Swimming Lessons

This Spring Davey and Charlie have been taking swimming lessons at Davey's school. Even though it is only once a week for 30 minutes, I have been impressed with how much comfort and confidence they have given both boys. It has been fun to do the "Bubs and Me" lesson with Charlie and Dave and I were invited to watch Davey's lesson last week through the window (so as not to distract him) so it was a good chance to get some of his skills on video.

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Charlie: "Charlie"

Charlie's vocabulary is expanding like crazy these days and I'm going to try to capture more of his darling little voice on video since I regret not having more of Davey. Here's a short little clip...

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Muharraq Island

Dave and I decided we needed to get out and do something different with our Saturday than swimming or going to the mall to play with the kids, so we decided to venture to Bahrain's second-largest island, Muharraq, and explore a former home of Shaikh Isa bin Ali Al Kalifa, former king of Bahrain from 1869 to 1932. It is supposed to be very beautiful with period architecture and wall carvings.

We brought along a guide book and map and were sure we'd seen signs to it before (the airport is also on Muharraq), but we drove all around the island and couldn't find it. No one we asked seemed to know where it was and one guy said he'd never even heard of it!

The island is much smaller than Bahrain island and we figured we had to run into it somewhere around where our map put it, but alas we did not. We did, however, still enjoy ourselves and saw some interesting things along the way.

A very pretty mosque we came across.

Sorry, I'll fix the picture soon.

Another mosque. I should have taken a close-up of the detail work around the doors. Very pretty.

Muharraq hasn't endured all the modernisation that Bahrain has and seems to have a lot more historic, preserved buildings.

A very beautiful, restored residence.

We drove by the shipyard where dhow boats (traditional wooden fishing boats) apparently go to both die and be born...

Some abandoned, decaying dhow boats.

I must be adjusting a bit because I found the scene a bit beautiful.

Some people were working on the dhow being built and it is very impolite here to take pictures of others without asking permission, so we didn't get a picture of one being built. But Davey thought it was pretty cool. He has had an affinity for dhows since he first saw them in Oman.

Central Market

I have heard for a long time about the Central Market here in Bahrain that is a great place to buy fish and produce. Cherries and berries here are extremely expensive and when I heard they could be had at a good price and I was invited to go with a couple from church, I was in! We went this morning at 6am...

Inside the fish market.

It was a slow day there since the weekend has been very windy and many fishermen didn't go out.

With the "shopkeeper" selling the sharks and my friend Imee

I picked up some prawns for Dave, which he thought were very fresh and delicious but a lot of work for the reward.

A view of the outdoor vegetable market.

I bought lots of cherries, mangos, kiwi, some cucumbers, capsicum (green pepper), garlic and bananas. It wasn't as good of prices as I expected, but surely a better deal than the grocery stores. It was a fun cultural experience!

Spelling

Apparently, Davey has really started to notice the times when we spell words when talking in front of him. Today he told me, "Mommy, we really need to fix my T-H-E-D-A-Y -- my construction truck."