Saturday I went to the BSPCA or the Bahrain Animal Shelter.  No, I was not looking for a pet, although I wanted to take a bunch of them home with me.  I went with a friend to volunteer there.  The first thing we did was go into the Cat House and help out there.  There was a staff member sweeping and mopping the cages.  We went behind him and put in the food and water and the litter boxes and beds.  And of course we petted the cats too.  There was a Persian there that looked very funny as it had recently received a haircut.  I never knew they got haircuts.  I hope it looks good when it finally grows out.  There was one cat brought in while I was there.  I never found out why.  Some of the cats had been there since August.  One was such a sweetheart she let me carry her around.  I don’t know why she was there so long.  If I could, I’d adopt her.  But I live in a “no pets” apartment.  There were a few kittens there too.  I expect they’ll go quickly.

After the cats we helped walk the dogs.  The dogs are not kept in kennels but in large pens.  There are around 8-10 dogs in each pen.  It’s easier to walk all the dogs in a pen at the same time instead of individually.  If you know dogs you’ll know why.  If you don’t know dogs, it’s because dogs are like people–they get jealous if they think someone else is getting something they’re not.  Fortunately for them on Saturday there’s usually a lot of volunteers.  So everyone takes one dog and thus the whole pen gets walked at once.  On the other days of the week the staff have to do it when they get time so maybe only one pen gets walked a day.  Even on Saturday, when every dog gets walked, there is still a lot of walking.  That is because there is a lot of pens and a lot of dogs.  It would be easy to spend two hours just walking dogs.

All the dogs seemed small to me, but maybe that’s because I’m used to seeing the big German Shepherd military working dogs on base.  These at the shelter looked to be from 30-40 pounds–so in the medium range of dog size.  They were also mutts and most skinny.  The only one I that didn’t look skinny was the one that looked like a rottweiler, and those dogs don’t look skinny.  My friend said a lot of the dogs had some saluki in them, and saluki is a skinny breed of dog.  There were also a lot of puppies there.  Most were half grown.  But they were all cute and definitely wanted attention.  If I were to be able to get a pet it would be hard to pick out just one.  They all need a good home.

Even though it was hard to leave the animals there, I enjoyed volunteering there and would like to go back.  It was fun being around all those animals that just wanted some care and attention.  But then I like animals, particularly dogs.

Later the same Saturday, I went to taekwondo.  I’d missed two weeks from being out of town and having a migraine.  I’ve had a lot of problems with migraines lately.  I don’t usually get this many.  I had one Saturday night too, but I took my medicine and went anyway.  I didn’t end up staying the whole time.  Maybe it was just as well.  My medicine tends to make me dizzy, and he was having us do these exercises that involved turning around (and around), which is enough to make you dizzy anyway.  Once I spun around too fast and ended up on my face on the mat.  I didn’t even realize I was falling until I was lying face down!  I wasn’t hurt.  That’s why we practice on mats.  The teacher applauded.  That’s what he does every time someone falls.  He says it’s so they don’t feel bad.  It does make it easier to laugh it off.  And it was funny.  I wish I could have seen myself.  I probably looked funny flying around and landing on my face.  So now I can officially say I’ve had my first fall in taekwondo.

The klutziness doesn’t end there.  Yesterday when I was riding my bike home from work I wiped out.  That means I came as close to falling down as makes no difference.  I tried to jump a curb and failed.  I guess I need to find some ten-year-old boy and have him teach me how to do it.  They all know, right?  So I scraped some skin off my knee.  It bled a little bit and hurt some too.  But as both my mom and Jeremy’s mom like to say in situations like this–I’ll live.  The ironic thing was that my senior chief talked to us about bicycle safety at work just that morning.  He’d said that even though it’s not required, we should wear long pants and long sleeves when riding.  I thought that was ridiculous, especially with Bahrain’s climate, but guess what?  I wasn’t wearing pants.  But will this encourage me to wear pants in the future?  Probably not.  So have I learned my lesson?  That would be a negative.  I have learned not to jump curbs.  Does that count for anything?

Well that’s all I can think of for the exciting things that have been happening in my life lately.  In blogging news I took down the “dead” widget from the sidebar.  It’s supposed to tell you the temperature in Bahrain.  It’s really cool, but it stopped working, and I don’t know why.  So I will wait until my computer guru husband comes back and hopefully he can get it working again.  Until then, I put a search bar up in its place.  I figured I have enough posts now that if someone were looking for one it would be annoying to page through all the archives; they should be able to search for what they want.  I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know how well it works.  It’s also rather ugly.  Sorry.  Nothing I can do about that.

That’s all, folks.  I’m off to bake a cake–Triple Chocolate Hot Fudge Cake.  All you have to do is add water.  Sounds easy and delicious.  I love chocolate.  I’d share if there were some way to send it electronically. 

So here’s an update on the news in my life:

In early February Jeremy came home for a couple of days.  That was a surprise.  He literally didn’t know until the day he came home that he would be able to.  So my Valentine’s Day came early this year.

