Boring Week!

Well, I have nothing to report this week. Odd, I know! It was just a regular, quiet, event-free week. I like having a week like this every once-in-a-while. We're all good. Work's good. There's a sandstorm today so driving is tough, as is breathing. Luckily, we're home. I have a very sore throat. It's been so windy! Hard to wear a dress or skirt with this wind!

Next week I will take the week off from the blog for my birthday! I'm sure that I'll have TONS to report the following week. I guess that I do have one bit of news. As of the 4th of April, we'll have been here for 6-months!

Until I talk to you again in a couple of weeks, stay well!

Seabee and Basket Balls

Last night was the first ever Seabee Ball in Bahrain. It was a huge success. There are only about 60 Seabees here (mostly without their spouses), however 300 people attended the Ball. It was held outdoors, ironically at the first place we stayed when we arrived before being kicked out because of Benny. It's a gorgeous place. The food was amazing. It was served buffet style. They had a grill going with kabob & kofta, whole leg of lambs hanging over the flame rotisseree style, tons of salads, grape leaves, Indian foods and all the usual condiments (hummus, baba ghanoush, yogurt salad, etc...) plus an amazing spread of desserts. My only complaint....no coffee. I spent the day getting my hair, brows & toes done. I should not have spent a penny on my hair, because it was so windy that within 2-seconds (no exaggeration) my hair was messed up. My dress was flying up like crazy. I couldn't really walk around. When I went to get my food, I wrapped my pajmina around my hips to hold my dress down. I needed my hands! About 5-minutes into the meal, believing I was clever, I decided I would go use the bathroom because 100% there would be a line within 15-20 minutes when everyone was finished eating. I got up and walked toward the entrance to the building. The doors leading into the building were right behind the main table where the Admiral & his wife were sitting as well as the guest of honor who flew in from California just for this and some other important people. Well, just as I went to pull the door opened, my left foot somehow slipped & I landed flat on my left buttock. Luckily, I am well padded there. I was so embarrassed. All these people at the table jumped up to help me but I jumped up myself and pretended that I was fine. I was in so much pain!!!!! Luckily nothing was broken. I went and did my thing & then found my way back to our table (After getting lost in the building & the security guard showing me where to go. I have always been directionally challenged). I told Scott what happened and he did his usual head shaking & told me to be more careful. He didn't appear shocked. I could not fully explain to him the drama of what had just happened...in front of so many people! Oh well. This morning, I am so sore on my left buttock. It hurts to sit, stand & walk. As I woke-up this morning I realized I had a horrible pain in my left shoulder that also shoots up into my neck. I feel like I've been in a car accident. What a pain, literally! We had a great time, though. These Balls are always so interesting because you see such a spectrum of dresses. You have some on the casual side (me), some super fancy...Cinderella style & then there are the tramps. We're not sure why one lady decided to wear a bottom half of a dress. The slit was so high, you could see her panties, honestly. The people watching is one of the highlights. We look forward to next year's Seabee Ball.

Work is going well. I am on my count down until spring break. We have a week off starting on April 2nd, which happens to be a very special person's birthday!!!!! I can't wait for spring break. I really need a break. I love my kids & my job but I really want this break! Last Thursday was my class's turn to play in the annual basketball tournament. It really was hysterical. From the coach, to watching my kids & the other third grade class play, to the cheers & jeers in Arabic from the sidelines, I was just cracking-up the whole time. My class was instructed to wear blue and the other class wore red. Girls were NOT allowed to wear shorts. Of course, one of my girl's shows-up in shorts! The P.E. coach was yelling at me about it. Like I have any control on what they put on in the morning before they leave their house. Just another example of how these kids really do whatever the heck they want. On a funny note, one of my girls brought me a note from her mother. The note said, "Mrs. Monique, Can you please not give so much homework? It gives Hessa a lot of stress and she has a headache. Please only give her homework two days a week." Whatever!!!!! That was my response back.

Scott left today for the UAE. He'll be gone for about 3-days. I am alone.....again! Benny and I dropped him off on Base at 1:45. A van was going to take him and the three other guys to the airport. I decided to take Benny for a walk since we were there anyhow. Scott had the leash, initially. We were all walking toward Scott's building & Benny thought he saw a cat (he always thinks he sees cats) and pulled Scott (which never happens...he pulls me) through a puddle of mud. The back of Scott's pants were covered with mud. His shoes were filthy. His suitcase was full of speckles of mud. There was nothing we could do. Scott was leaving right then & there. We tried to wipe off as much as we could but it was useless. The best part, Benny was walking as happy as could be. His tail up and wagging. A big happy face. Clueless to what he had just done. It reminded me of the movie, Marley & Me. I had been putting off seeing that movie because of the ending. I'm still scarred from my experience of putting down the best dog in the world, Spunky. Caroline & I were there with him. It was so sad. Well, Marley and Me was on cable yesterday & I watched. So much of what happened in that movie reminds me of Benny boy! I cried so much at the end of the movie, just as I knew I would.

