Year One.....Done!

We've officially passed the one year mark here in Bahrain. It was a momentous occasion for us. We celebrated by eating at Coco's, the first restaurant we ate at on our second day here. What's funny is that our landlord owns the restaurant. We love this place! Lucky for us, we get to eat there for free now. Just one of the perks we get from our landlord. I guess it makes up for all the days we are without water and/or electricity.

We have not yet heard where we are going next. Scott says we can hear anytime starting now through January. So, I'm just planning to hear closer to January, otherwise I'd go crazy. I remember waiting to hear where we were going while living in Memphis. It was supposed to be Washington D.C. Then, a new detailer came in and changed everything on us. Scott was given the option of Iraq or Afghanistan for a year. Luckily, this position in Bahrain came up. Scott was originally coming here alone for a year, then they allowed me to come with Scott and changed it to a two year assignment. Was it the right decision? We think so. We've been together rather than apart and we've been able to get a lot of fun travels in. It was such a stressful time last time. I am doing my best to not think bad thoughts this time around. My fingers are crossed that we are going back to southern California. We shall see.

Scott is doing well. He worked until 8pm or later all week including Friday (which is a day off for us here). He gets Sunday (a work day here) off for Columbus Day. I have to work. I'm always so jealous when he gets the day off and I'm working. He deserves the time off though. This has been a demanding job.

Benny is his usual self. We're taking him to the local vet today. His skin has been dry and flaky for the last few weeks. We think it's from the chlorine in the pool. Hopefully she'll figure it out. He will be on cloud 9. He absolutely loves going to the vet. They can do anything to him and he wags his tail. I think he just loves that he's getting extra attention. I'm bracing myself for when she tells us he's too fat. She brought it up 4-months ago and I'm sure she'll bring it up again. Now that the weather is cooling down to the low 100's - high 90's, we'll start running and walking him more. We just couldn't do it before. As the months move on we'll be back to our routine of running and walking him several times a day.

I'm still busy trying to manage 32 wild kids alone at school. I am so exhausted at the end of each day. Some days I regret taking this job again this year. Last year was so fun. This year is mostly not so fun. We have many fun moments, but this group of kids are just wild. An exciting thing I started this year is a penpal program with my niece, Lily's, 3rd grade class in LA. My kids have already written letters to the LA students. They have received them and written back just this week. All my kids are super excited to have a friend in America. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the letters. My sister, Caroline, informed me that news of this penpal program has made the local paper. Exciting stuff!

My Big Fat Greek Vacation

One of the nice things about teaching in Bahrain, is that there are many week long Muslim holidays which translate into school closing for a week which translates into us traveling! Not a bad deal! We are slowly but surely hitting all our destinations. We recently returned from an 8-day trip to Greece. We spent 3-days in Athens and 5-days on the island of Crete. The most special part of the trip was seeing my family & introducing them all to Scott. We had a great adventure, as usual. The weather was perfect! We had highs in the low 80's and lows in the high 60's. It was like being back home in LA for a week. We hit all the main tourist spots in Athens. Although it was the middle of September, there were quite a few tourists, more than we expected to see. I would say 99% of them were German. We came across a few Americans. They are never hard to spot. They are usually loud, overweight, and wearing baseball caps. We ate like pigs the entire trip. Whatever we felt like trying, we tried. We loved every minute of that trip and feel very fortunate to be able to travel now. Our next joint trip will hopefully be to Cairo. Scotty needs to meet that side of the family as well. I hope to travel alone to Lebanon & Dubai to visit more relatives. Scott is restricted from traveling to those locations, unfortunately.

I'm starting my second month of teaching 3rd grade again this year. I have to say that I am not thrilled so far. I have 32 students and no help whatsoever. There are 19 boys and 13 girls. I think the best way to describe them is as a bunch of wild animals. I have never seen kids like this before. They are wild. I even threatened to quit. They shaped up when I made the threat. I may go through with it though. I also have a group of mothers who are driving me absolutely crazy! They hover around before and after school and just drive me nuts. I guess this is what I get since last year was a breeze. Who knew?!

