How do we get there?

As most of you know, when I get and give directions, I like to use landmarks - road names - hah! I don't need no stinking road names!

Well, boy did I come to the right place. The only way you can give directions here is by landmarks. The secondary raods here are all numbers - there is no Oak Street or Maple Lane. You would live at Road 3435. And good luck finding the sign for it.

The main roads are like the States - named after famous people. But for most of us Westerners, who are used to Martin Luther King Blvd. being shortended to MLK and Thomas Jefferson Avenue being just Jefferson, it can get a little confusing when the names are hard to shorten because they are so similar like "Shiekh Khalifa Bin Salman Highway" or "Sheikh Isa Bin Salman Highway" or "Sheikh Salman Highway". All different roads (and different people). Like naming one road John Adams Aveune and the one right next to it John Quincy Adams Avenue.

Anyways, yesterday we received an invitation for directions to a friends house. The directions were so funny and typical Bahrain. Below is a modified version:

"Take Highway that leads to Saudi to the KFC roundabout (that is what I call it). Turn on Jazayer or Jazier road (it doesn’t have a sign so it really doesn’t matter how I spell it). Once you pass the Jazayer Mosque take the first right (You can’t actually see the road-thanks to the sand, so my landmark is the gas station across the street). Follow that road (known as road 4231 – but you won’t see that sign for a while)… as I said, follow that road, it will curve to the right, go over a speed bump, you’ll pass an abandoned shop, go over 1 more speed bump and then my compound will be on the left. I’ll try to put a few balloons outside but I’m not sure how long they’ll last out there."

These are actually really good Bahrain directions - we should have no problem finding it!