Love the Airlines in the Middle East

I love airlines in the Middle East. Granted, I had to travel to the office to make the change, but today I changed my itinerary for our vacation only two days away - departure city, return date, added an extra flight and changed the return city - and only paid $20 per ticket because of Dubai's airport tax. Amazing! My cab ride to get to the office cost more.

Other great things about the airlines I've been on here: planes are nice, clean and new, food is plentiful, individual tvs usually even on short flights, great customer service, etc. And their change/cancellation fees are either non-existent or minimal. I was dealing with Qatar Airways today. Go Qatar! Now I'm even more excited for our trip to Greece!

Witness at the Scene

So I called my friend Monica to see if she wanted Dave to bring her kids home from school, too, since I wouldn't recommend her being on the roads to go get them. Yes, she did of course after hearing about what I encountered.

Dave picked them up just fine but as he drove from the school to the first roundabout just outside it, he sensed something was wrong. A car was up on the median and started squealing its tires like crazy to get moving all of a sudden, entered traffic the wrong way around the circle and crashed head-on into another car. It was so obviously an intentional crash that one of Monica's girls asked, "Did that guy mean to hit the other car?" Dave just said, "I don't know," and gunned it to get out of there as fast as he could, seeing other cars acting strange as well.

So he took the other way home that I hadn't gone to avoid that protest and got still more of an eyeful. Hundreds of men gathered together with clubs and stick in their hands looking like they were looking for a fight. It was such a relief to have the whole family home and safe. But the afternoon was filled with jitters about what we'd witnessed and what it could be meaning was happening out there.

Later that afternoon we got an email from the school explaining that they had gone into lockdown for ten minutes following that car accident, which they heard from the school, and then mostly because of the gunshots that were fired at the scene of the crash. So scary and I'm glad Davey was out of there before that! Imagine if they had accidentally hit the wrong car and it was Dave with a carload of kids! So scary!

Caught in the Action

The last week that Dave was gone in Houston was really hard for me. I was so exhausted, physically and emotionally, from the stress of everything happening in Bahrain and felt like I would never make it through the week. We hadn't left the house in a week and a half (I did run across the street from our compound once to the Midway Supermarket to restock our produce and we did take the kids to play at the park and ride bikes at the tennis court in our compound) and, being 5 months pregnant, I was emotional. But somehow I made it through the week and Dave came back on March 4th.

It was so good to have him home and over the next week, life started to return to normal a little bit; Dave was home every night, Davey went to school and Charlie went to school one day. We still went out as little as possible and were always trying to figure out what was happening across the country but we didn't see any of it. Then the weekend of March 11 and 12, protests were all over and church was cancelled. But we didn't hear to much and Sunday we planned to live life normally. Davey went to school.

Everything changed for me and I think everyone in Bahrain that day. Later, I found out that several mothers had felt an impression to pick up their children early from school; I don't know why I didn't have that impression too and wish I had. Either I wasn't listening or I wasn't meant to do it. Either way, when I went to get Davey from school I decided to go the longer route that would avoid passing a royal palace in Riffa that had been the scene of large demonstrations and clashes over the weekend, not knowing if it would still be a bad way to go. As I drove down the freeway, I saw three ambulances going both directions with lights flashing. I was curious but not too alarmed yet. As I continued in the left lane, two cars came driving toward me in my lane, traveling at highway speeds! I was able to get out of the way but was spooked. Then several more cars were driving the wrong way up the freeway, in the right lane/on the shoulder.

By this point I, and the cars around me, was traveling much slower, wondering what was happening making these cars do this. There was only one exit left before the freeway ended and I thought about getting off but didn't because I didn't know how to get to Davey's school from there. Just after that, I came upon tons of cars parked along the road and had to come to a stop as there was a large traffic jam near the end of the freeway and I found myself in the middle of a freshly-tear-gas-fired-upon demonstration. People were everywhere, coughing and holding their heads in pain from the tear gas and I quickly turned off my exhaust. Cars were going every which way on the freeway, but no one could get through in the direction of traffic so we all had to turn around, in the middle of a tightly packed traffic jam. As I was trying to turn around, more tear gas was fired. I must say I was getting scared and upset. I was trying to call Dave but he was in a meeting and ignored my call the first couple times. Fortunately he got the message that I needed him and picked up after a couple tries. Thank goodness he works right next to (less than 5 minute drive) Davey school so I sent him to pick up Davey, unsure how long it would take me to get out of there and if I could get there the other way either.

Luckily near where I was, the freeway was not divided by metal barriers, but by cement blockades so some men were able to move one and cars were able to get through to the correct lane of traffic to get away from there. The drive home was uneventful though filled with tears and nervousness.

And even crazier, Dave had a very eventful drive home. More on that in the next post.