We're dealing with the day to day realities of living in a borderline 3rd world country. Two weeks ago our air conditioner broke and we were miserable until it was repaired. Last week we had no water for about 10-days! That was horrible. The electricity stops when it feels like it and now our satellite dish is not working properly. Even with all these issues, we are enjoying our time here. There is one exception.....the heat. I don't want to complain too much because it has actually cooled off a bit, but we're still in the triple digits and will be for at least another month to month & a half. I've been knitting 2 scarves and hope to have them done by December/January when it cools down enough.

Locally, there are elections taking place later this month. For the first time ever they are encouraging women to run for office. We have seen candidate signs go up all over town. We can't read the signs since they are in Arabic, but you can imagine it's the usual stuff. There is also a big picture of the candidate. I wonder how the women will be recognized on these posters. How do you know who is who when all you can see are their eyes? It's easy with the men. There they are in all their glory. The women, it's another story. I often ask myself this question everyday at school. How do these kids recognize their mothers when they come to pick them up? For many of them all they see are the eyes. The black hijabs all look the same. Yet, these kids go running to the right mother each day. It amazes me!

Scott is doing well. He is working a lot and is very busy. He is riding his bike to and from work everyday now, since the weather has cooled off. We laugh because we think 110 is cool now. He's also keeping busy around this house as usual. There's always a project to keep him busy. Of course, he always has Benny boy right next to him trying to help, but usually getting in the way. Benny's up to his usual antics. He's as energetic & dramatic as ever. Nothing slows this guy down. When we picked him up from boarding after we returned from Greece, we figured he'd sleep all day since he had a week of non-stop playing & attention. No such luck! He was ready to play from the moment he stepped in the door.

This week we will celebrate our one-year anniversary of living in Bahrain. I'm amazed at how quickly the time has flown, while at the same time I feel like we've been here forever. We are grateful for every day we've had together & hope year 2 will be just as memorable. With that said, we are ready to get back home! The other day I realized that I haven't heard a lawn mower in a year. That horrible noise used to be part of my normal everyday. I used to hate the sound of lawnmowers. Now it's gone. It's these little things which remind us that we're not in Kansas anymore.

Melting Cactus

Well, this picture says it all! We walked out the front door last night and noticed our cactus was bent over as if weeping. Poor thing! Even she is finding this heat and humidity unbearable. She has surrendered to the weather. I thought a cactus would be the one plant I couldn't kill over here. Hopefully she'll perk back up soon. I too feel like just collapsing and letting myself melt nearly every time I go outside. The stickiness from the humidity is a horrible feeling to have daily. We just need to get through the next 2-months and things will cool off. I am counting down the days. Our nutty dog on the other hand, seems to enjoy laying in the sun for 10-minute chunks of time throughout the day.

I'm back to being busy again.....which is a good thing. I don't do well with free time, at least not with a lot of free time. I started work two weeks ago. Teachers went back to the usual dumb meetings and in-services that do nothing but waste time that could be used more productively. Because I started in January last school year, I missed these fun first few days of work. There was a huge turnover of teachers. Of the new teachers this year, four are American, one is Lebanese and two are South African. My students started school last week. I have another adorable group of 3rd graders. The way things are run over here is just....bizarre....yes, bizarre. Parents can request their child's teacher for the upcoming school year at the end of the current school year in June. I have a class of 32 students! Of the 32 students, 32 were parent requests. I know I should take this as a compliment, but the pressure is now on! I'm a speech therapist for Pete's sake! I will give the kids 110% but I would have rather had a room of kids whose parents don't care. Should be an interesting year! I've already told my class that Scott hid a camera in the room which feeds into the principal's office. They fell for it just as quickly as last year's class. They keep pointing to random parts of the classroom claiming to have found the hidden camera. This stuff cracks me up! One of my student's just moved here with his family from San Diego. It's nice having an American kid in my class. Of course he's allergic to peanuts! There goes my daily PB&J sandwich! He also needs speech therapy for his l's and r's. He and his parents seem unaware of this fact. I asked him if he went to speech last year & he had no idea what I was talking about. Pretty typical!

