No Maid for Me

Well, I tried to have an open conversation with her. I explained that we have a particular way we would like things done and we need someone who is willing to listen and do it that way. We need someone who is willing to get down on their knees and scrub at a spot on the floor if that's what it needs (that's where we were getting the most push-back). Apparently, she cannot/will not.

I've been thinking that I would be more comfortable with someone younger (this lady is probably 50 or so) who would probably be more open and flexible. I've been thinking that this lady is not the one for us, though I'm sure other people have thought she was good for them.

Turns out, she's been thinking the same thing. She speaks pretty good English, but I still felt like I had a hard time knowing exactly what she was saying. What I took from it was that she has been cleaning in Bahrain for 2.5 years and apparently no one has ever been so direct with her and wanted things done their way. Other people must not be very particular about their cleaning. But I find that hard to believe. I think she just wants to do what she wants to do and not have anyone bother her. Well, that doesn't work for us.

So today was her last day. Now I'll be trying to clean this big house for a while. Hopefully not too long because its really just too big and there is too much dust everywhere for one person to keep clean on their own (unless they're a maid and it's their job ;).

I've Got it Made

I mean, I've got a maid. Well, I might have a maid. We're in a trial week to see how we like her and she can see how she likes us. I am definitely enjoying it but it also is a little uncomfortable. It probably sounds crazy to anyone else for me to be anywhere other than in heaven with this, but here's the dilemma as I see it...

First, it's difficult to discern what a good wage is for them. We had heard one price (lower) before we got here and now we're hearing differently from some people, but not others. I want to pay someone fairly and higher rather than lower to keep them happy and honest, but I need to feel like it's worth it/I want to fit it into my budget.

Second, providing housing for the maid (we have a *tiny* maid's quarters behind our garage) is worth a lot to them; i.e. pay for a part-time maid is only slightly higher than having a ful-time maid who lives with you. So having the maid live with you seems obviously a better deal, right?

(Third) But that's the part I'm uncomfortable with. When the maid lives with you, you basically become completely responsible for them in the eyes of the law here. And I would feel that way as well. I would be providing all of their income, which means all of their sustanance. Maybe it shouldn't, but that is something I'm not comfortable with when I'm providing such a low wage. I know it's not low compared to other maids, but I just can't wrap my head around it. Get over it and go with it, I know, but I don't seem to be able to. It's totally stressing me out.

Fourth, the hard part about having someone live with me is that I want them to be happy/pleasant to have around and unintrusive in my life. So far this maid began by being pretty chatty and felt free to let me know everything I needed for my home; i.e. you need a shelf here, you need a basket there, you need, you need, you need. On the second day, I let her know that we do not have all of our belongings here (neither of our shipments have arrived yet) so I know our home does not have everything we need to be completely convenient and organized yet and, most importantly, that I know what I need for my home and don't need her to tell me. After that, her demeanor changed and she seems to be sulking. I don't like the feeling it's giving me when she's around.

I need someone who is going to take direction and be compliant with cleaning my home exactly the way I want it cleaned. I understand she is older and has been cleaning for a long time and thus probably feels like she knows how to do these things better than I do, but that doesn't matter to me. I am paying someone to clean my home the way I want it done. If I am going to get pushback all the time, I don't want her.

So, it should be obvious, right? Just try a different maid. This just isn't the one for us. But, good maids seem to be hard to find. I've heard she was quite good and I didn't like the other one we've tried. This house is so big that I don't want to be without help, but it may have to just be that way for a while. Its just so hard to be able to immediately have the level of trust you need with someone to bring them into your home every day, but how do you get to know them and trust them without doing just that? Go with a referral. But no one seemed to have anyone until my neighbor recommended her. We'll see. Today is the last day of our trial and I'm going to see if she will do one more week of part-time to give us more time to think on what we want and evaluate her.

Around Town

We went to the mall for some after-Christmas-style shopping (though no big sales here) for Dave to exchange one of the gifts I got him. Most stores seem like they don't let you return things here, only exchange, and this store only gave 7 days for that! Definitely different. Anyway, our camera was working this morning when I played with it again... yahoo!! So I took a few pictures (from the car again, sorry) of what things look like here.

Headed toward Manama's city center

One of the malls

The twin financial towers - one of the city's most prominent features

The Pearl Monument

Bahrain used to be a huge place for pearling; they still don't allow cultured pearls to be sold on the island.

This "boat" and a few others are scattered around to "beautify" the place. Interesting.

Merry Christmas

Christmas in our home was pretty low-key this year. We were pretty hopeful that our air shipment that included our tree and almost all the Christmas gifts for the boys (luckily I took a few in my suitcase) was going to arrive in time. We were told it was scheduled to arrive in Manama on the 19th and would go through customs and be delivered to us on the 20th. No such luck.

