike out of the elevator and realized the kickstand was down I had trouble getting it back up.  If the pedal is in the down position on that side it gets caught under the pedal and I can’t get it up.  So with a cup of coke in one hand I have to literally pick the bike up and move it back a few feet so I can “pedal” the pedal forward a few feet so the kickstand can be free to come up.  And then when I finally got to my apartment I realized my keys were in my bookbag.  Not wanting to put my kickstand down and have trouble with it again, I prop my bike against my leg, take off my bookbag, prop my bookbag against the bike (remember the coke is in my other hand), and with the same hand that is holding the bookbag unzip the pocket, did in it, find the keys, zip the pocket back up so other stuff doesn’t fall out, and then put the bookbag back on my back and then unlock my door.

As you can imagine I was glad to get inside and park my bike, take off my bookbag, and eat my supper.  It turned out I had about two thirds of the coke left, so that was good.  Now the question is, was all that worth it for a Big Mac?  Even if the entire meal was only 1 dinar ($2.66) (I told you I had a coupon)?

And hey, guess what?  No scratches, bruises, or anything on me.  That’s great, huh?  And the Big Mac was good.  I hope your meals are not as eventful.  Mine usually aren’t either.  Anyone think I should ride my bike down to American Alley again sometime?

Bahrain does not observe Daylight Savings Time.  It is in the time zone GMT +3 if that means anything to anyone.  Here are the time zones for the continental U.S., just for comparison:

• Eastern Standard Time is GMT -5
• Central Standard Time is GMT -6
• Mountain Standard Time is GMT -7
• Pacific Standard Time is GMT -8

Zero is GMT, which is Greenwich Mean Time or Zulu (that was for you, Jeff).  Everything in the Western Hemisphere is a negative number and everything in the Eastern Hemisphere is a positive number.  So when figuring how many hours different you basically forget the sign and just add the two numbers together, like this:

• EST = 8 hours behind Bahrain (5+3)
• CST = 9 hours behind Bahrain (6+3)
• MST = 10 hours behind Bahrain (7+3)
• PST = 11 hours behind Bahrain (8+3)

Or you can think of it as Bahrain is that many hours ahead.  But when you switch to Daylight Savings Time you have to remember that you are an hour ahead of what the Standard Time would be.  So, from now until November, when you all switch back, Bahrain is the following number of hours ahead of each time zone:

• EDT (Eastern Daylight Time): 7
• CDT: 8
• MDT: 9
• PDT: 10

This means, for example, that when it is midnight in Illinois (CDT), it is 8:00 a.m. here.

I hope that clears everything up without it being too confusing.  If not, please ask me for clarification.

Happy time change, everyone!

Jeremy found the church on the Internet.   I don’t know what website he found it at.  So sorry I can’t point you in that direction.  As far as I know the church itself doesn’t have its own website.  But, Jeremy, if I’m wrong about any of this, please leave a comment correcting my information.  Just for fun, here’s the actual address of the church: Villa No. 4, Compound 103, Road 4103, Juffair 341, Kingdom of Bahrain.  Now you can come visit, hah, hah.  Yes, it’s in Juffair, the town we live in.  I know you all thought we lived inManama and we do, sort of.  It’s hard to describe.  It’s like the burroughs of New York, I think–Queens, the Bronx, all that.  Or maybe it’s just that a bunch of towns grew together until they were one big city.  I don’t know.  I just know that Juffair and Sitra and Hamad Town and other areas are considered separate towns but as far as I know they don’t have local government.  I really don’t know about that though.  And as far as I know the whole thing is known as Manama, too.  But Juffair is easy.  It’s on a peninsula.  The base is here, the Grand Mosque is here, our apartment is here, and so is the church.  There’s not much in the way of shopping or restaurants here, though.  There is “American Alley” which is right next to base and has a bunch of fast food restaurants on it (and where, due to the number of cars transiting the street too narrow for that number and the absense of adequate parking along the street, driving along that street is an adventure).