Two weeks ago I passed a “test” in Taekwondo and now am at the next level–yellow belt.  I was at the white before which is the beginning level.  So I say I was at the baby stage before and now I’m at the toddler stage.  I had to do Poomse (two syllables–the “e” is like the “e” in “cafe”) number 1 to pass.  This is a form–a sequence of movements.  It was really hard for me to learn–it took me about a month–so I’m really proud that I know it now. Taekwondo continues to be challenging but fun.  I think I understand now why so many parents put their children in it.  I’ve noticed it teaches two things: how to take constructive criticism and how to keep on trying.  That last one encompasses not giving up as well as learning you can do things you thought you couldn’t do.  An example: like the day, right after our warm-up, when the teacher handed us jump-ropes and said, “I do not have time for a 1000, so give me 500.”  I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  But he wasn’t, so we had to jump the rope 500 times.  I didn’t think it was possible.  I didn’t think I could do it.  But I did.

A few days ago Jeremy again came home, this time for a little over 3 days. He arrived Saturday and had to be back on his ship Tuesday night.  It was great having him here.  While here he threw a party for some of the people on his ship that he’s become friends with.  That was my first time entertaining and it turned out not to be too bad.  There were about 16 people there.  We ordered pizza to feed everybody, so I didn’t have to cook (Yay!  I’m a lousy cook, and I didn’t have enough food in the house to feed that many people anyway.)  They played the Wii (the “rabbid” game is a lot of fun) and played board games and cards or just talked.  They kept talking about how they wanted to steal our couches and beds (we have two extra beds, and one guy did take a nap–and knowing ship working schedules, I’m sure he needed it).  I totally understood them as I’ve lived on a ship.  Comfort is not in short supply on a ship–it’s absent.  And coffin racks are just that–the size of a coffin.  Imagine sleeping in a bed for months that you can’t sit up in and when you turn over you bang against the wall or your curtains (which are the only way you get any privacy).  And how about having nowhere to sit but on a stool or bench (found on the mess decks, which is what the “dining hall” is called) or in a chair.  And the chairs aren’t very comfortable either.  I’m sure it was nice to be able to look at a wall or ceiling that didn’t have pipes running along it either.  The pipes were what I disliked most about ship decor.  I know why they’re out in the open–so you can get to them easily when you need to fix them–but they just bugged me.  They’re so ugly.  No matter how much you paint them, they’re still ugly.  So I’m glad we could provide them a comfortable place to come to for a few hours.  I found out later that it was originally supposed to be only about six or or so people and that one of those had invited somebody else (apparently with Jeremy’s knowledge and permission) who invited other people (apparently without Jeremy’s knowledge or permission) and even went back to base to get still more people.  One of the guys Jeremy had invited seemed quite upset over this imposition and apologized to me about it.  I understood his position, but for some reason it didn’t bother me.  Maybe if they’d stayed longer or been more of a bother or maybe if it’d happened more than just that one night, but as it was it was okay.  I just felt like I was doing a service to them as I know what it’s like to live on a ship and how it can be nice to get away for a few hours and see the inside of a house once again.  So it was okay.  And the original group, which are the people Jeremy directly works with on the ship, are nice people and really like him a lot.  So I felt like I was leaving him in good hands, as it were.  I’m glad Jeremy’s been accepted by the crew of that ship.  That doesn’t always happen with riders (temporarily assigned people).

I still go to church.  I don’t know if I mentioned it, but it’s the Arabic/English church.  It’s called First Baptist Church of Bahrain.  I worked with the kids a couple of times.  It’s a combination nursery and Sunday School.  There’s a couple of two-year-olds and a five and six-year-old and a couple of other ones that come occasionally.  So the “Sunday School” part is basically a preschool level.  And since church is an hour and a half long they have to be kept busy or entertained.  So they get a Bible story–in Arabic usually, but when I’m there in English.  Fortunately they all understand English, even the two-year-old, at least he does as well as a two-year-old understands anything.  And after that they play.  I’d like to teach them some kid’s songs.  They don’t know any and neither do the adults, apparently.  While there’s Arabic hymns, apparently there are no Arabic kid’s songs.  The only song they know is “Go Tell It on the Mountain” which they were taught at Christmas.  (Apparently there are no Arabic Christmas songs either.)  Their regular teachers (different women take turns with the kids) taught them to say Psalm 23 in Arabic.  They came downstairs and recited it for the adults last week, the proud parents snapping pictures with their cell phone cameras.  I have pictures of a couple of the kids.  I’ll have to post them once I figure out how to do that.  I tried to do it, but it didn’t work.  And my “computer administrator” is not here right now.

That’s all the news I can think of right now.  I’ll try to write more regularly from now on.  Although, I’m warning you, if I can’t think of anything to write, I might just copy something into the blog–like a hymn or a local news article.  The only thing is the local news article would probably be plagiarism so I probably couldn’t do that.  We’ll have to see.  Or I’ll inflict philosophy on you.  I think I’ll do that anyway.  I like philosophy.  I always have.  I don’t know why most people don’t.  So be warned.  Or whatever.  See you.