School Visits on Easter Sunday?

Now that's dedication! The weekend in Bahrain is Friday and Saturday, so today is a regular weekday--think of it as Monday morning. Easter wasn't totally ignored however--a chocolate Easter bunny and dyed egg were delivered to the hotel door. Better than USA Today....


Our plane was late in arriving; we got to the hotel at 3:00 a.m.this morning, door to door travel of 27 hours. We departed for our school visit at 10:45 a.m., so we were all in various stages of sleep deprivation as we set off. The Shaikha Hessa Girls School was our first visit of the trip. Named for the mother of the king, it is a 7 year old school in Riffa about a half hour from Manama. (That is with a speeding driver--ours came within 2 feet of the tail of a car he felt was not moving fast enough in the left lane. Jenny R. decided to put on her seat belt when the driver in front stepped on the brakes, our driver blasted the horn and edged him over. If it weren't for the desert, and the lack of hand gestures by either driver, we might as well have been in New York.)

Anyway, we spoke to the senior and junior classes and I had one of those dreaded admission moments. We had added this school late to our itinerary, and thus it didn't go through our check of applicant records. During the presentation a senior raised her hand and said she had applied to Smith (wait listed.............) tough moment.

Exhausted though we were, we did pull off a coherent presentation, and declared our first visit a success.

Critical decisions at this point: exercise, sleep or explore? Next blog will tell...

Note to Chris--you would love seeing all of the fast food places names in English and Arabic. (Especially Dairy Queen) Happy Easter to all.