Eating and Eid al-Fitr

Eid al-Fitr or the Festival of Fast-Breaking started on Friday and continues through today (Sunday). Ramadan ended and it's followed by Eid. It is a big holiday here. Despite the hot and muggy temperatures people were out everywhere Friday night and throughout the weekend.

Malls were packed. People were all dressed up, many women and girls had Henna tattoos.

I'm not sure what US holiday to compare it to. Of course there is commercialization of the whole thing because there are Ramadan sales and now I see signs for Eid sales.

Eid is also interesting in that part of the celebration is for the men to travel to visit with the females from their families. So a man might leave his wife and children to visit his mother and sisters wherever they live. Essentially he's establishing contact with them to see how they are and how he can help them in their life. Charity is a big part of Eid as many Muslims make large donations to charities.

Now to the eating part. Restaurants are now open again all day. So you can go in and sit down to eat and not worry about finding a place that has curtains up to hide what you're doing. We don't have to wait until after 7:00pm to eat dinner.

I moved into my furnished two bedroom place this week. More about that in another blog, but I wanted to report that on Sunday afternoon I made something to eat. In keeping with my love of hotdogs I had a beef hotdog, with Lay's potato chips, Florida Natural's raspberry lemonade, and the dog was covered with French's mustard and Heinz relish. So that's all my brand advertisement for today, except I did by some Dial liquid hand soap for my two full baths and two half baths.

Students are here and start classes tomorrow. Today was supposed to be the first day, but they were canceled because of Eid and will begin tomorrow. More on that later too.



Stay Cool,

Wayne