So, the internet is up at home! And, you know what that means - No, not porn, but Vonage! That's right, for a limited time only (as in as long as we're here/at home), you can call us just as if we were in the States! Please, please, please check the clock on the blog before you make that fateful call, though. Nobody wants to talk to me after waking me up in the middle of the night, not even Katie.
So, for those of you who know, we came up with a great way of determining if we're awake (outside of using the blog clock). It's really quite simple, we call it the James and Erica method. If Erica is going to bed, we're waking up. When James is going to work, I'm getting home. When Erica's normally scheduled workday is done, we're going to bed! See, it's simple!
Ok, so on to some other news. Some work news, perhaps?
On Thursday, we attended a reception at the Japanese Ambassador's residence for the new Japanese Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM). The DCM is the second in charge of the embassy, and, when the Ambassador's out of the country, acting Ambassador, or Charge' de Affairs. So, we went to this reception, and had a love-ly time. While not quite the most junior there in rank, we probably were in age! There were a number of ambassadors, DCMs, and various individuals from some small embassies. I got to use my Arabic, and Katie "got" to sit and chat with the ladies all night. What fun! The best part was that they had sushi! Unfortunately, some of the Arabs didn't know how to use chopsticks, so we helped as best as we could.
There are 3 Steve's in my office. There's Steve B., S., and J. We've been going by full names, "Hey, Steve Jacob, I got something for you!" But, I've come up with a better way: Steve B - the Boss. Steve S - Senior, and Steve J - Junior! There's another Steve in a different section, but he's Steve M., and I can't figure out how to work that in.
There's also a Steve Jacobs. Steve Jacobs is a Tunisian street dog. I haven't met him, yet, but I'm looking forward to it, even if his mommy says he's mean.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, October 5, 2007
New Format
You've probably noticed new additions to our little Blog. This is, as always, a work in progress. If you have other recommendations on things to add, let us know, and we'll do our best to figure out how to put them up here. (Yup, we're talking about a Flickr account so we can post more pictures!)
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Back to Arabic
Ladies and gentlemen, the backlog is gone! That's right, you can get your very own new passport, and quickly, too!
Why do we mention this?
Well, the answer is because it means Steve is back in class, learning (or relearning, as the case may be) Arabic. His new test is on October 18, so wish him much luck and success, because there's $$ in it for him if he does really well.
Tomorrow is Katie's last day at Barton Malow. This company, where she's worked since graduating, is sorry to see her go, but has been wonderful about helping her find employment in Bahrain and beyond.
After numerous SNAFUs with State Department Medical, they have Katie's records and promise us a clearance in the next few days. This is good, because when that's done, we should get orders, which we need in order to get Diplomatic Passports, get State to pay to pack up all of our stuff, and to get our tickets.
We just recieved pictures of all of our furniture in the new home - most of it's "18th century", a lot of dark wood and the like. It'll probably look even better in person! Now, we just have to go through all of our stuff and find out what we're going to take with us.
Why do we mention this?
Well, the answer is because it means Steve is back in class, learning (or relearning, as the case may be) Arabic. His new test is on October 18, so wish him much luck and success, because there's $$ in it for him if he does really well.
Tomorrow is Katie's last day at Barton Malow. This company, where she's worked since graduating, is sorry to see her go, but has been wonderful about helping her find employment in Bahrain and beyond.
After numerous SNAFUs with State Department Medical, they have Katie's records and promise us a clearance in the next few days. This is good, because when that's done, we should get orders, which we need in order to get Diplomatic Passports, get State to pay to pack up all of our stuff, and to get our tickets.
We just recieved pictures of all of our furniture in the new home - most of it's "18th century", a lot of dark wood and the like. It'll probably look even better in person! Now, we just have to go through all of our stuff and find out what we're going to take with us.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Sticking Around
So, over the last few weeks, Steve's been hearing rumors of a passport taskforce at State Department. You might be asking What's a Passport Taskforce? and What's Steve got to do with that? Well, the answer is simple. Congress decided that effective January 20-something of 2007, ALL US citizens needed a passport in order to get back into the US, even if they were just hopping across to Tijuana for a donkey show and coming back that night. Unfortunately, Congress didn't think to give State Dept more money to hire people to process all of these passports, nor did anybody in Congress (or maybe even at State) think about how big a percentage of the 300+ US citizens didn't have a passport and might want one (Those donkey shows are tight, or so I, uhh, hear!)
So, in January and February, as Americans started hearing from their friends that they needed a passport to travel ("What?! You mean they ain't gonna accept my driver's license no more? Damn Government. I'm gonna go join me one of them militias; this way, if they track me down, at least I'll be more heavily armed!"), they started submitting applications. Can you imagine what happens to a system that's used to processing 20,000 applications when it gets flooded with 20,000,000? The wait time rocketed up past the "normal" 6 weeks to something approximating 2 years... State, however, had a solution. They decided to recruit State's highly trained and overworked Foreign Service Officers, especially the ones in training in DC, and pay them overtime to come in and either adjudicate passports or answer phones from Americans who want to know where their passport is in the process.
Unfortunately, they didn't get enough volunteers. Something about important missions abroad and being understaffed and overworked in the embassies or something. I'm not really sure. So, State decided to pull from those people who were most available - the Junior Officers who were already in DC, in training, getting ready to go to Post. While these JO's aren't the only ones being picked (not by a long shot), they are the group that most affects Steve. So, after hearing rumors of people getting told (as little as a week before they're supposed to head out to Post) that they have been assigned to the "Taskforce" and, instead of Iceland, would be going to New Orleans or Portsmouth, Steve decided to find out for himself.
