No Water, No Juice, NO WAY!

Whenever I come back home from anywhere, I wash my hands. It's just a habit. So, I went to wash my hands a few days ago. Low and behold no water came out of the faucet. Apparently, we used up all the water in the tank. I didn't even know we had water in a tank. I just thought the water came through the pipes from a central water location. It's much more complicated than that and although we get water from the city supply, we also have a tank of water. The whole thing was weird to me, but Scott seemed to understand what was going on. Long story short, we had water again the next day. Kasim came by and took a look & told us that if we didn't have water the next day to call him & he'd call the water people to fill up our tank. Since we couldn't run the dish washer, Scott was a good sport and washed the dishes by hand. He's a very handy person to have around during a crisis.

Benny and I pretty much stayed indoors the entire week. Other than meeting Scott for lunch on Thursday, I didn't go anywhere. I didn't want to go anywhere & I don't want to go anywhere next week either. Heck, I don't want to go anywhere until November! It is so hot, that it's truly painful to go outside. It really is a heat I've never experienced before. Memphis was hot & humid, but not like this! We're miserable. I have a few projects at home to keep me busy. I finished one which was to go through all my documents and papers I've filed away over the years. I kept only the most recent & important stuff and shredded the rest. I'm reading a lot & working out everyday, which has been nice. Benny also keeps me busy. I don't get to sit for long periods. He always pops his head on the sofa next to me with either a ball or stuffed toy in his mouth. He has me chase him around a little then he goes out and sits in the sun for a while. Ten minutes later, he's at the door to come in panting like a maniac. I let him in and he collapses on the cool floor for about 30-minutes.

As much as I'd like to just camp out indoors in the air-conditioned house, Scott and I decided to venture out today. We've been wanting to go to the Bahrain Museum since we arrived here 9-months ago. We figured it would be a good indoor, air-conditioned activity. Plus, it's about 5-minutes away from the house and right next to a Lebanese restaurant we've been wanting to try. So, we went. The place was pretty much deserted. There were only a few other people there with us. We always do things early, especially compared to people here, so maybe more would show up later in the day. Who knows?

We were pretty impressed with the museum. We first saw an art show of paintings done Rashid Al Khalifa. We know he's related to the royal family by his last name, but we don't know how he's related. Anyhow, the paintings were nice. Not great....to me, but I'm sure some people probably would love them. We then walked through the rest of the museum, which had areas related to ancient discoveries, burial grounds, early lifestyles, and documents & literature. We saw a lot of interesting stuff. Bahrain is known for its pearls and we saw a lot of "stuff" related to pearl diving of long ago. Bahrain is also known for its pottery and there were many pieces of ancient pottery that's been discovered and put on display. I think my favorite thing was the tombstones. When someone died, they made a clay sculpture of that person as their tombstone. I found that interesting. Another area Scott & I both really liked was the lifestyle section. They had these scenes set up depicting early Bahraini life. From outdoor markets, coffee shops, bread makers, pharmacies, mattress makers, etc... we really enjoyed walking through and looking at what life long ago was once like. I loved that they had a display regarding the evil eye. You know that you are definitely in a middle eastern museum when they talk about the evil eye. There were also displays that explain their sexist view points which I will never understand. I keep reminding myself how lucky I am to be an American woman.

After the museum and since we were starving, we drove a few minutes away to a Lebanese restaurant. As usual we were earlier than most when it came to eating. There were people at one other table when we got there and by the time we left there were about 4 tables of people. The menu was fairly large, but we narrowed down our order. I had been looking forward to ordering a freshly squeezed glass of mango juice. So, I ordered it. The waitress then told me they didn't have mango juice. They had all the other juices (8 choices) but not mango. A little bummed out, but I decided on watermelon juice. No problem. Then it was Scott's turn. Remember, she said they had all juices but mango. Scott ordered pomegranate juice. Oops! They didn't have that either!! I swear, we looked at eachother like, huh? Is this possible? So, Scott ordered watermelon as well. Next was the food ordering time. I ordered koshary, a typical middle eastern (really Egyptian) meal of lentils, rice & noodles. Scott ordered a seafood salad & we wanted to start with falafel. No falafel. What Lebanese restaurant doesn't have any falafel? OK. We ordered this bread with meat and hummus. After what seemed an eternity, our food came. As she was putting our food on the table, she tells Scott that there was no seafood salad. It was comical! She handed Scott the menu to choose something else, but he opted out of that. Really, there was no guarantee that they would have anything else we wanted to order. We shared the food we had which was more than enough. Needless to say, we will never be going there again! What a joke. At least the food that we ate was good.