Ramadan Specials

Ramadan here is great!! That's right, I said it. I like Ramadan. I mean, of course, sometimes it is a pain in the neck to not eat or drink outside your own house during daylight hours because its against the law and yes it sometimes is upsetting that some of your Muslim friends blow you off during their holy month because you are just an ignorant blasphemer, but overall I like it.

One reason I like it is the great Ramadan Specials. You can go break fast at Dairy Queen for 5 bucks and get double meat double cheesburger, fries, salad, dates, and a drink. Chili's will give you Chicken Crispers, soup, salad, dates, a drink, and desert for 10 bucks. That will feed an entire army!

The best thing is the Micky D's Date Pie!!! That's right, Fig Newtons move over. Just thought you would want to see a picture of it.

[the reason everything is served with dates is tradition.... and well, that's really the only thing that grows naturally here in Arabia besides oil]

Shopping At Ramadan

Ramadan is upon us. The best way to describe this event without taking a whole post is to say that is a month long daytime only fast. Fast when the sun is up and feast while the sun is down. It has the feeling of Christmas and the food like Thanksgiving.

Today we had to run to the store to pick up the essentials. . .Coke, sugar, cheese, more coke, some candy. . .you know, all the important/healthy stuff. Well, have you ever been to Wal-Mart the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Do you recall the huge masses of people?

Imagine something similar to that, but with Arabs. Arabs don’t have several key attributes that we seem to find important in the West: patience, the use of deodorant, or the ability to form lines. Not only that but they have huge families, and not only that they are shopping for food to feed those huge families for the equivalent of 30 Thanksgivings! Moms had their carts with their kids pushing the other carts. It was mayhem.

We made it out. We are alive and I plan to go back with a camera and try to capture this amazing site on camera for all to see. Expect to see “The Crowds At Cosmos” coming up this next week. Inshallah.