Eid al-Adha

A couple days ago was the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. Brendon’s good friend asked if we would like to celebrate with him and his family. We were very excited for this experience and we arrived promptly at 8:00am at our friend’s house the next day. We were told that this holiday was in honor of when Abraham was obeying God and was about to sacrifice his son but instead God provided a lamb to take the sons place. Eid was a special holiday that praises God for the substitute of the lamb. So every Eid al-Adha families come together and slaughter a lamb and have meals together.

When Brendon and I arrived I was shown the ladies door and Brendon walked through the men’s door. After coming into the house I was greeted by all the women with sided kisses and assalam wa alaikum (Peace be upon you). The women of the home showed great hospitality to all their guests. I wasn’t even allowed to throw my own trash away because they didn’t want me to have to get up. They had amazing food! They had a gigantic chocolate platter, another platter of pastries, coffee, tea, and dates! I loved it all!!

            

Brendon’s friend had the honor of slaughtering the lamb this Eid and it was a great privilege for him. By the time we got there the lamb had been slaughtered and skinned and now they were cutting up the meat that was hung in the backyard. They brought in a bucket of blood and meat from the lamb and I was told that for breakfast we were going to have the liver of the lamb. So about an hour or two later they brought out breakfast that consisted of liver, lettuce, bread, and Foul. The liver was interesting and I couldn’t eat a lot of it because my taste buds were thrown for a loop haha! We all ate on the ground which was really fun.

After breakfast we had more chocolate and pastries and just hung out and talked. There were about seven women and four younger girls. They all spoke Arabic but three of them knew English so they would help interpret conversations or questions. The family was so sweet and they had a lot of questions for me and vice versa. We had music on in the background the whole time and then there was a song that every liked so we got up and danced. If you know me….I was loving this!! I don’t know exactly what style of music this was – maybe Egyptian hip-hop? We danced Saudi style which is swaying back and forth and moving your hands. It’s a very peaceful/elegant way of dancing.

They served lunch which consisted of a HUGE platter of rice with lamb meat on top. I was so full by this time that I couldn’t eat too much. Everyone was so polite and kept me in the conversation by interpreting Arabic to English. After lunch ended it was around one so I was trying to feel it out to see if we had over stayed our welcome and it was time to go. I asked one of the sisters and she said, “oh no not at all!” So we talked a lot more and had a lot of fun talking about American culture and Saudi culture. Around 3:30 I heard that the boys were ready to leave so I got my Abaya back on and walked out the door to meet Brendon. We were there for 7 ½ hours and had so much to catch up on. Brendon also enjoyed his time with the men. They talked and played video games haha! The family was so welcoming and Brendon and I felt very honored to be a part of their day!

Covering in Saudi Arabia

We only have 3 more weeks of teaching, then training until July 7^th, and then we are heading back to Cali!! We are getting excited to come home and see everyone, but we know we will miss our new friends from Saudi. We love our students and really enjoy being with them. We have learned so much about the Saudi culture by teaching our students. One thing that I have learned while teaching the girls is that they are so careful not to have their face exposed. When you walk into the University you have to have your hair covered and the Saudi girls always, always have their face covered too. Right when you walk past the walls and enter the University everyone has to uncover though. So the whole day at work the students and the teachers just wear regular clothes for the most part. All the teachers have to wear skirts down to their ankle and shirts that go to their elbow. Anyways, the students love to take pictures of anything and everything. While they love doing this, it is carefully done so that their face and hair are never in the picture. The most common thing to do is to give the peace sign and just have your hand in the picture. For example, my students and I randomly planted a tree one day and they all wanted to take a picture by it. So they all stuck their hand by the tree and they took the picture! So funny! This is one example but I usually see this every day at work. I’ve also seen umbrellas and books blocking my girl’s faces in pictures too.

Last week one of my students came in and asked me to step outside the class for a second. I stepped outside my door and she began to cry and tell me that she had lost her phone. I thought for a second “this is why you are not in my class right now?!” But then she began to tell me that her phone had a picture of her on it. She said, “Teacher, pictures of my face our on my phone.” She was so upset and then I began to realize how serious this was for her. Saudi woman have never shown their face to anyone but their family and other females. So the fact that she had a picture of her exposed face on her phone was pretty risky; now that the phone was in the hands of another person made her terrified. The good news is that by the end of the day she had found her phone and she made sure I knew. She ran towards me and starting screaming in excitement for like 2 minutes straight haha. In the end it was a funny story but this is just one example of how important it is for women to cover here.

I have asked my students multiple times if they like wearing the full burka and they always say yes. They told me that they feel safe and protected by wearing this. This is all they have ever known so it is completely normal to them. I’m sure there our women here who might not want to wear the abaya, headscarf, and face covering but I have not met them. My students love their culture and they don’t look at the burka as a negative thing at all. Everything is so different than what you would think, but being here you see how fascinating this culture is. Hopefully we can share more with all of you when we come home in a month or so! Love you all!