I already have a favorite student. His name is, Mohammed. He is just adorable, both looking and acting. His personality is right up my alley. He is a bit "all over the place" so I have his desk right next to mine. He is constantly telling me what I should do next....or where I should put things.....or how to do things. Finally, I told him to stop being so nosey! All the kids laughed hysterically & he looked like he was going to cry. I was pretty surprised. Then, I heard one of the kids tell another kid in Arabic, that I said Mohammed picks his nose. What?! Good thing I understand Arabic. I had to do a lot of explaining. I explained what the expression meant and that it had nothing to do with him picking his nose. Of course, I then went into my lecture on nose picking & how it is completely unallowed! I told them I will call them out if I see them digging. I will do it! Humiliation seems to end this bad habit!

The base sponsored a great Labor Day BBQ yesterday. They grilled delicious steaks and served corn, beans & watermelon. They did a nice job for the families. There were pony rides, a huge jumping thing, face painting, etc... It's amazing to see how many more families have arrived this summer. There was a huge turnover starting in June, of people leaving and new people coming in. We are just amazed that we have been in Bahrain for 11-months now! We just can't believe it. I don't know where the time has gone. I feel like I have so much to do before we leave. At one point it seemed like we had all the time in the world to see & do all we wanted and now I feel the squeeze. We have really enjoyed our time here, with the exception of the heat! We should find out where we go next within the next few months! I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Southern California, but you never know!

Benny boy is turning into a fatso. Scott does not run him every morning anymore because of the heat. I no longer walk him for 45-minutes in the afternoons because of the heat. So, poor guy gets one walk a day & lounges around the rest of the day. I do take him swimming every day. He is such a good and speedy swimmer now. He went from total fear of the water to jumping in as if he's been swimming forever! He's sad a lot of the time because he can't go out running & walking, but we're stuck for now. We'll be back to taking him out regularly in a couple of months. He is still a spoiled and lucky dog.

The Heat is Still On & On & On & On

There is no relief in sight. The heat will be with us for at least 3 more months. I'd like to say that we are adapting nicely, but then I'd be lying. There is no adapting to this kind of heat. To top things off, Ramadan started this week. American Military people & their families were offered a 1-hour brief on Ramadan & what we were required to do. In a nut shell, we are not allowed to drink, eat, smoke....even chew gum in public from sunrise until sunset. If caught doing any of these things we could be arrested and/or fined. Men are required to wear long pants & long sleeve shirts. Women are to wear clothing past their knees and elbows. On a positive note, we are allowed to wear open-toe shoes. Yes!!!!! Scott has been training me to always find something positive rather than to keep complaining. So there, I did! All restaurants, even Starbucks are closed until the evening. Only 27 more days to go, but who's counting? I'm just being positive.

Scott worked 7-day weeks the last 3-weeks. I've had nothing to really share with you all because we've done NOTHING! We've had a few adventures during that time, I guess. The car battery just died one day. The adventure was in getting it changed. Poor Scott had to ride his bike to and from work a few days. He was a sweaty mess. There also seems to be a fly problem here in Bahrain, so I ordered these fly traps (that stink) on-line to try and get rid of them. It actually works really well. Unfortunately, though, it does have a stinky odor. We decided the odor is better than the flies. As usual, Benny was right by Scott's side, helping him set-up the fly trap. I ended up in the emergency room with a really bad urinary tract infection. I ignored the symptoms all week until it turned into this really bad infection. I could barely stand-up. The ER experience was truly an adventure. My doctor was Iraqi. Naturally, I was a bit worried he wasn't too thrilled to help an American, but he was actually really good. A few things seemed odd, but all in all I was pleased. I don't want to go back, though!