I won't go into the annoying details, but let's just say I made a late-night run the night before Christmas eve to find a tree, some trimmings and a couple more gifts. Davey was excited to trim the tree with us and we tried to make it feel a little like Christmas by baking and decorating cookies and making a countdown chain.

Christmas eve we spent at the home of one of Dave's co-workers. It was nice to finally meet a bunch of nice, friendly American women. I am looking forward to getting to know them better. Someone else is having another party tomorrow night, though we'll have to see if we're going to go. 7pm parties are difficult with our children.

When Davey went to bed Christmas eve he kept saying he didn't want Santa to come and he didn't want presents. Finally, though he changed his tune when we were talking about how Santa has to bring the gifts to children all over the world. He then asked, "Can Santa come to my house first?" Uh huh. We knew you wanted those presents.

As I mentioned, our camera was broken so these pictures aren't really great, but at least we have some halfway decent ones from Dave's phone.

Our sparsely-trimmed tree

Christas morning Davey showed an incredible amount of self-restraint when we asked him to wait to open his gifts until Charlie woke up an hour later. He passed the time enjoying the Starburst the elves left in his stocking...

I got distracted and I think he ate 8 red starburst before I realized it.

Davey and Charlie ready to tear into the gifts!

Davey loves to plaly doctor so he's been loving the doctor kit!

After opening gifts, I had an adventure in the kitchen trying to make a chocolate cream pie without a fully-stocked kitchen. Not sure why I thought I could do it, but it turned out okay in the end even though I had to mix the crust and wisk the pudding and whipping cream with a fork and make the pie in an oval pyrex dish. Then it was off to church, since church here is on Friday, for just Sacrament meeting and then a pot luck. It was nice to have some time to chat with people at church and get to know them better.

After church, Charlie and I took naps, which was so nice, while the turkey cooked. Then we had a simple dinner with just turkey and sweet potatoes. I still haven't gotten much into cooking here (as you can imagine with my limited kitchen supplies - also groceries are pretty expensive here since everything is imported and I never want to buy too much...). I'll have to get over that soon.

Anyway, even though it was very low-key we had a very nice Christmas! It was nice to be able to talk with Davey more in-depth this year about the true meaning of Christmas and let him know how grateful we are for the gift of the baby Jesus. Merry Christmas everyone!

Our First Day Out

It took a while before we ventured out in the sunlight. Honestly, we were here 6 days before I saw any of Bahrain in the daytime. We were just that tired.

Anyway, our first day out consisted of quick drive-bys of a couple interesting places... we didn't want to push the kids decent moods or stay out too long. We really needed to make it to the store. Sorry for the poor pictures.

One of the King's camel farms. If you look closely, you can see them. Apparently you can get out of your car and get on one if you slip the guard some money. We were scared away by the private property sign at the time.

A quite poor picture, taken from the car like the previous one.

Some very old fort built by the Spaniards. I'll be more specific someday when we actually go for a visit.

The beach.

Even though this is an island, no one frequents the beaches unless you are a member of the Ritz club. You can imagine that there wouldn't be a lot of sunbathers in a country where the women are covered from head to toe in public. It was apparent by all the shells still on the beach. I've never seen a beach with so many. Not that they were great shells - they might have been at one time but most were quite sun-bleached from sitting there forever. 

We did let the kids get out and stretch their legs for a few minutes.

I'm not sure if Charlie has ever played in sand before. He enjoyed checking it out.

It was after this that I picked up Charlie, tried to hand the camera off to Dave so I wouldn't drop it and *poof* it got dropped anyway. We can't get it to take another picture. Ugh. Guess we're getting a camera for Christmas.

Our New Digs

Well, I don't have all the pics I would like to share because our camera is broken. Yes, broken. Isn't that wonderful timing? Maybe the time in our lives when we would most like to share our experiences ever and our camera is broken. At least we have a few pictures of our new home from when Dave was here before (house-hunting) that I can share...

Here they call homes 'villas'. We live in Villa #2.

We live in the first villa of 18 as you enter our compound, so it's a small neighborhood. It seems like probably only 7 or 8 of them are occupied right now, but the compound is always busy with the "security" people who I can't really figure out exactly what thier job is. They act as 24 hour security, call me before anyone rings my doorbell, installed my internet, hang my pictures, do my gardening, etc. I guess they're Mr. Do-it-alls or something. One even lent me a Dinar the other day when the guy dropped off a new water jug and I didn't know I was supposed to pay him directly.

