Made it to Manama

So, we have made it to Manama!

We still do not have Internet, so I cannot post any pictures yet. I am posting this from the embassy today. As soon as we get the Internet up we will post some pictures.

So, a little about the trip here and the first week settling in. The actual travel to Manama was pretty uneventful. I actually slept most of the way and Steve wasn't that far behind me on the hours of sleep. When we switched planes in Frankfurt it was about 45 degrees there. When we got off the plane in Manama is was about 85 degrees here!

Our sponsors picked us up and took us to our new home, which is is a quiet gated neighborhood in the suburbs of Manama. We arrived at the beginning of the Bahrain weekend, so we actually had two days to explore before Steve had to start work. On Friday we were taken out by our sponsors for lunch and a trip to the Navy Base, which has a Navy Exchange on it - a great place to buy some American things. On Saturday we drove around and got a little lost in Manama - we ended up driving through the Souk, which is one lane and surrounded by shops and people walking around. Locals do not drive through there - we felt a little silly!

Sunday was Steve's first day of work, and I was suppose to come along to get badged in and meet some of the embassy personnel. Everyone has been extremely nice to us here, and very helpful.

So, some of you have already received some of these interesting tidbits, but I have tried to add some new ones:

1. Driving here is CRAZY! The Bahrain people are very nice, but once you get on the road with them - watch out! The best is that the roads have tons of roundabouts - thanks to the British influence here - so along with crazy driving, we have to deal with those too. They also have the traffic lights that flash yellow before the green light comes on, and the zig-zag lines before a stop light like in London. The main difference from the Brits is that they do drive on the right side of the road here.

2. The island is very small. It is about 3 times the size of DC, so if it takes you more than an hour to get somewhere, you are probably lost. It takes us about 20-30 min to get to the embassy. Everyone here complains about how long it takes to get in from where we live - I think it is great though - that commute from Washington to Baltimore has made me jaded about traffic!

3. The grocery stores "on the economy" (which means not at the Navy Base) do serve Western food, but most of it is British. It is like shopping in a weird version of the supermarket in Leeds. All the same biscuits and candies and things like that. Vegetables are very expensive at the grocery stores though - I think we paid about four dollars for two peppers, and a small container of raspberries is about six dollars.

Let's see - in other news, we have received our local cable TV - it is called Orbit. We watched Meerkat Manor last night on Animal Planet. Cori and Jason told us about it (hi Glucks!), and so we got a little hooked last night. It is this goofy show that follows the life of these Meerkats in the wild. Think soap opera - Animal Planet style. There are about 16 English channels. They showed Gilmore Girls too (that information is for Grammy L.) - but they showed it with subtitles in Arabic - you would have to be the world's fastest reader to understand. We are waiting for our AFN box from the Navy - it takes some time - but after we get that we can get ESPN and some other US channels - go FOOTBALL!!!!

Anyways - I have to run, my ride is leaving the embassy, but I will post a part deux soon......sorry so long - we will try and be more frequent and slower.