But I digress.  I was talking about the church, not Juffair or the driving or abysmal parking problem around here.  (Parking problem, what parking problem?  –This from the natives–they don’t think there is a problem, but there is, trust me.)

So the church is in a villa, which is a house–an independent dwelling–as opposed to a flat (apartment).  The bottom floor has a bathroom, the kitchen, the main room, which is used as the auditorium, and a separate room used as the translation room.  Upstairs you have the fellowship room, another bathroom, the children’s room, and two other rooms that aren’t used.  The main room downstairs would, of course, be the dining and living rooms if this were lived in by a family, and the children’s room and two unused rooms upstairs would be the bedrooms.  The fellowship room, which is open to the stairs would be an upstairs living room, something that is common with the villas around here.

There are about 20 to 30 people that come to the church.  Not everyone comes every week, of course.  Jeremy knows more about the history of the church than I do, so I’ll have to rely on him to correct any errors.  I believe the church was started a few years ago by some Americans.  At any rate, some Americans were heavily involved.  They’re supposed to be coming back for a visit sometime in May.  There was also a Lebanese guy involved who I believe was the pastor.  In fact, I think he’s still officially the pastor, but right now he’s in Lebanon pastoring his Lebanese church.

The man who does the pastoral duties, and whom I call the pastor (even though he says, “No, I am not the Pastor.”) is named Majdhi (uncertain of spelling) and is a doctor here in town.  He works at Salmaniya Hospital.  He is a general practictioner.  I was teasing him last night because he always brings one of those ear-examining devices that doctors have (don’t know what they’re called) because people tend to ask him medical device during the fellowship times after the services; he doesn’t seem to mind at all.  I teased him that he’d brought his favorite toy.  He laughed and said, “Yes, this is my favorite toy.”  Then he said I should see what he has at home.  And his wife looked at me, agreement in her eyes.  I just laughed.  So anyway, he is originally from Egypt.  He has two sons, Mark, 6, and Daniel, 2 (pronounced Dan-ee-yel).  His parents are here, living with him.  They don’t speak English, but they always smile at me.  Majdhi does the preaching and is generally in charge.  He’s the leader.  (If that’s not a pastor, what is?)

Then there is Abdullah, who told Jeremy to call him Yousef, but everyone at church calls him Abdullah.  He’s like Majdhi’s right-hand man.  He leads the Arabic singing.  He’s the one who took me and Jeremy out on the boat (yes, that “me” was correct English–hah!).  So if you look at the picture gallery, “Bahrain by boat,” you can see a picture of him.  He works in a bookstore at the Seef mall.  He’s also very good at working with his hands.  He built a boat out of fiberglass for this guy he knows, and he also fixed my bicycle.  He’s Bahraini.

There’s a few women who come.  There are two Hannahs.  One is also a doctor at Salmaniyah and is getting married in August.  Her fiance is Jordanian.  And that is where she is getting married.  So she probably won’t be around much afterwards.  That’s too bad.  She’s real nice and very pretty too.  The other Hannah (pronounced the Arabic way: Han-ah or Hun-ah) is Palestinian.  She’s very good at both Arabic and English.  I estimate she’s in her forties, so I kind of look up to her.  Another lady, I don’t know her name, comes every week very faithfully.  I’ve never seen her husband.  I don’t know her nationality, but her skin’s kind of light to be Bahraini.  (They have brown skin like Mexicans.  Other Middle Easterners, particularly those from the Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine area have white skin.)  She’s not very good at English.  She has two children, a boy who is probably about thirteen, named Cesar and a girl, 5, named Karen (pronounced Kahr-en).  Then there is the lady who translates the sermons whose name I don’t know, and another lady, whom I don’t know.

There’s also a lady named Fatima who comes sometimes.  She’s Bahraini, I think.  She’s very young and seems to be shy.  She has a little girl named Sarah (Sah-ra) who is less than two years old and who is a handful.  Her husband comes once in a great while.  She says he works all the time.  Two other families come sometimes.  I don’t know there names.  One has two small boys and the other has three children–a girl of about 8, a boy of about 4, and a little girl, named Sarah, who just turned 1.  Except for the baby, I don’t know any of their names.