Today was the only day off Scott has had in about a month. It started off great. Then....half the house lost electricity. I called Kasim. He eventually found out that some construction workers shut off the electricity to our block for, "one hour." Three hours later, we still had no electricity. My biggest concern was the food in the fridge. Scott ran to a store and bought a long extension cord. We plugged it into an outlet that worked and voila problem solved. Comfortable that we saved our food, we went to City Centre Mall, the biggest mall here, to shop for some lightweight pants for Scott & to get some groceries at the mega store, Carrefour. All the lightweight pants were sold out! We have a suspicion they were bought up by all the Americans. There must have been a mad rush the last week or so before Ramadan started. This mall is great. It has every store you can imagine...American, European, & local. Some store names crack us up, though. I'm always amazed to see the lingerie stores here. This country emphasizes & encourages wearing the hijab, yet you walk in the mall & there are these "sexy" window displays. It's all very hypocritical to me. So much of what I see here, I find ironic, fake, & full of hypocrisy. Your eyes aren't truly open to it all until you're living in the middle of it & seeing it firsthand. Anyhow, we came back home about 2-hours later to find we had no electricity at all. The whole house was dead. No air conditioning & then there was the food! I called Kasim again. He rode his bike around and then came back to tell me that the construction guys told him it would be, "one hour maybe two." I thought we would suffocate. Poor Scott ran to the base and bought 10 bags of ice. We put them in the fridge & freezer to try and save what we could. Sure enough an hour later all the electricity came back. I'm now typing away with my favorite sweater on. Scott keeps it chilly in here. One week we lose water, the next we lose electricity. It all seems so random to me.

One thing I love about shopping at Carrefour is the nuts & spices section. They have these huge sacks of fresh nuts & spices. You tell the guy how many scoops to give you. He weighs it & puts the price sticker on it & you're off. Our favorite thing to buy are the lemon almonds. They are so good! We will miss them when we leave. I sent my parents & Scott's parents a bag to try and they love them. Initially, you think lemon almonds? That sounds weird. Once you eat them you're addicted. We also love the fish section. They have all the freshly caught fish displayed on ice. You choose what you want and the guy wraps it up for you. We bought some amazing salmon & grilled it for lunch today. It just melted in your mouth. I always buy a big container of spicy/lemony vegetables, usually carrots, cauliflower, jicama along with pickle chunks and green & black olives, from the cheese & special foods counter. I love this. In Arabic, we call it "torshi." Scott doesn't care for it. It may be an acquired taste. I grew-up eating it so it's yummy to me. I always get the one from Egypt. It is the best. They have a Syrian mix as well as a Bahraini mix. I don't care for either of those. Unfortunately, today, they were out of the Egyptian mix. When sharing my disappointment with the guy working the counter, I found out he was Egyptian & he found out I spoke Arabic. It was nice to use my Arabic. I don't get to use it that often. Most people I deal with are Indian, Pakistani, or Filipino. We all speak in English. Anyhow, once this guy found out that my parents grew-up in Egypt & that my dad was Lebanese, he took back this cheese I asked for and gave me another one. He told me the new one he gave me was fresher. It really is all about who you know that will get you what you need. Scott & I cracked-up over this. It was also hysterical that as he was talking to me he was clutching his heart the whole time.

Our maid, Mary, comes 5-days a week. She and Benny have this secret love affair. She has been coming to work around 6:30am the last few weeks since it's so hot. When Benny sees her, he is beside himself with happiness. She comes in and says hi to Benny immediately and is then on the floor rubbing his belly and giving him love messages. There is continual giggling the entire time she is here. I'll be upstairs & hear her giggling and hear Benny running around. I have no clue what they are doing. All I know is that she is supposed to work for 2-hours...I pay her for 2-hours......but she's here for close to 3-hours everyday. I can't help but wonder how Benny will deal with not seeing Mary when we leave & how will I deal without having Mary 5-days a week when we leave? It's been such a nice luxury. Oh well.

Ten months down, fourteen to go!

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.

