Oh, and for those of you who don't know, Eid al Adha, this holiday, celebrates when Abraham proved his faith by offering his chosen son, Ishmael, as a sacrifice to God; at the last minute God sent an angel to stop Abraham and sent a ram to be sacrificed instead. So Muslims who can afford it sacrifice sheep. Something's a little different about this story...can you figure out what?
Soooo much happened this weekend! First, I believe I wrote how Shireen told me on Sunday there was a party on Thursday and will I come. I said yes, of course, and it was a little odd because she reminded me to save the date 2 times that week. So the day came, and she said "we're getting picked up at 5:15 I'm going to get dressed." I asked if the dress was "as you wish" like last time and she said "no, it's a wedding, so nice." OH!!!!! So I got to go to a wedding party after all. :) :) :) It was a LOT of fun. and SO JEWISH!!!!!
First off, as you can see in this picture, the family did a circle dance...where they circled, and spiraled in, and spiraled out, and went up and down the dance floor...sound familiar? There were also people who sat the entire time and those who couldn't get off the dance floor. I was dancing every time that Suher and Diana got up to dance. Shireen kept trying to get me to go every time ANYONE was on the dance floor; I'm not going to dance when it's just the bride's sisters!!!!!!Another thing was there was a Syrian singing/chanting group that came at the beginning, and they were wearing kippahs!!!! Oh my god!!!!! You can kind of see them in the background of this picture, though not really. Ah well. Ask me when I get home. The BIG thing in the below picture is this is the bride's sister. Tell me again what's appropriate and what's not???
Pictures on here are really weird so I take no responsibility as to how this blog looks. I'm just not going to fight with it that much. Anyway, on Friday I was at school at 8 again to go on a field trip with my Islam class. We checked out a bunch of shrines/graves for 2 prophets (Joshua, the leader after Moses, and Moses' father-in-law) and a bunch of the Prophet's (Muhammad's) Companions. It was a LOT of fun!!! It was really relaxed and we went in a small bus (there were under 20 of us) and you never knew what you were going to get!! For example, in most of them the Imam (the head of the Mosque and caretaker of the shrine) greeted us and showed us around. But we had told the Ministry of Something we were coming and they told the imams; but they told all the imams we were coming in the morning. So one was just not around and we waited for a little, and the people who were sitting with us and watching us told us to go around back and look through the window at it. ooook. Another time, for I believe the 3rd shrine, we got there just as we heard the Call to Prayer. So we sat near the bus and waited for the prayer to end and the imam to be free and the bus driver to return. This was only vital because it was open, and while we were sitting a bunch of teenage guys came over and were being annoying. My teacher started yelling at him to go away and he gave some smart-alec answer I didn't really understand but I did understand him say "they're Israeli" and my teacher say "noo, American. Go! Go from here!" He finally did, as did his friends who were watching him from across the street. Boys will be boys.
The shrines were really grand. I posted 2 pictures, one of them with me standing next to it just so you can see the SIZE of these things!
And yes, all the girls wore headscarves when inside. It makes life SO much easier, and it's more respectful. Course, I was one of the only ones who knew how to put it on...for the others, it was only half covering their hair, or it was covering most of their hair but they didn't bother wrapping it around their neck; some people just put their hoods up. It was good enough, no one gave us grief. But it was still funny to see.
Saturday was Desert Castles tour with CIEE. I realized something--I do NOT like going in large groups!! I know this was the only way we could've seen the amount we did, and it was the only thing that made sense for CIEE to do, but I MUCH prefer the small, iffy trip on Friday to being shepherded from one castle to another with 40+ other people. The castles actually weren't castles, they were old hunting lodges. They were also Roman, Nebatean, and Ottoman, NOT Western/Crusader time period. Here are some pictures of the castles we saw just to give you an idea.
Also, a major difference between Jordan and the West: the way they treat artifacts is completely different. You can see in the pictures, we were climbing ALL OVER EVERYTHING!!! The most fun was when someone moved the "Pleas dont enter" sign (yes spelled that way) so we just went up and chilled on the roof of the building until the overseer yelled at us to come down. :) Oh and you need to see the picture on the left big, but I'm not floating on thin air. There are long bricks sticking out of the mosque and I'm walking up them. It was REALLY funny when a few people who aren't great with heights decided to go up. Then had to come back down. They made it, just weren't too happy about it.
This is mainly for the Lillinagels and Slerpstmans, but you'll all LOVE this last picture. For those of you who don't know, everywhere the 2 families go we take a picture with a sign. So we passed a roadsign and the bus stopped and everyone in the program took a picture with it. Enjoy!!
You know you love me. }:) NO, we were not anywhere near the boarder. We were just close enough for there to be signs starting to lead the way towards it.
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