Travelogue: First Day in Bahrain

by Christine McSwain & Emma Stough

Bret Lott, Christine McSwain, & Emma Stough have gone to meet our friends at the University of Bahrain. Follow their progress here!

May 5

Bahrain

We started bright and early this morning with a tour by the Dilmuni Couple, Mariam and Hussain. We began with a traditional Arabic breakfast at Emmawash. Pictured are the many dishes we enjoyed this morning, including fresh bread, chicken livers, balaleet (sweet noodles with egg on top) and for dessert, lugaimat, a sweet, bite-sized pastry soaking in date syrup. We washed it all down with hot chai tea.

From breakfast, our tour headed to Bani Jara Weaving Textiles. There, one of the two brothers who owns the studio was weaving a woman’s dress. We got to observe the intricate and dexterous process of weaving while sipping delicious Arabic coffee. From the textile studio we stopped off on the side of the road to gaze out across ancient burial mounds, the historic graves contrasted by the modern cityscape in the distance. In the village of A’Ali we visited a pottery shop where we watched men molding vases effortlessly from clay.

The final leg of our tour took us to Shaikh Ebrahim Center in Muharraq. There we walked white-washed alleys overshadowed by palm trees and ducked into several beautiful homes dedicated to certain aspects of Bahraini culture including journalism, weaving, coffee, poetry and more.  As we walked, a call to prayer echoed through the alleys. We ended the tour at an open air cafe and enjoyed refreshing glasses of saffron juice and lemon mint–the latter of which is a new favorite for us both.

After a quick rest at the hotel we headed to Freej Bin Rashdan for a delicious meal with our students from this semester. What an incredible feeling it was to walk into a restaurant halfway across the world and see familiar faces. While it was almost surreal to meet these students in real life, we soon discovered they are just as full of life and laughter as they were on Skype. We eagerly await tomorrow morning, when our students will read their work in a ceremony dedicated to this international writing program.

Until then–

Christine & Emma