Stars, Stripes, and Stitches

Reality quickly set in that we are no longer in Italy. Scott went back to work. I'm bored. Benny is as needy as ever. We're all HOT! It's going to be a long summer! As happy as I was to be done with work, I'm kind of ready to go back. I'm sure that once it's time to go back to work, however, I'm going to want to be off of work. It's a horrible cycle!

This was the first 4th of July that I didn't get to see any live fireworks. A year ago, we were sitting outside with neighbors in Memphis watching a spectacular fireworks show. The year before that we were at a minor league baseball game in Memphis which was followed by a fireworks show. The year before that we were watching fireworks from my balcony in LA, where I could see the show from Santa Monica, Venice & Marina del Rey. Scott had also proposed 3-days earlier, so it was our first "holiday" together. Time is just zipping by.

We did have a very nice treat this 4th of July here in Bahrain. We were treated to a delicious meal of grilled steak, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, potato salad, coleslaw, & watermelon. It was all thanks to Harris Ranch Steaks from Central California. A team of people from the restaurant came over here and grilled these amazing steaks in triple digit heat. We were really amazed at what a wonderful job they did. The steaks were apparently flown here on ice...not frozen. The plane had to land at one point just so that they could change the ice. The meat was so tender and juicy. We were really grateful. It was all free, too! I looked up their menu on-line later the next day & found what I believe was the steak we were served. It sells for $30.95 at the restaurant. Can you imagine what it cost to feed 4,000 of us? So, although there were no fireworks in the evening, we ate well! The fireworks were going off in our mouths.

Speaking of eating well, well, we really are! One of the main things to do here in Bahrain is to go to a Friday brunch which is usually offered at all the hotels here. Friday in Bahrain is similar to Sunday in the states. We're off on Friday and Saturday. We work Sunday through Thursday. So, since Friday is the muslim prayer day, these hotels offer these brunches so that people can go pray & then come eat. Needless to say, we all go to the brunches. Yesterday we went and pigged-out at The Golden Tulip Hotel. It's very hard for me to describe the amount of food that is put out. I can comfortably say there are close to 200 food choices. In addition to the prepared food, they have a raw fish and meat section. You go & choose your specific fish & meat & tell them how you want it prepared. They then take it to the kitchen and bring it to your table. Finally, there's the dessert section. There are probably close to 50 desserts to choose form as well. How do you narrow it down? It all looks so good. I went in with a plan and I stuck to it... pretty much. I went a little overboard with the dessert. Oh well! I worked-out for an hour when I got home & I was so full that I didn't eat anything else until this morning. Scott, on the other hand, took a nap & read his book! Although fun, they are not cheap. They cost about $50 per person. We have two other brunches we want to try. We've got 15-months to fit them in. So, we figure every 6-months we'll go to brunch. It's really hard to believe, but we have been in Bahrain for 9-months! We're hoping to hear of our next assignment before the first of the year... possible even late this summer. As soon as I hear, you'll know all about it!

Finally, Benny had his stitches removed today. He did great. He's the only dog I've ever had that loves going to the vet. His tail doesn't stop wagging. He makes friends with everyone. He was so cute. He jumped up on a seat and sat down in the waiting room, excitedly waiting for his turn. Scott took him into the exam room because I didn't want to watch the stitches being pulled out. We also had Benny's toe nails clipped, they had grown so long all of a sudden. Anyhow, Scott came out and told me that the vet said Benny's too fat! I'm so upset! He is pudgy, I agree...but he's not fat. Poor guy has nowhere to run around like he used to. Other than walks, he can't exercise. Now that the stitches are out, I'm hoping to get him back in the pool & swimming. So now, I have to limit his treats & cut down on his food. I can just see his sad eyes looking at me now. We have to do it, though. We want him around for as long as possible!