As for the house itself, it is quite large, probably about 4,000 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths. Tile is everywhere except faux-wood floors in the bedrooms. We are really needing to pick out some rugs because the rooms are big and boomy and the sound travels everyewhere. I'm hoping it will help. The problem is that the home is furnished in a more modern style, which we like just fine, but since it's not typically our taste we're having a difficult time choosing anything or knowing how it would look in our home when we see it in a store.

A view of the kitchen. Large and lots of cupboard space but tiny refrigerator.

The neighborhood has some nice amenities, which you can see a glimpse of in the picture below.

The clubhouse lounge overlooking the pool, behind it the park and tennis court.

Once we get more settled and into our life (i.e. meet some friends :) I think we can be comfortable and happy here.

Jet Lagged

I had been so worried about the flight, I didn't fully realize how difficult getting over the jet lag would be. I kind of figured that once we kept the kids up during the day one day, they would sleep at night and things would go pretty smoothly.

We arrived at the Marriott in Manama around 11pm Thursday night local time, but most of the family had just had a full night's sleep, so Dave romped with the kids while I went to bed for a few hours. The company had only booked the hotel for one night since our home was ready for us to move in, but there was no way we were moving from that room so quickly. We were all in a dead sleep the next afternoon when the maids came in thinking we would be gone.

Friday evening when we all finally woke up we took a drive to our new home. We thought we'd just look around outside and peek through the windows but when we said hello to security at the gate, he just handed over the keys, so we got to go inside and have a look. The next morning at 9am we met with Jackie, the housing coordinator from Oxy, to officially let us in. They supplied us with basics until our air shipment was to arrive (that's another story...), like towels, kitchen wares, vacuum, etc. Everything is good but the mattresses are SUPER uncomfortable. I am so so glad we were advised to bring over our own.

Dave had to work the next day (Sunday) and the next couple days are kind of a blur... They were so difficult with Davey up all day (he really adjusted pretty well) and Charlie up all night. And I had to let Dave sleep since he had to work and needed to begin his new job well. Luckily we had a great surprise when Dave got to work and learned that he would have Wed-Sun off for a combination of National Day and the Islamic New Year. I was so glad to only have to endure 3 days of that on my own.

We heard from others that Charlie would pretty much never adjust on his own, so even though he was up all night, we began to force him to be awake for the next several days. It felt so mean to wake him up for the day at 8am when he had only just gone to sleep at 4:30am most mornings. But we survived and by the time Dave went back to work on Monday we were in pretty good shape.

Now we seem much more in the swing of things, thank goodness. And the kids are on a pretty good schedule. Davey has taken a good nap each day and Charlie has stopped screaming every time we enter his room. The one thing I'm having to adjust to is Charlie's later bedtime, now between a7 and 8pm when it was 6pm before. I didn't think I'd like it since I enjoy having the evening "to myself" but I must say I'm also enjoying sleeping until Davey wakes at 7 or 7:30am.

The Big Trip Over

The day finally came that we were to board the plane for our big move overseas. It was hard to believe it was finally there. We were in pretty good shape with being ready to go and didn't have to leave until 4pm for the airport, so I was able to meet up with Mendy for lunch and even go to the hospital and meet Kristin's new baby, Madison, who was born the night before!

The day got a little crazy after that. I picked up a box on the way back to hold a couple items we hadn't planned to take on the plane with us. I stopped by the hotel around 2pm to check on the boys and then at 3pm I was going to drop a couple things at the post office, just across the freeway. But the sinking feeling I had when I couldn't find the car keys was confirmed when I saw them sitting on the front seat of our rental car!!!  I can't believe I did that right before we were to leave!! We could have just had the car company pick up the car later from the hotel but we needed the car seats and stroller out of it. It was a stressful hour, let me tell you, but it all worked out in the end and we arrived at the airport at 5:15 for our 7:30 flight like I had wanted to.

When we got our crazy amount of luggage all checked in (4 large suitcases, 4 small suitcases, 3 car seats, a box and a stroller) we were able to relax, eat some good food and let the kids play for a few minutes in the Qatar Airways business class lounge. It was such a nice change from the normal wait at the airport, especially one for a long flight that you spend trying to stock up on enough decent food to tide you over through it.

The accomodations on the plane were super-nice, too - lots of space, fully-reclining seats like a bed, a large tv and noise-cancelling headphones, a toiletry bag, pajamas (that I was surprised to see people actually wore) and a delicious menu!

The kids getting all settled in... Davey loving the new Cars activities

and Charlie enjoying the floor space emptying the contents of my purse

I was so super nervous about the airplane ride over here... luckily there is a direct from Houston to Doha so at least we didn't have to endure a long flight only to have another long one ahead of us, but I was very much not looking forward to the 15 hours on the plane with the kids. I was mostly nervous about whether or not Charlie would be able to sleep... he won't sleep in his car seat anymore for any length of time so I thought one of us would have to stay awake all the time in case he were to get up and fall off the seat or crawl away...