So that’s it for the “Arabic contingent.”  Now for the “English contingent”:

There’s about 5 or 6 Philipino men who come.  I don’t know there names, but one of them leads the English singing.  And there are some Philipino women too–I don’t think any of them are married.  And some of these may be from other countries, too, like Thailand.  I know one woman is.  And there is a Malaysian couple that has come a few times.  There is an English man, named Peter.  He’s old enough to be a grandfather and probably is.  His wife, Noa (spelling? pronounced No-ay) is the woman from Thailand.  She’s real nice and has really befriended me.  I usually sit next to her in church.  Peter plays the piano when Jeremy isn’t there to do it.  But he much prefers Jeremy to do it, since it’s difficult for him to play and Jeremy is so much better.  I don’t think Jeremy minds either.  It’s actually not a piano, but one of those keyboard things some churches have.  It works, or at least it does now, ever since Jeremy fixed it by plugging the pedal into the right spot.  Jeremy and I are the only Americans in the church.

So you can see that the church is truly multi-national.  I think that’s cool.

Services are on Friday nights at 7:30 p.m.  Hope you all can come out (hah, hah, again).  They also have a prayer meeting on Sunday nights at the same time.  If you come on Sunday nights you get to hear people pray in Arabic and whatever other language they want to pray in.

So on Friday nights, here’s a typical service: They start with a welcome which is usually translated, and a prayer, which is usually in Arabic, and not translated.  Then they sing three Arabic songs, from the Arabic hymnal.  There is no musical accompaniment  and there are no notes written in the Arabic hymnal.  The people sing solely from memory.  Some of the songs have the same tunes as some of our hymns, but others are totally different.  During this the “English contingent” sits there quietly.  After this we sing two English hymns. We have hymnbooks, just like churches use in the States, that some church donated (as in their old hymnals–you can see the church stamp in the front of someof the hymnals).  The hymnals are kind of falling apartish but they work.  I really like being able to sing the songs I grew up with and am familiar with.  I often feel that the others aren’t as familiar with them as sometimes the singing is quiet and falters, especially when there’s no piano playing, which, with Jeremy gone, is often the case.  But everybody does the best they can.

After this if there is a special number (usually a group of men or women sing a song out of the hymnbook–and they call it a quartet, no matter how many are actually participating–mainly, I think, because it starts out a quartet and sometimes grows when participants try to get their friends to go up there with them–that’s happened to me) it is done here.

After this is the preaching.  The preaching is in Arabic.  But not to worry if you don’t speak Arabic.  The preaching is translated into English.  So what you do is you go to the back of the room, to the back row of chairs, where there is headphones on the chairs.  Actually, the “English contingent” being familiar with this, sit in the back already.  So around here, if you’re a “back row Baptist” that just means you don’t speak Arabic.  You put on the headphones and listen to the English translation of the sermon.  If there’s not enough headphones to go around (there’s eight, but I think one doesn’t work) you can go into the translation room and sit on the couch or chairs in there and listen to the sermon that way.  So in this church, someone getting up during the service and walking out doesn’t mean that he or she is offended.  It just means that his or her headphones weren’t working and he or she is going into the translation room in order to hear better.  Since it is a woman who does the translations (and I think she does a good job, considering it’s real-time translation), it was strange and took some getting used to hearing a woman’s voice speaking the sermon.

After the sermon, there is a prayer in Arabic, which is not translated.  After this there is usually a song or two.  The people come out of the translation room for this.  If one song, it’s in Arabic.  If two songs, one of each.  And this is the end of the service.

After the service everyone goes upstairs to the fellowship room.  The children are “released” fromt the children’s room and everyone mingles together and eats the snacks brought by the women and drinks coffee (they used to have Arabic coffee, but not anymore) and talks.  The service is over around 9:00 p.m. and the fellowship usually lasts to around 9:45 p.m.  For some reason I always hang around to the end; I never want to leave early.  So I usually make it home around 10:00 p.m. or a little later on days I don’t leave until around 10:00 p.m.