I just finished reading another Lisa See novel, Peony in Love. It was excellent! All of her novels are excellent. I am now reading, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, by Gail Tsukiyama. She's another one of my top authors. I just realized that I have read 7 novels in the almost 6-months that we've been here. That's a record for me. I need to find book number 8. Any suggestions?

Field Trips and Moon Ships

The "buses" were supposed to pick us up at 8:30 A.M. We left school at 9:00A.M. Ninety-one 3rd graders and their 4 teachers were suffering from severe anxiety, but for different reasons. It was field trip day & all my kids just wanted to go. The build up to this field trip all week was slowly fizzling which meant out of control kids were forming. Once we were all in a seat (some seats had 2 kids) we were off to see Alice in Wonderland & then to lunch. The drive there was indescribable. I am just so happy that we made it there and back safely.

Once at the theatre we were lead in through a private entrance. We were being shown the movie at a special time before theatre hours. The theatre knew that we were coming & that there would be close to 100 people (91 being 8-years-old) and they had one concession stand open with one worker. Are you kidding me? The first job was to get them in an orderly line. There is no such thing in this country, but we did it. Next, we had to hurry them through the line. The movie was supposed to start at 9:20. It was about 9:30 when we initially lined up for food. The amount of junk these kids bought was amazing. You name it, they bought it. One interesting thing is that they have a choice of salted or sweetened popcorn. Of course, 99% of them bought the sweetened. Once the final kid got his food and we were all seated, the movie started....at 10:10 A.M. We were so off schedule! The kids (and me) loved the movie. It's been a while since I saw a 3-D movie. I missed a lot of the movie, though, because every two minutes someone was standing next to me saying, "Miss. I need to go to the bathroom." or "Miss. I need to buy more snacks." They were really getting on my nerves!

After the movie we headed to this kids-type restaurant. What a loud nightmare. They had reserved the entire upstairs for us. There were games they could pay to play and there was a huge play structure in the middle of the room. They were like wild animals. So many of my kids...and kids from all the classes were crying that they got elbowed in the eye or so-and-so pushed them or threw them down from the structure. My voice was gone by the end of the day. We had pre-ordered the food and drinks (chicken burgers or chicken nuggets) and I have to say this place had the order perfect and everyone got their food. I do not understand the love affair over here with mayonnaise. I thought I was going to gag watching them eat. Since we were way off schedule, we left the restaurant later than planned. One major reason being that one of my kids lost her shoe. We made it back to school 10-minutes after school finished, which was miraculous. I truly did not think we'd make it back anywhere near the time we did. Our driver was crazy, though. He drove like a maniac & was on his phone the whole time. Anyhow, I was glad it was all over. I didn't lose anyone & we made it back safely.

I got home at 2:45 and headed right to the Base because 5 Legends of Aerospace were visiting. About 2,000 of us were treated to a nice discussion by Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, Jim Lovell, Steve Ritchie, and Bob Gilliland. The only name I was familiar with was, Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong & Gene Cernan were the first and last men on the moon. Jim Lovell was the Captain of Apollo 13....we all remember that movie with Tom Hanks. Steve Ritchie is the last Airforce Ace Pilot (meaning he shot down 5 enemy planes - in Vietnam) & Bob Gilliland flew the fastest airplanes ever. In short, they were all pioneers in aerospace and accomplished some amazing feats, making our country the leader in space exploration. It's sadly all coming to an end now. Russia will have to take over our spot. So sad, especially when you hear these gentlemen speak. You realize how important the space program is & was. It was truly a privilege to meet all of them and to be able to hear them speak. I never would have thought that I would meet legends such as these! You read about & learn about them in school, but who ever thinks you'd meet them? We are enjoying all the special treats sent our way while we are over here.

We are all fine here. I've been busy with work & taking care of things around here. We're eating well......which is good & bad! It's been real tricky trying to make healthy meals when I get home. It's working, though. We had some delicious jambalaya that I made in the slow cooker. That lasted us about three days! It was tricky finding andouille sausage, but we did it. We've had pancakes for breakfast on Saturdays since we were first married. Now, we are also having foul (pronounced fool) breakfast Fridays. We are fools for foul. Foul is a traditional Egyptian breakfast made from fava beans. You add chopped up boiled egg, cucumbers, tomato, & onion along with some warm pita bread and you have an absolutely delicious breakfast. My sisters & I always loved when my dad made it for us on the weekends while we were growing up. My dad introduced Scott to it about a year ago & he loved it. So, now we have a second tradition. We have food traditions. Nice!

