Thoughts on Ramadan

Hey everyone. This is the first week of Ramadan, which is the Muslim holy month. During this month muslims fast from all food and water during the day. They're allowed to eat and drink before the sun comes up and after the sun goes down, but not during the day. Everything feels a little different during Ramadan. If you want to eat during the day, you need to buy food the night before and keep it at your house during the day. Also, everyone's tired all the time. It's made visiting friends and practicing language a lot harder. During the day people are tired. Then at sunset they eat and are really tired because they just had a huge meal. I still haven't discovered when is a really good time to visit people during Ramadan.

Culture shock seems to be an ebb and flow sort of thing. Some times I think I've got it down, and other times it knocks me off my feet and sends me reeling. During the last week or so I've had a bout of culture shock that was a surprise. It was a reminder that I really am a foreigner. I find myself fighting the temptation to just say "well the people here are just like this ______________." The temptation to feel superior is an easy trap to fall into, but not a particularly fruitful one. I had a couple of American guests here last week, and they told me how great my arabic sounded and how nice it was to have a fellow American who understands the culture here. Maybe this past week is just putting me back in my place. Who knows?!?!

Having guests was fun, but I definitely spent more of my day speaking English than I would like. I'm looking forward to getting back to mostly Arabic in the days to come.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope you're all doing well . . .