Back to Italy

One of the perks of being in the military is that you can fly the chartered plane that transports service members & their families to their new duty station on a "space available" basis. In other words, if there's space on the plane, you've got a seat. This is great, especially because it's free! The down side is that you can't make definite plans & you have to be flexible with your travel plans. You are at the mercy of the plane's schedule. Fortunately for Scott and I, we were able to get seats to Sigonella (Sicily) & then seats back to Bahrain flying from Naples. Unfortunately for Scott & I, the plane left Norfolk 2-days late. So, we missed two days in Italy. The worst part is that we missed our time In La Maddalena, which is a small Island that Scott was stationed on a few years before we met. I was so excited to go there & Scott was excited to show me around & introduce me to some friends who still live there. Oh well! We hope to get there on our next trip out to Italy.

We landed in Sigonella at about noon. We needed to catch a bus from base to drive us to Sicily. We were initially told the bus stop was right outside the entrance to the base. Once we walked there, the guys out front told us that we actually had to walk about 1/2 a mile to the stop. So, we started walking. Suitcases and all. We walked along a country road which to me was classic old style Italy. We saw some goats & a ton of wild flowers. As we were walking the road suddenly narrowed into just one lane. As we were approaching the lane, I mentioned to Scott to be careful because the people drive like maniacs. Just as we entered the scary part, a Military Police car approached us. I thought we were definitely in trouble for walking on this dangerous road. Well, we weren't in trouble. It was the guys who told us to walk to the stop. They ended up giving us a ride. I don't know for sure, but I think they realized or were told that there was a stop right outside base. We appreciated the ride. I was happy to walk in beautiful weather and see a bit of the countryside.

The bus came about 10-minutes after we sat at the stop. A typical Italian bus driver type was our driver. He practically ran Scott over as he pulled the bus over with cigarette in one hand and cell phone in the other. We went in the bus and he went out. He disappeared for about 10-minutes. At one point I saw him smoking another cigarette. Whatever. Let's just get going. We were really tired at this point. We were alone in the bus for quite a while. As we approached the beach area, the bus quickly filled up. We had no idea where to get off. Scott told the driver the name of the street we needed & at one point, we were suddenly grabbing our suitcases and jumping off the bus. He told us to walk up the street & we'd find our hotel. We stuck out like sore thumbs. At one point we thought the driver had no idea what he was talking about. We couldn't find the hotel. We found the street & building with the number of the address, but did not see a hotel. Scott stopped in a bakery & asked and sure enough our hotel was within this apartment building. We had to climb about five flights of stairs (not good for the disabled population) and we were there. It was a very cute & modern place. It seemed to be a big apartment divided into private rooms. At the end of the hallway was the kitchen where we had breakfast the next morning. I always love the complimentary breakfasts we get when we stay in Italy!

We walked around a bit and had a great Sicilian dinner. As usual, we were the first ones in the restaurant. We went to eat at about 7:30pm and there was no one there. They started showing up closer to 9pm. We just can't wait that long to eat. We were most likely asleep when most people were starting their evening festivities.

Early the next day, after breakfast, we took a cab to the airport to pick up our rental car. All the cars were stick shift, so I could not do any of the driving. I am so happy to not have needed to drive. I don't think I could have maneuvered the streets with all the crazy drivers. Scott did a great job getting us to where we needed to go. We were supposed to get a VW Golf but ended up with a Hyundai. Whatever! It got us to all of our destinations. We drove to the ferry port. We drove the car onto the ferry & about an hour later we were on mainland Italy. Once off the Ferry we set out on a 7-hour drive to our location in Naples. Along the way we drove to Amalfi. It was absolutely gorgeous! Fortunately, we had really great weather the entire trip. Amalfi itself was super crowded. We could not park and walk around much. We drove to a neighboring little area and ate at a really delicious pizzeria. We had traditional buffalo mozzarella & prosciutto as well as mushroom pizza. It was delicious. I could not eat more than one slice of pizza, so we didn't eat all our food. The waiter commented about that and I felt like we were insulting them by sending food back. I couldn't help it. I wasn't going to eat it just to eat it. When we waddled back to the car we noticed we had a parking ticket! Crap! According to what we could make out on the ticket, which was in Italian, we were blocking the driveway of the house we parked in front of. Of course, we weren't. We really weren't! Now, what do you do about a parking ticket on a rental car in a foreign country? According to Scott's friend in Naples, "Nothing. You throw it away." I hope he's right!

