Where am I?

There are certain things here that are different, as you might expect, from what we're used to in the States. Of course, that's part of the experience of doing this kind of thing ... learning the way the world works in places other than what I've known all my life. A lot of those kinds of differences are small, interesting little things that come up and you quickly understand and get used to. For example, I know that when I get in the shower in the morning, I have to let the water run before I get in ... not so that it will warm up, but to give it a minute to cool down to below scalding (that was a quick lesson ... that first shower, I turned on the water and was delighted that initially it was a perfect temperature to jump right into ... 2 seconds later I was out of that shower, dripping all over the floor, checking for 3rd degree burns).

Then, I guess a more "cultural" difference is the lack of closets in the houses. I thought at first it was just our house, but I'm understanding that no one really has any closets. It's just the way they design houses around here. People may not have a lot of clothes or crap they want to store away (certainly, what to do with your 9-foot Christmas tree for 11 months out of the year isn't a big issue for the Arabs). It seems the whole "I have too much stuff and need to shove it away out of sight but I don't really want to get rid of any of it" deal may be more of an American thing.

But, here people have cupboards and dressers and armoires that they use to put their things when they aren't actually using them. Interesting little tid-bit.


But, there is a really big difference that seems hard for me to adjust to. Here, no one knows where anything is. You can't show someone a map and say "where are we on this?" They don't know. It's not any wonder, really, since there are only like 3 streets on the island that even have names. Here's an illustration ... our address is Villa #11, Gate #582, Rd #2619, BarBar 526, Kingdom of Bahrain. Go ahead and plug that into Google maps and see what you come up with ... I'll wait. Did you find us? No? Hmmmm ... neither can the water company who we have water delivery contracted with. Of course, our house number is a little confusing from the start.

Here is a picture of our front gate (yes ... those are our water bottles that have been sitting there on the porch for 2 days waiting for the water people to find us)... what number would you think our house number was? If you said "15", you'd agree with 100% of the people out here, even the people that own the place, but the actual number that is our address is the small little "11" in the blue rectangle on the left hand side. Completely obvious!

But, all addresses out here are like ours ... a list of numbers. The post office won't even try to figure any of it out ... everyone has a PO box for their mail. Everything is found by way of landmarks. If you call a shop and say "where are you located" they don't say "we're at 110 North Shaikh Ave" ... they first say "where are you coming from?" and they then say "well, you go to the McDonald's roundabout and come back the other way, then take the 2nd right just past the gas station and once you see the bakery on the left start looking for the purple 'buckle your seatbelt' sign and just past that on the left is a dirt road that will take you down to us ... we'll be on the right". No one knows what road they are on. When we were still trying to hunt down a car for me, there was one we wanted to look at but we couldn't find the dealership. Van called to find out where they were and the guy who answered the phone didn't even know how to tell him. From him, we didn't even get the standard "where are you coming from?" He DID tell us they were way past the mosque (like there aren't 20 of those in any given area). We gave up on that car.

Yesterday we decided to drive around and go see the Tree of Life ... a national icon. Yes, I did say "national icon" ... that isn't on the map. Well, I take that back, it had an illustration of it on the map down at the bottom of the island with one road going to it. Of course, we couldn't find it. It IS out in the middle of the desert "nowhere", so when we came to some kind of security shack that made no sense we asked them and two different people couldn't tell us. And, of course, when we showed them the map and asked them to point out there where we were at the moment, they completely disregarded it. We gave up the Tree of Life ghost for the time being. When it cools down and the kids are in school, I may go out on a solo adventure and see what I can find. That will be an interesting blog, I'm sure.

If you want to know where I am right now, if you're coming from Manama, head toward Saar on the Budaiya highway, just after the 1st roundabout past the Country Mall, start looking for the "to Saudi Arabia" sigh on the right ... you'll turn right past that at the Rose Cafe sign (if you get to McDonald's roundabout, you've gone too far). At the Jawad Dome, stay to the right and just follow that down past the Japanese Ambassador's house on the left until the road Ts off ... there you take a left and just past the auto repair place start looking for a little road off to the right ... it will have a Manama Resorts sign, but you really have to look for it, or you could miss it because it's a small road ... take that right and we'll be down at the end of the road on the right ... just tell Mamu at the Sercurty gate that you're coming to see the Brackins in Villa #15 ... or is it #11?