It's currently 0430 in the morning and I'm waiting in the military airlift command terminal. I got to sleep around 10:30 last night, luckily I was SO exhausted that despite my stomach being in knots and being paranoid about oversleeping, I easily drifted off. I just want to get to the Nimitz & go to sleep; something tells me that's probably not in the cards. I'm not sure how "comfy" a COD flight is and I'm hoping that my ability to fall asleep anywhere, anytime will come in handy today.
My throat is VERY sore as we went out on Tuesday night and the bar we were at was VERY VERY smoky, my throat hurt SO bad from the smoke the next day. And yesterday, Marc & I traversed almost all of Bahrain, chatting it up the enitre time (weird for me, I know :) so between that and no sleep last night, I feel pretty miserable.
I am so super nervous :/ Hopefully this is less painful than I am imagining.
Bahrain was REALLY fun! The first night, I got to experience some good Bahraini night life (it was mid-week so obvoiusly not too crazy) and topped off the night with some late-night 2am schwarma- DELISH!The next day we hit up some schwarma before lunch (at none other than Shwarma Alley) before hitting the carpet stores; I can't make good dceisions about rugs on an empty stomach!
We went to a place that seemed very legitimate; the store front was COVERED in Navy stickers from all kinds of ships and units that had been there. Once we walked in, in addition to the hundreds and hundreds of rugs, there were TONS of command coins, letters, & autographed pictures from visiting ships and commands. I even saw a letter from Admiral Stavridis and a picture that Abdullah had hanging up of him and the Admiral. Seriously, everyone who's everyone buys rugs from there. Abdullah was so much fun to work with. Refueled by schwarma, he first had me go around and point out colors and styles that I liked, then we discussed size. While this was happening, he also taught me about threat count and material and quality and how some are made for hanging on walls, thus more delicate (and expensive) and some are made for walking on, more durable and hand washable with soap and water. Quickly, he got an idea of my tastes and then he got to work pulling out carpet after carpet after carpet. It was almost exhausting! When I would sort of like one, he would unroll another that was similar and then I could pick between them. He was a great salesman, and not pushy like many others in Bahrain. 
I left with 2 rugs, a larger area rug (good for a small living room like ours), and a long hallway runner. I'm not sure if we will use them right now but I think they will be something we will have forever; they are mainly colors of navy blue, maroon-ish, and ivory. I think they will match a lot of things. Abdullah also lived up to his promise of a "special price"- and with shipping back to the states, the 2 carpets were less than $400! I was VERY pleased. He said he used to sell them on base but then they started wanting a 25% cut, and so he moved off the base. Now he says he does MUCH more business. After the purchase was made, he even offered to drive me and Marc back to the base, where we were going to go to mail it. We took him up on it and on the drive he told us all about how he sells rugs to all of the distinguished visitors in the Navy. He said whenever a DV comes to Bahrain and wants to buy rugs, his shop is one that they go to- the Navy even comes to do a security sweep to make sure it is safe. If you've been in Bahrain longer than like 6 months, Abdullah probably knows you.
He told us about this thing he does called "rug flops"- rug flops are basically like Tupperware parties... but for Persian Rugs. He and his shop will bring carpets, food, and non-alcoholic beverages to a person's house. If you are hosting a rug flop, you will supply the libations for the evening and lots of friends; you eat, drink, socialize & then Abdullah will show tons and tons of rugs. He says there really is no pressure to buy; sometimes he doesn't sell any rugs and he brings the food. There are no cost for the host for these parties- Abdullah says that even if he sells zero, the people there usually end up coming back later to look at more now that they have met him. It is very common when a ship pulls into port, if someone on the ship knows someone who works in Bahrain (not hard, given how small the Navy is!), they will host a rug flop for the visiting ship's Wardroom. I thought this was an AWESOME idea. If I had been in Bahrain longer (and had more than like 2 friends), I would have easily hosted a rug flop!
So if you find yourself in Bahrain, I highly recommend his shop.
We did so much that day, walked everywhere and saw everything. I may be running out of time here and won't have time to write about EVERYTHING, but I must tell you about the bread! We went downtown to the gold city and souq's, which was much more "authentic" and local, not a lot of Americans. I am glad that I had a tour guide who was familiar with the city, I felt very safe and it was a lot of fun. Marc took me to this TOTAL hole-in-the-wall shop on an off the main road side street- literally it had no name or anything! It was 2 guys who make bread in this really hot fire-pit stone oven. They take little circles of dough, slap them on the wall inside of the fire-pit oven and it cooks in like 2 minutes. It was sorta like pita- but bigger and thinner and way better- I guess you could make schwarmas out of them? I'm not really sure. He sold them for the equivalent of like 30 cents! But what was really cool was the ones that he rolls flat and spread with some kind of soft cheese (tasted sorta like Laughing Cow cheese). He folds it in half to make a little half-moon shape bread, then he scores it with a ravioli cutter looking thing, sprinkles with sesame seeds and slaps onto the wall inside the oven. It cooks and bubbles and melts the cheese and then he gives it to you wrapped up in a piece of paper. AWE-SOME! It was like $1.20 for 2 and when Marc described it to me at first as a "middle eastern grilled cheese," I knew we could not go wrong. DELISH! I meant to take a picture of it finished, but I gobbled it up before I even got a chance :)
Alright well, I should probably get going b/c I am going to skype-type with Dan and then try and scrounge up enough change to get a little snack before we have to leave. I'm not sure how I will blog next so I will probably just shoot Dan an email when I get to the carrier and he can post for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment