You American, Give me your Money
Welp, I did it again. Some how I managed to obliterate 10GB of data in 6 hours. I blame George Lukas for my misfortune, but most other rational humans would say it was my fault. I tried to download Star Wars to the iPad for the boys, but there wasn’t enough storage. So, I downloaded it again, being ignorant to the fact 1) The Star Wars movies take up a lot of room 2) iTunes doesn’t resume downloading from the place it stopped. It starts ALL over again. So, now I have no Internet, no movie (damn you iPad!!) and concrete walls make it impossible to steal my neighbor’s wifi.
Yesterday, the family went to pick up our CPR cards, which just means we picked up or residency cards. The cards mainly allow us to set up utilities. Picking up the cards was pretty much the definition of purgatory. We had to go to the embassy to meet our driver, switch cars, go to a mall, wait for two hours in a waiting area, and then wait more. Nothing says torture quite like waiting in one spot with three babies for hours. I wasn’t fully aware of the process until we got there, so I made a rookie mistake, and didn’t bring anything to distract the boys (what an IDIOT). Luckily, Bookie paid extra to get the cards expedited. It could have been an all day event otherwise. After we got our cards, we went to an AMAZING restaurant and treated ourselves for not murdering our children.
The restaurant was amazing. The best food I have had in a really long time. I don’t even know what kind of food it was. They had a few Pakistani dishes, some Indian dishes, and other dishes that I have no idea where they were from. My favorite was the rice. WARNING: I’m about to spend way too much time talking about rice. Be prepared. The rice dish was phenomenal! With
every spoonful I tasted something new. At first, I thought it had curry powder (it had a yellowish tint to it), and then the next bite tasted like cloves. It was so strange in such a delicious way. When we got home I started picking through it, and saw why every bite was so different. All the spices they used were whole. There were whole cloves, fennel seeds, peppercorns, cumin, and a couple other whole seeds I couldn’t recognize. Thomas and Diem, if you visit us, we should go to that restaurant and try to recreate the dish. I know I am missing so many ingredients, but I want to learn how to make that rice.
Since I am on the topic of food, I need to talk about the Bahraini Breakfast. I had heard so much about it before I got here. On the weekends, people leave their poop faces with their nannies, and go out to brunch; they have what is called Bahraini Breakfast. This morning I went to a restaurant named Saffron with a group of Embassy spouses, and I got to taste what everyone was talking about. First, the restaurant was in the Bahrain Souq (a souq is the equivalent to a middle eastern flea market). The food was served family style on a Lazy Susan. There were five different dishes, and a ton of flat bread. Three of the five dishes I loved, the other two were good but not my favorite. The first dish was noodles with scrambled eggs. The noodles were sweet, but not overbearingly sweet, and the scrambled eggs were really fluffy and just sat on top. Austin loved the noodles and eggs (that’s right everyone, Austin can now eat noodles and flat bread. YAY for me!). The second was a scrambled egg in a tomato sauce. The egg was cooked in the sauce, and it was delicious. I have no idea what spices were used. I wish I could be a bit more descriptive about the flavor, but all I have in my thesaurus is YUMMY. The third was what reminded me of a baked bean dish. I think the beans are baked, but the question is, “what the heck did they bake them with?”. The fourth dish was spicy chickpeas with fresh herbs. It was good, just not my favorite. Finally, there was another side of beans. These beans looked like, and had the same texture as, refried beans. I need to figure out what spice it is, but there is a Middle Eastern spice I am not too fond of. I guess I will just have to go to a spice store and figure it out. Oh darn.
After the breakfast, we walked around a little bit and went shopping. The first shop we went into had a lot of great stuff. I fell in love with a tea set. They were made of marble with blue specks, and it came with 6 cups, 6 saucers, and a tea pot. I really wanted it. I asked the salesman how much it was (first mistake), and he said 30 BD. That is $79.68 USD. It was entirely too much for what it was. Please enjoy the rest of the conversation (I know i did!)
“Thank you, I’m going to continue to look around.”
“It is a very good price. You not find better price.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“You from Germany? Where you from?”
“I’m American.” (Second mistake)
“America? You have too much money. American come and have lot of money. Just give me your money and you get it.”
“Thank you, but I am just going to continue to look around.”
“No, you American, just give me your money. You American have too much. Just give me your money.”
Then I walked away laughing (third mistake). Sadly, he was not as amused as I was. I’m interested in where he went to salesman school. I didn’t know it was a successful tactic to demand money. Not only that, but he assumed I was rich. Next time anyone here asks me where I am from I am going to say Greece.
I drove for the first time today, and I didn’t kill myself, nor my husband. YAY! Saudi Express here I come (I’m joking everyone)