A beautiful sight!! 

Dave slept the WHOLE flight (thanks to the benadryl that seems to work wonders for him) but Charlie had more trouble staying asleep. But I didn't have to worry about sleeping through it... he woke screaming each time. I wasn't able to settle in and sleep much at all, but at least Dave was so he was rested when we arrived and could deal with the kids and let me rest.

Since we flew through the night we didn't get to see really anything on the ground out the window (I was really trying to peek through the clouds when we flew over Iraq).

The first class lounge in Doha was so super nice. I should have taken more pictures. Huge buffets of food with fresh juices and waiters, sauna, hot tub, sleeping rooms and a great play room for the kids with even a crib for a baby to sleep... 

Goofing around and getting out some energy before our next flight

Our family made it to the Middle East in one piece!

On the bus to the plane for the final leg from Qatar to Bahrain

(I know I look horrible in this but maybe I'll want to remember it someday...and it's such a shame Davey's eyes are closed too, he so rarely actually looks at the camera and smiles anymore)

AND at the end of a 30 minute flight... 

... the first glimpse of our new home!!

Not much at night but still an important first view!

Bahrain, Explained a Little

(We live close by where the King Fahd Causeway meets the island)

A bit about the Kingdom of Bahrain. It is a small island country in the Persian Gulf, near Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The population is around a million and has just one major city, Manama. Only 50% of the population are Bahraini, the rest coming mostly from South Asia and a handful of Westerners (maybe 100K).

It's mostly hot and dry here, though in the week we've been in Bahrain it's rained two times. Apparently it hadn't rained for 3 years before that, even though the air is often humid in the winter.

Driving around here, the majority of the buildings look similar (no surprise) to pictures I have seen on the news of Iraq. Not to say that the whole place looks like Iraq though; there are lots of modern buildings as well and they are certainly very nice inside. Shopping seems to be the national pass-time as everyone is very fashion-conscious and there are tons of busy, very nice malls (though you wouldn't be able to tell from the outside). Plus, I don't really know what else anyone does besides a little bit of sailing and Formula 1 race watching. I'm sure I'll find out more as I'm here longer though.

As for the culture, it is much more liberal and moder than many Arab countries, which is definitely good for us. Seeing Arab men in a Khandura and women in the Abaya is definitely common but not the majority. Every 1 in maybe 15 of the covered women are fully covered, showing only their eyes and maybe not even that. As much as I see myself as open-minded to other cultures, I'm still a little bewildered when I see a woman completely covered walking with a man dressed in a t-shirt and jeans.

The few locals I've interacted with have been very nice and mostly the interaction was based on admiring my children. Everyone here seems crazy about kids. They get so much attention, which of course a mother likes :) even though I know all kids get that attention.

Okay, I promise the next post will include some pictures we've taken since we've been here.

Our Big Adventure

Well, I can't believe I haven't even mentioned this on my blog yet, but we now live in Manama, Bahrian! Actually, I can believe it. Here's the story (I'll try to make it brief).

• Mid-August Dave got a call from his boss (who'd been here doing the job) saying he wanted to recommend him for the it, would he like it? (OF COURSE! Dream come true for Dave.) Wewere told however that we could not breathe a word of it to anyone. He even specifically mentioned that I couldn't either. Who could I tell that it would matter? Oh well, we kept it to ourselves for a while, then just told our parents of the possibility. His boss also wasn't very confident that sending an expat overseas would get approved so he gave it a 25% chance of happening. So, no blog post.
• Waiting game for a couple months... then it finally gets "approved" verbally mid-October right before Dave leaves for a trip to Bahrain for 2.5 weeks. They want Dave to return to Bahrain for good (= 2-3 years) 3 weeks after his return from his trip. We're still not sure it will really happen until we see something in writing but decide that the boys and I should go back to MI and see family while Dave is gone in case it does really happen that quickly. Plus, I don't want to be a "single" mom for 3 weeks. Don't want to spread the word too far since, like I said, we're not really sure it will happen until we see it in writing... so, no blog post.
• Dave is told he will get his written offer while he's there but it doesn't come until a few days after he returns but the time table is to remain the same. Ugh. Soooo much to do to get ready! (So... no blog post.) It doesn't quite happen as quickly as they wanted, but still very quickly for an international move. We all return from our trips Oct 31 and the movers arrive to begin a whole week (!) of packing on Nov 30. We flew out Dec 9th and the rest is another blog post!