Benny is his usual self. He's a spoiled rotten, lazy bum. Several days this week were in the 90's, so his outside time is decreasing, poor guy. For now, he's finding a few moments a day to spend outside to do his favorite activity, smell the air. There are 2-3 donkeys a day that run down our street along with their riders. They have bells on them that jingle as they are running. Benny goes nuts when he hears them coming. He's excited but also terrified of them. It's pretty funny to watch. We have no idea where these guys ride these donkeys to every day. Scott's busy with work. I'm glad to have had him home for another full week. Next Friday night is the Seabee Ball, which we're looking forward to. Then he's off again to Kuwait & I'm on my own again for a few days. It really is getting old. We are heading into our 6th month here......wow!

Revisiting Memphis

Scott's home. He's in one piece & I'm breathing again. Thanks to all for your prayers & support!

It's no secret that we were not impressed with Memphis, in general, while living there. The one thing we repeatedly said was that although we were happy to get out of there we'd miss the BBQ. We loved our BBQ. Scott & I both love pork...and we loved our BBQ. Our favorite place was Central BBQ. We tried pretty much all the BBQ restaurants out there and Central was our favorite. Another one high up there in our ratings was, Corky's BBQ. We were never disappointed there. Well, we knew that Corky's made frozen BBQ. We saw it all the time in the frozen food section in Memphis. Having the freshly made stuff available, we never thought to buy the frozen stuff. Well, to our surprise, Scott found frozen Corky's babyback ribs here. We said we'd give it a try. What would be the harm? Well, let me tell you we were very impressed! From the first whiff we knew it was the real thing. There's no mistaking the smell of Memphis BBQ. Scott grilled it up and we pretty much devoured it. I'm not a finger licking type person, but with good BBQ you have to lick your fingers. You can't help yourself. I think I licked my fingers a dozen times tonight.

Benny has always been a pain when it comes to eating. It's hard to explain but he's just difficult. We will often times offer him some of our leftovers after dinner & he usually turns his nose to it. What dog turns away steak.........bacon, even?! Well, Benny does! The one thing he has never turned his nose to is BBQ. He loves it. He was sniffing the air from the moment Scott started grilling. He slept close by while we ate & kept a watchful eye on us. When we were done, Scott got up & offered him a little bite of pork & Benny practically bit Scott's finger off. We scraped up as many scraps as we could and he kept coming back to us for more. Poor guy, we barely had anything left for him. While in Memphis, I would always save him half my pulled pork sandwich. He'd see the white Styrofoam box in my hands and practically attack me at the door. He is from Memphis after all......he knows his BBQ.

It's starting to heat up over here. We're slowly approaching the 80's and soon will be in the 100's. We are not looking forward to that. It was very windy here a few consecutive days this week. Because of all the dust and sand here, the air was thick and gray. It looked like a good smoggy LA day. I miss LA so much. We are looking forward to returning there soon! We are now in our 5th month in Bahrain. Hard to believe! Just 19-more months to go. We will miss Bahrain, though. So far it has been a really nice experience.

Work is good. My kids are keeping me on my toes. We just finished two weeks of learning how to tell time. How I got myself into this, I just don't know. To think that I would be responsible to teach 25 people how to tell time. Telling time is such an important skill. Let me tell you it's not the easiest thing to teach. I pretty much lost my voice trying to teach time to these kids. In the end they got it, of course. I should say most got it. There's always the few that are clueless to pretty much everything. We had our big chapter test on telling time and most made really silly mistakes & the grades weren't great. There are three students that ace everything, of course. They knew I didn't have to grade their test on a curve like I did the rest of the class. All in all, they're a smart group of 8-year-olds. We start multiplication tomorrow. God help me!

We are starting to learn how to write rhyming poems. This is going to be another opportunity for me to lose my voice. Oh, are they horrible rhyming poets! I have to share this one kid's poem because he incorporates the fact that his mom yelled at him about his math test grade in it. When I read it I couldn't stop laughing. It really cracked me up. I'm still laughing hysterically at it. As you'll see, Ahmed, and all his classmates have a long road ahead of them before they can write a poem. There were some other pretty funny ones but this one was my favorite.

Otherwise, things are good here. We're both busy. I'm on pins-and-needles daily now expecting Scott to tell me that he has to go to either Iraq or Afghanistan. I pray that doesn't happen. It is a very odd and unexplainable feeling when you know your husband is in a war zone. Freaky! Thankfully, everything went just fine.

My class is going on a field trip to see The Mad Hatter. Hopefully I won't lose any of them at the mall. These malls are massive & these kids just do as they please. There's no fear of kidnappings or law suits here. Should be interesting. I'm sure that I'll have some stories for you next week!