On that fateful day when he spoke to his Career Development Officer about the Taskforce, he was told, "We're going through the list of everybody who's at FSI (The Foreign Service Institute, where diplomats are trained) and selecting those who have some time and we can assign to the taskforce. Post is being told to 'Suck it up' and will just have to deal with being shortstaffed."
So, now at the top of the list (owing to his curiosity), Steve has been assigned to the Passport Taskforce from August until Mid-October. The plus side is that this gives us time to get Katie "in the system," and get her medical clearance so we can travel together. The other plus side is that we'll be staying right here in DC.
Ya'll come visit now, ya hear? You don't need a passport to get here, just to Bahrain!
So, in January and February, as Americans started hearing from their friends that they needed a passport to travel ("What?! You mean they ain't gonna accept my driver's license no more? Damn Government. I'm gonna go join me one of them militias; this way, if they track me down, at least I'll be more heavily armed!"), they started submitting applications. Can you imagine what happens to a system that's used to processing 20,000 applications when it gets flooded with 20,000,000? The wait time rocketed up past the "normal" 6 weeks to something approximating 2 years... State, however, had a solution. They decided to recruit State's highly trained and overworked Foreign Service Officers, especially the ones in training in DC, and pay them overtime to come in and either adjudicate passports or answer phones from Americans who want to know where their passport is in the process.
Unfortunately, they didn't get enough volunteers. Something about important missions abroad and being understaffed and overworked in the embassies or something. I'm not really sure. So, State decided to pull from those people who were most available - the Junior Officers who were already in DC, in training, getting ready to go to Post. While these JO's aren't the only ones being picked (not by a long shot), they are the group that most affects Steve. So, after hearing rumors of people getting told (as little as a week before they're supposed to head out to Post) that they have been assigned to the "Taskforce" and, instead of Iceland, would be going to New Orleans or Portsmouth, Steve decided to find out for himself.
On that fateful day when he spoke to his Career Development Officer about the Taskforce, he was told, "We're going through the list of everybody who's at FSI (The Foreign Service Institute, where diplomats are trained) and selecting those who have some time and we can assign to the taskforce. Post is being told to 'Suck it up' and will just have to deal with being shortstaffed."
So, now at the top of the list (owing to his curiosity), Steve has been assigned to the Passport Taskforce from August until Mid-October. The plus side is that this gives us time to get Katie "in the system," and get her medical clearance so we can travel together. The other plus side is that we'll be staying right here in DC.
Ya'll come visit now, ya hear? You don't need a passport to get here, just to Bahrain!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Wedding Day - June 16, 2007
Hello All!
So, this is my first post. I thought I would start with the event that precipitated my receiving the blog as a gift in the first place - our wedding!
Steve and I had an unbelievable time! It was so much fun. On the Friday before the wedding we had our rehearsal and then a fabulous time at the "Pre-Ring Fling". It was a great party and a wonderful time to catch up with friends and family before the big day. There was dancing, singing and lots of fun.
I left at a reasonable hour that evening, but Steve and our friends and family did not disappoint me by staying up and enjoying some tasty beverage....scotch to be exact. So I was not surprised on Saturday morning at the salon when I heard "Do you know how drunk your fiance got my son/ husband/ brother/ etc. It would appear the ladies knew how to hold their liquor a little bit better.
We were lucky and had an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day on Saturday. The actual ceremony was a little bit late, but otherwise it went off without a hitch. We had a great time seeing everyone, dancing and enjoying the evening. Everything turned out great!
So - the ways you know it was a Jacob/Lynahan wedding?
Well, the first is that we started late (although this was actually not mine or Steve's fault - shocker!) and the 2nd was our programs - I not only did not spell check the programs very well, I also did not verify exactly when I was getting married. Mis-spelling Pachebel's Cannon seems like a not so big deal when your 200 programs say "July 16th" rather then "June 16th" Whoops - the best part is that I didn't even notice, even when we were folding all of them!
We did check the engraving on our rings after we realized the programs were wrong. We got those right at least!
So, this is my first post. I thought I would start with the event that precipitated my receiving the blog as a gift in the first place - our wedding!
Steve and I had an unbelievable time! It was so much fun. On the Friday before the wedding we had our rehearsal and then a fabulous time at the "Pre-Ring Fling". It was a great party and a wonderful time to catch up with friends and family before the big day. There was dancing, singing and lots of fun.
I left at a reasonable hour that evening, but Steve and our friends and family did not disappoint me by staying up and enjoying some tasty beverage....scotch to be exact. So I was not surprised on Saturday morning at the salon when I heard "Do you know how drunk your fiance got my son/ husband/ brother/ etc. It would appear the ladies knew how to hold their liquor a little bit better.
We were lucky and had an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day on Saturday. The actual ceremony was a little bit late, but otherwise it went off without a hitch. We had a great time seeing everyone, dancing and enjoying the evening. Everything turned out great!
So - the ways you know it was a Jacob/Lynahan wedding?
Well, the first is that we started late (although this was actually not mine or Steve's fault - shocker!) and the 2nd was our programs - I not only did not spell check the programs very well, I also did not verify exactly when I was getting married. Mis-spelling Pachebel's Cannon seems like a not so big deal when your 200 programs say "July 16th" rather then "June 16th" Whoops - the best part is that I didn't even notice, even when we were folding all of them!
We did check the engraving on our rings after we realized the programs were wrong. We got those right at least!
Monday, June 18, 2007
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