Arabian Culture Night!

This happened last night, on Wednesday October 21st!

We had an Arab Culture night that was arranged by our Arabic teacher, Ayman Jebara.

We all dressed up in Sunday clothes, and went to the forum (which is where we've come to live a lot of our life here at the center). The first thing on the list was an Islamic / Religious introduction. I was a little wary, cause we've learned about Islam and Judaism everywhere we go, but this was pretty cool. They had a father and son who do the prayer call for the al-aksa mosque, on the temple mount. Their family has been doing this service for 530 years, they said. It has been passed from father to son, and they take it very seriously. What a family legacy!
This is Ayman and the father and son. I forgot to mention that some people wore Sabbath clothes, but some people dressed up in Arab garb that they'd gotten as suveneirs in Egypt. So there you go! These two guys from my group had on traditional headdresses.

Anyway, first they showed us the call to prayer. Now, we hear this every day, five times a day, starting at 4 in the morning... You'd think we'd have had enough of it, yes? Yes. But it was different to have a paper in front of us telling us what it is, and reading the translation. It gave it more meaning. Anyway, we got to hear the different styles of prayer call of both the father and the son, which was sweet. (They didn't speak English, and actually didn't say much at all except for singing the prayer call and etc., but Ayman spoke to us about it.)

Anyway, after they showed us about the prayer call, Ayman asked them to show us their prayer for the evening, which they were going to do anyway. It was very interesting. They took their shoes off, and faced away from us towards Mecca, and the father led the son in prayer. Then they did a second one, and they could be at different times, because the second one is the personal prayer time. It was neat.
This is the Father and Son in prayer. You can't see well, but the Father, on the left, his prayer rug is slightly in front of the son, signifying that he's leading the prayers.

Kind of a bad picture, but you can see them kneeling completely with their foreheads touching the ground. They repeated this several times, standing up and then kneeling back down again.

After the presentation in the forum, we went to a nice dinner in the Oasis, where we normally eat, where they had set up a nice buffet for us, and Jimmy, the head chef, had prepared a special meal with foods that are common in Arab cultures. We all walked in, and we had to sit at assigned tables, and of course, Kathryn and I were assigned to the same table. We're just supposed to be best friends, I guess, cause we just can't seem to ever get away from each other! It's really fun though, I love that Kathryn and I not only are both on this trip, but are roommates and everything too, it's way fun.
This is, from the left, Victoria, Kyle, and Kaylee waiting to be ushers for people coming to dinner after the religious presentation.

Kathryn and me at our table :)

Everyone seated. It was all decorated nice with table clothes and nice napkins, which by the way, I learned how to fold! Christmas dinner, I call that job :)

This is the buffet, with nice flowers and everything, and over on the right is Jimmy, the head chef, who always cooks our meals and has worked as head chef in five star restaurants, but really loves working here at the center :)

My meal...and yes, I tried everything. There was even stuffed carrot, and my pita and bread is covering some veggies and other fun stuff.

So, after dinner, which was interesting...some I liked, most I didn't...but I did try everything. I also can't remember the names of anything, but oh well. We did have a good dessert though. Well, kind of good. Actually, my tummy was a little unsure about the different foods that I fed it last night. It got better though, which is good.

After dinner we had Arab Folk Dancing. There was first a performance, and then they broke us into four groups, and we all learned together. Then they got us in a huge circle, all together, and we did the dance. Then a big throng of jumping around and dancing broke out, which was really fun.

After that they had us get into a big circle again, and they asked the people who felt like they were good at it to come into the middle and form a smaller circle. I was too timid to go at first, but it looked like tons of fun, so after a while I just went and got in the circle. That turned out to be a sweet idea, too, cause shortly after they had everyone kind of kneel and clap to the rythm, and then one of the dancers pulled me to dance in the middle. I thought that I was going to dance with them, cause a couple others had pulled people in to dance with them, but then he just left to go show other people what to do, and I was just dancing by myself in the middle of the circle for everyone clapping. It was fun, but I definitely didn't do anything very special! Oh well, I had a good time. Then after that I kneeled down and then a girl pulled me up to show me the girls part, and I just was twirling around and doing all sorts of fun stuff with my hands. It was really fun. Some people skipped out to study, but I'm so glad that I didn't. I had a really good time.
This is Ayman telling us about the dance, at the beginning.

This is them showing us the dance.

Anyway, that is my Arab Culture night from yesterday!

Sidenote: