GPS and still getting lost.

I went to the American Embassy today to add pages to my passport.  Because I’m in a foreign country, I’m a little bit anal about planning my trips out so I won’t be lost or stranded somewhere.  I did my due diligence with this as well.  I looked up the address.  My cell phone has GPS in it, so all I need to do is program the address in and it directs me there.  The problem is…no one knows any addresses.  They find everything via landmarks.  And when you don’t know where the heck any landmarks are, it creates a little bit of a dilemma.  But the American Embassy…was very American and had their address clearly printed along with the business hours.  So I get to the embassy around 8:30 and am promptly told passport offices don’t open til 10.  I complained…but the website said 8…Yes that is when its doors open but not apparently when they conduct business???  OK so I walked away and came back at 11.  It was something walking inside of the Embassy.  I was officially on U.S. soil and that was a strange feeling.  I felt safe for some reason, a little patriotic.  Like I was home…even though security was tighter than Oprah in a size 4 jean.    I do feel safe here in Bahrain…safer than I felt in the U.S. even.  But there was something.  I often say how much I like it here.  One of the reasons, it just reminds me how great the U.S. is.  I really am prouder to be an American since being here.  Our country is really one of..if not the best in the entire world.  I say that being objective through my many global experiences.   That’s why most Americans are revered. (I feel a Lee Greenwood song playing in my head). When people are anti-American, its generally because there is a jealously and because most Americans don’t appreciate what they have.  I do miss home a great deal.  I miss my kids, I miss the lifestyle, the routine.  But I know that I know that I know, that Im called to be out in the Middle East for this season in my life.  How long will that season last…I don’t know.  But that’s the cool thing about God.  If you are walking according to His plan, wherever you are…that is where you will find the most contentment with life. 

So I got my passport pages ordered, they’ll be ready tomorrow…so only one more day of being an illegal.  We had a couple of really great meetings today.  The first was with St. Christopher school.  We are bidding to be their web-developer-host, video producer, official photographer, printer…the whole shebang.  This would be a huge client.  Their questions were…Can you do this?…Yes…Can you do this?...yes…Can you…Yes….Can…Yes…yes.  So basically by rule of thumb as a GM at this point is to say we can do anything…then figure out a way to do it.  Im fairly confident we can anyway, so that makes that philosophy a little less risky.  If we can’t do it…we hire somebody on staff that can.  After that…I painstakingly tried to look up the address for the LuLu Hypermarket for my next meeting.  Lulu is like the Giant Wal-Mart supercenter…only 3-4 times the size.  Their website was awful (more on that in a bit).  Nowhere was the address found.  So I just entered the city name in my GPS and hoped for the best.  Bad idea.  I drove around for an hour trying to find this place.  I had a map even that had landmarks…but no address.  Im an intelligent guy, but for the life of me…couldn’t find this place.  Finally I pulled off to the side of the road, (by a landmark)  and Khalifa, had Jeddah come fetch me.  I literally passed this place three times.  Maybe it was a mental block.  So we get there and the place where we are supposed to hang and sell 200 of our photographs…isn’t ready.  Khalifa was there and he wanted the wall painted maroon and some other things done.  Our contact Mohammed Kaleen (a really sharp Indian guy) was the GM and he basically is giving us whatever we want.  So we found extreme favor.  Afterwards we went up to his office, and I showed him the Demo video I just completed.  He wants us to produce a similar demo for his store and to also manage and maintain his website (remember I told you it was bad).  We are also most likely going to build a retail outlet in the mall to sell the photographs and put up a studio for portraits.  All in all it was a very productive day.  What did I do to deserve this?  Not much really.  I was just in the right place, had a good attitude, and subject to the extreme favor of God. 

To top off my good day.  I had dinner with the Romanian.  She is really turning into my best friend on the island…though it is strictly platonic.  She just broke up with her pilot boyfriend and is determined to be “single” for awhile and not date.  I guess I don’t count as a date.  I do enjoy her company and its nice to have someone to go out with and laugh and laugh and laugh.  She’s off again tonight to Frankfort.  Im off to bed..wondering what the next adventure that God has for me will be.