There’s a couple customs I didn’t mention that I thought strange when I first started coming.  (I still think it strange, but it’s part of the culture here, I guess.)  One is that women sit on one side of the church and men on the other.  And the other is that most of the women (and then mainly it’s the Arabic-speaking women) put a covering over their head during the service.  They look like triangular pieces of lace, most of them blue.  They keep them in a drawer in a cabinet on the wall.  So, no, it’s not like the scarves and such that the Muslim women wear.  And they only wear it during the actual service, not all the time like Muslim women.

Last night we got to hear a sermon in English.  All the Arabic speakers had to go to the back of the room (or to the translation room).  The man who spoke is from India.  He had one of his daughters with him who sang.  She’s also very beautiful.  He also had a man with him from South Africa (who was white, in case you were wondering).  They are both organizing a ten-day period of prayer for the nations by the church literally all over the world starting on the Day of Ascencion (sp?) and ending on the Day of Pentacost.  They had a huge map with them–9 ft tall by 13 ft long–which costs $150.00.  They hope to provide 1000 of these to churches around the world.  The maps are for if people want to pray for a specific nation and be able to place their hands on it while they’re praying for it.  Basically it’s a visual for people when they pray, if they want it.  It was very impressive.  When you looked and found Bahrain and saw how small it was in comparison to the rest of the world, you felt very insignificant indeed.  The only thing better for making you feel how small you are in comparison to the ginormousness of the world is a trans-ocean or trans-world trip, by ship or plane.

I think it’s awesome how people from all around the world, from so many different nations, are all believers, are all family, are all members of the body of Christ.  You could see the joy of Jesus in the faces of these brothers from India and South Africa.  And even though I’d never met them before (or anyone from South Africa) the fellowship with them was sweet.  I was able to talk with the man from South Africa afterwards (his name is Gary) and he was an encouragment to me.  I really needed to hear what he had to say.  It’s so neat how God puts people in your path right when you need them.  And how they can be people from the other side of the world, people from a different culture and country, people you would have never met save for your common bond in Christ.  There is truly a world-wide universal church, and it’s so neat to be a part of it.  And it’s here in Bahrain, too.  And not just at my church.  There are other churches in Bahrain.  Perhaps the biggest is the Catholic Church (no surprise there), but there are other like-minded (to mine) churches too.  I didn’t catch the name, but Gary is presently living here in Bahrain and goes to one such church.

I don’t know how many churches there are in Bahrain.  I do know that our church doesn’t have official status.  When the church leaders went to apply for it they were told, “You already have fifty churches [or was it forty?  I forget].  What do you need another one for?”  But there are way more than fifty mosques, and they are building new ones all the time.  But it would be very unpolitic and unwise to point this out and say, “Why do you need another mosque?”  On the other hand, for the Middle East, Bahrain does have religious freedom, and we can be thankful for that.  So far the only harrassment we’ve had is about parking.  The people who live in the other two villas in the compound like to call the landlord and complain about us parking too many cars in the compound.  We always make sure we leave them room to get to their villas, but they still like to complain.  They would prefer us to all park out on the street, I think.  So I always do park out on the street, even though it’s a little scary out there since the compound’s not in a very nice area of town.  It’s in a Shiite neighborhood.  Shiites have been historically oppressed in Bahrain and even today they are in a lower socio-economic status than the Sunnis (as in they’re poor).  So this is a poor neighborhood and just like poor neighborhoods in the States the people can be very distrustful of outsiders and even rough.  But so far I’ve been safe every time I’ve come to church.  And nothing has happened to my car, either.  So don’t worry about me.  I think as long as I continue to lock my doors and be aware of my surroundings, I’ll be fine.  And remember, God is a better protector than a bodyguard or gun or whatever could ever be.

So that’s everything about my church I can think of for right now.  Any questions, please feel free to ask.