I didn't care much for Naples. It's a dirty city. There's trash all over the streets. Apparently the mob owns the dumps and they stopped collecting trash for a while. At one point it was a horrible living situation. This mess we saw was apparently pretty good living. There were also tons of stray dogs. We saw some sad stuff. I can't seem to escape these stray dogs! We stayed at the Navy Inn on base. It was OK. The price was great & the location good. Really, as long as I have a good shower & bed....and wifi....I'm good to go. We enjoyed our stay.

We took the ferry from Naples to the island of Capri. Capri is beautiful! We had a really nice time there. We took a boat out to see the blue hole. The blue hole is a cave filled with the bluest water you've ever seen. It was gorgeous. It was a busy day there, so our boat waited about 45-minutes before the little boats came to get us 3-4 at a time to go into the cave. We had to squeeze in by laying down flat. Along with Scott & I we had a mother-son couple. They were from Germany. Jon was adorable. He's 13 and travels all over the world with his mom. When I asked about his dad he told me, "He's in Germany to make the money." We exchanged e-mail. We'll see if he ever e-mails me. His mom was a bit much. She did not stop talking! We loved our blue hole experience. With all the boat riding time & waiting time to get in the cave I expected a bit more than we got. We were in the cave for about 2-minutes. I don't know what else we could have done in there but it just seemed to end so quickly. It was beautiful and is a must see!

We toured Naples, eating a lot of pizza. I also loved these cookies with an apricot filling. I can eat like a dozen of those....especially with a good cup of coffee or tea. Yum! We went to the city of Pompei. Pompei was destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesusius approximately 50 years after Christ. It's been completely excavated. It was amazing to walk through this ancient city. Fortunately for me, Scott likes reading maps & is good at it. I am horrible at map reading. He found all the important and unusual parts of the city we needed to see. We opted out of a tour so that we could go where we wanted to go at our own pace. We had climbed over a mile the day before to get to the top of Capri. The view made it worth it, but oh my goodness! We were exhausted. I thought I was going to throw-up at one point! We didn't feel like climbing again so we didn't go to Mt. Vesuvius. We had a great view of it and that's all that mattered.

Our final night in Naples was spent with some of Scott's friends. We ate at a hole-in-the-wall local restaurant that only serves fish and fruit. Unfortunately, all the fish is fried. I don't do well with fried food. It makes me sick. So, I felt like a total pain ordering my meal, but I ended up with the only thing not fried.....3 large prawns, grilled. They were very good. I also tried this classic Neapolitan dish of fried dough with seaweed. It was actually pretty good. We had a great time & it's always nice to eat at a local hangout. We flew home on time the next day. We left beautiful weather and walked off the plane to 95-degrees at 6:30 in the morning here in Bahrain. Fun! We were happy to be home, though. It's always nice to get home.

As for Benny, he got himself into some trouble at his boarding facility. He's fine, but poor guy has 7 stitches along the side of his belly. Those of you that know Benny will not be surprised to hear how he hurt himself. Benny will do anything for a ball. And if you play ball with him he will love you forever! Well, one morning, the Indian guys that care for the dogs, opened his gate and he took off to get a ball before the gate was fully opened. A piece of metal was sticking out of the gate & Benny sliced himself open on that piece of metal. He was rushed to the vet where they anesthetized him and stitched him up. Luckily, I left the names of a couple of friends here in case of an emergency. The lady who runs the place didn't ask for any names, but I left them because, honestly, Benny is prone to accidents. I'm not sure why. The only thing I can think of is that he is so impulsive that he gets himself into trouble. Anyhow, he seems fine. The stitches come out next week. The wound looks horrible, but doesn't seem infected or anything. It's always an adventure with Benny boy!