It’s been another busy week that just seemed to disappear. We did some of our usual park visits and also went to the Embassy swimming pool a couple of times. We had to say farewell to some good friends this week too. Kaylan and Leila headed back to the U.S. this week and Jessica and Amelia will leave next week while we are in Oman. I’m going to have to make some new friends, but it was great to have these wonderful ladies here while we could have them. Their husbands are still going to be around for a few more weeks so we will farewell Dan and Jon later.
Besides the usual stuff, this week I went out to dinner with some of the military spouse wives again. We went to a Spanish-style tapas restaurant, Bonita’s. The food was really good and had a wonderful atmosphere, and of course, the company was good too.
Yesterday (Saturday), I went with Jon to visit some of the Bess Family favorites for local artistry and craftsmanship. We went to a place called Joseph’s and another called Arabesque both off the beaten path and I would never have found them if he hadn’t taken me and shown me. Joseph is an Armenian who has a pottery store with some very unique and intricate designs. From what I am told, he and his brother picked up the craft in Jerusalem and he moved his business to Amman. As I was thumbing through our Turkey guidebook, I found a few pages where they do this similar design with deep reds and blues. It is very pretty. There was a woman working in the shop when we entered and she gave us a brief tour of the shop. They mold, fire, paint, and finish all of the products on site. Her English wasn’t great, but she did a good job showing me how it all works. She said “the man” (I assume Joseph) does the molding of the pottery and pencils in the designs. Then she spends the hours of time it takes to paint the designs. Once painted, the pottery is “fired” again and becomes usable and food-safe.
The top left photo is a picture of the shop where the woman was painting the pieces of pottery. The top right is the ceramic firing oven. The bottom left is a photo of some of the pieces in the shop and the bottom right is the piece I bought. It's a cheese plate or trivet. The long tulip in the middle is supposed to symbolize "long life".
Then we went to Arabesque, where Jon and Jessica had some pottery made as gifts that they wanted to take back to ship back to the States. This shop was way back in an alley way of a very industrial part of town. They call it the “Crack House” because they make a lot of pottery that has a cracked" look to it. Again, a very friendly shop owner, this time with very good English, offered me a tour. All of the pottery is made on site and they had a much larger operation. In the far back, a man was working on molding some tea cups and then the middle rooms had women who were painting and applying the “cracked” look to many of the pieces. There definitely seem to be “men” jobs and “women” jobs. It was interesting to see how it all works and how it is all made.
The top left is a photo of the man who was molding the tea cups. The middle left is a photo of some of the tea cups that needed to go into the oven, the bottom left are some of the pieces in the shop. You can kind of see the "cracked" pottery in the vase with the flowers or the house on it. The top right is the piece I bought and the bottom right is a photo of the women working in the shop.
This is how Jake spent the evening last night. He decided that the pots and pans all needed to be lined up and then moved on to the water bottles in the cupboard. Thought it was cute and wanted to post. It made my heart smile.
I’m drafting this post while on a plane to the country of Oman. We are going to be spending about 10 days there and plan to visit Muscat, Musundam, and Nizwa. Our flight left Amman at 3:45 AM, which meant we had to leave our house at about 1 AM. Jake was a trooper through the airport and was excited to ride on a plane. He wasn’t trilled with getting strapped into his carseat once we were on the plane, but he crashed in the first 10 minutes on the plane. Chris thought that was a good idea and he’s sleeping too. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I get caught up on the blog. We fly through Abu Dhabi and have about an hour layover before flying to Muscat.
Update to this adventure....We landed in Abu Dhabi at 8:05 AM and our flight to Muscat was supposed to leave at 9:05 AM. When we got off the runway and into the airport one of the Etihad Airline employees said we missed our connected and directed us to stand in the customer service line. Our ticket said we were boarding at 8:05 so we didn't argue. Chris stood in line for nearly an hour and when he finally got to the front, another employee questioned why we weren't on our flight (it still wasn't quite 9:05). It was incredibly frustrating, but they put us on another flight that was leaving at 1:25 PM. BUT we had to go to Terminal 1 (we were in Terminal 3) and stand in another line with Oman Air to get our boarding passes and to update our baggage claim tickets. Of course there were two lines and Chris was directed to the wrong one and ended up in line for nearly another hour. We finally had boarding passes and we were assured our baggage would transfer to our flight. They gave us some meal vouchers for our trouble, but when we tried to use them to buy pasta from one of the restaurants, they wouldn't accept the vouchers. So we headed to the ol' tried and true, McDonalds, and got a couple of cheeseburgers. Jake gobbled his up. Then we waited around for our flight to take off. As we were about to board the flight to Muscat, one of the airline workers came up to Chris and told him that only one of our bags was on the flight and he'd have to go to the customer service desk in Muscat to make a claim on the other. That always makes for a wonderful flight...knowing you're going to have trouble on the other side. It was Chris's bag that is missing and along with all of his stuff, it had all of Jake's diapers in it. But we made it safely to Muscat. Our friend and fellow FAO, Vance, picked us up from the airport and took us to the hotel. Our hotel is awesome and at the end of the day it was all an adventure. We met our friend Dan at the hotel. He flew in two days ago from Jordan and we went to dinner at the Turkish House Restaurant, recommended by the hotel concierge. It was good and Jake enjoyed looking at the fish they had in the fish tanks. Then Chris and Dan dropped Jake and I off at the hotel and went out to find diapers. Now it's a 11 PM and they went to the airport to see if they can find Chris' bag because nobody is answering the phones. We have a flight to Musundam tomorrow so he needs to try and get it tonight. All is well and I'm writing the details of this portion of the trip because I know it will become a very insignificant part of our trip by the time we get back to Amman.
Update to the update: Chris got home from the airport with his bags last night. All is well in the world with Team Baldwin.
Top left is the Abu Dhabi airport. Very interesting architecture in Terminal 1. Top right is Jake hanging out. The bottom left is Jake eating his Happy Meal and devouring his cheeseburger. Bottom right is after we arrived in Muscat and Jake is helping us get directions.
These photos are of Jake and Amelia at their last playdate together. We are going to miss the Bess Family!
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