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.

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.)

Oh, I forgot one other sign of spring.  The robins are back.  That was always my favorite sign of spring.  (My least favorite being dandylions.)  The robins always come first of all the birds.  They come when it’s stil cold out and sometimes still snow on the ground.  For the first week or so you see them walking around their feathers fluffed up to keep warm, looking like little brown and red fluffy balls.  You wonder, “Why didn’t you stay south for an extra week, bird?  Didn’t you know it was still cold here?”  But then it warms up, and they are fine.  I always liked to look for them.  For me sighting the first robin of spring was a moment to celebrate.  For me that signalled the end of winter (much more so than some groundhog in February) and the beginning of spring.  Sometimes I like to think that the robins brought spring; that if they didn’t come back then spring wouldn’t come.  I like robins.  I think they’re my favorite bird.

There are no robins in Bahrain.  But we do have flowers.  The red and purple and white petunias around base are particularly pretty.  And we have warm weather.  It’s still a little cool in the mornings, but by midday it warms up so that you can run around in a short-sleeved shirt and be comfortable.  That is, to me.  Other people say it’s hot.  I say to them, “Just wait.”  After last summer, it’s not hot unless sweat is running down your back and your face at the same time less than five minutes after you step outside and you feel like you need to drink a gallon of water a day.

But right now it’s absolutely beautiful weather.  I’m really enjoying this time of year.  Of course, spring is my favorite time of year.  Oh, correction to above: if in Illinois my least favorite part of spring is rain.  It doesn’t just rain in Illinois; it rains for two to three weeks straight–every day.  That gets old, real fast.  But otherwise, it’s beautiful.  And there are lots of robins.

Happy spring, everyone!

What do you like about spring?

I’ve been here since the end of June and this is the first time it has rained (that I know of).

It started as people were leaving church.  The kids were so excited.  They acted just like small children back home do when it snows for the first time that year.  They insisted on going out and playing in it.

It didn’t last very long.  By the time I left it had stopped, except for a slight drizzle.  So I didn’t get wet.

But it rained.  Can you believe it?

It is also the Land of the Two Seas. Why? “Bahrain” means “two seas” in Arabic. What are the two seas? The locals tell us visitors that there are fresh water springs that come up from the ocean floor near Bahrain. The two seas refers to both this fresh water and the ocean’s salt water. Interestingly, locals call fresh water “sweet water.” So the two seas are sweet and salty water.

You will notice a weather “widget” on this blog. It tells you the current weather here in Bahrain. It also shows you whether it’s night or day here because at night it will show a picture of the moon. I think this will be interesting for you because you’ll be able to see at a glance at any time just how different my time is from you and perhaps also my weather. For those of you living in North America (which as far as I know is all my readers right now) my weather is considerably warmer than your own (although I’m told it does get cold in January and February).

Enough weather report. Here are some facts about Bahrain:

• It is a kingdom and has a king.
• Its time zone is GMT +3. For reference Eastern Standard Time zone in the U.S. is GMT -5. GMT being of course Greenwich Mean Time or 0.
• It is a bilingual country, both Arabic and English. Everywhere signs are in both languages and the people speak both usually.
• Its religion is Islam.
• There are other religions here, too. Christianity is one of them. Yes, some Arabs are Christian. My husband and I attend a local church. The services are in both Arabic and English. We find this to be interesting.
• There are a lot of what Americans call TCNs here, Third Country Nationals. These are people, mostly men, from nearby countries, like India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Thailand. This is not necessarily a complete list. These people come to work in the restaurants, hotels, construction, and similar “blue-collar” jobs. These people come here for economic opportunity, but the average restaurant worker makes 100 dinar a month. That is equivalent to $266 a month.
• There seems to be either rich or poor here. I haven’t really noticed a middle class. People can afford to live in nice villas or apartments where the rent is three or four times the restaurant worker’s monthly wage or they are that restaurant worker.
• That being said this is a very booming place. There’s construction all over the place, all the time. Most of what is being built is high-rises. They are also building new land–they actually create it from the sea, I guess by dumping dirt into the water.

That’s enough facts for now. I could go one, but this post is long enough already. In closing I want to thank you for coming along on my journey, for sharing my thoughts and adventures. I hope you have a wonderful day! May God bless you!