First off, I am blogging this from a $25/day Internet connection, which is about what I pay for two months of DSL in Cairo, so savor every word.

I am in Bahrain on the second stop of a multi-country recruitment tour in the Arabian Gulf area. I’ve actually lost count on how many times I’ve been to these countries now. Flied into Muscat last Wednesday, now in Manama and going to Kuwait tomorrow, to be followed by Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This tour has two “free” days. The first was last Thursday, when we went to a place called Ras El Hadd in Oman- some kind of national reserve area- to watch the hatching of the sea turtles. We went at night and had a park ranger guide us (with a group of french tourists) to see the turtles.  It was pitch dark except for the flashlights the guides and some tourists had. At one point, the ranger stopped, had the group look at a certain spot in the sand (which to everyone looked like any other spot in the sand), sat on his knees and basically dug up something in the neighborhood of 120+ baby turtles and put them in his lap. It was amazing. In broken English he started to explain all kinds of things about the turtles, from their mating habits to predators that feed on the little ones. The guy apparently knew what he was talking about but the Americans started making fun of his English. Admittedly some of what he said sounded funny but he was getting by. Like how far do you get by in Arabic? Lets hear you try to explain the  mating habits of sea turtles in Arabic. You know who you are. Oh well, all in good fun.

I didn’t take any pictures (forgot to recharge the camera…idiot!) but some of my friends did and I’ll try to post some when I get them. It was also very intersting to see Muscat again after last summer’s hurricane. Its not like everything is ruined but you can see the debris of stuff that collapsed or got swept away here and there. A whole street just caved in, destroying a sea side Starbucks in the process.

At the end of the tour we’re supposed to go on this diving/snorkeling trip in the Red Sea off the coast of Jeddah. Heck, we might even manage to get some work done. Oh my so adventurous life.