Friday, August 12, 2011

Ramadan Kareem! Or... رمادن كاريم

Okay, so my spelling in Arabic isn't to great. But if you sound it out, it actually reads Ramadan kareem. At least how I think it sounds...

Anyways. It's Ramadan, the Holy Month where Muslims fast from sun-up to sun-down. And it's the middle of summer. And it's hot. And I don't have a clue how they do it and stay so happy at the same time. But they do, and once the Call to Prayer rings through Amman as the sun goes down, they have a feast, eating and drinking to make up to all the food they refused during the day.

So, our Embassy has guards all the way around the perimeter, and they have to work while that Call to Prayer is going off. So, how're they goiong to get their meals?

Well, we bring them to them.

The embassy restaurant makes tons of meals, provides water, eating utensils, juice, pita bread, and yogurt, and then the office my dad used to work in delivers all the meals to the guards. And guess what? They allow others to help them.

So my my mom, me, brother, two friends and their mom, plus another family of kids and their mom piled into the two giant cars to deliver all the food. My friends and I were in the juice, water, and yogurt car. And it took us quite a while to fill up those cups of juice, so we decided to race the other car without them knowing. The second we arrived at one guard posts, we all jumped from the car, gathered up the desired number of supplies and ran to hand them out, shouting 'Ramadan Kareem!', before jumping back into the car, always in a different order. We were also in the fun car, with two of my dad's colleagues driving and joking around, and us screaming out the lyrics to "Smelly Cat" You know that song from Friends? That Phoebe sings? Yup, that one.

But then it ended up as a race against the sun. We were almost finished when the Call to Prayer went off, causing us to go even faster to hand out those long desired meals. In the end, it took us forty five minutes to give every guard on duty a Mini Ramadan Feast.

So, did we win our mini race? No. But in our defence, the other car was made up of my mom, brother, twins, their brother, two Embassy guys, and another mom. So we were outnumbered.

But it was still fun, and now I've got Smelly Cat stuck in my head.

Wish you were here Dad, you would've loved it. Come home safe. <3

Monday, August 1, 2011

Construction II

Remember this? Well now it's four stories tall and very loud. With the cranes and cement mixers going by and all. I would get a picture, I tried even, but it didn't work to well with the bars across our windows. I'm sorry, but those thing sure are convenient, especially when my brother and I open the windows and want to stand on the rather large ledge. They make sure we don't fall off. Thank you metal bars.


But I hate seeing the construction over there. As the building gets taller, I can't see over it. I can't see other cars and people that are about to turn the corner either. It makes our view pretty... dull.


And it means another small view of my world, just got even smaller.