Musing at Eid

I have been taking a break from blogging for the past few days because we have been on vacation!  Well, Mike has been on vacation, which is to say that he has had the days off of work.  And we really just did a stay-cation, because it's just too darn hard to lug the three kiddos around and still keep everyone napping on schedule.  (C is every day from 9:00-10:45 and from 2:00-4:00, L is every day from 12:30-3:00, and E is Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 1:00-3:00.  Ugh, we are never going to get to go anywhere ever again!)

So anyway, the reason for this week-long holiday is the Muslim celebration of Eid. 

All I know about Eid is that there are two of them:  one at the end of Ramadan called Eid al Fitr, and it's a great big four day party to celebrate the end of a month of fasting.  It's rather like Easter at the end of Lent, but without all the Jesus stuff.  This year, that Eid was in August.  I was not here to witness the revelry, but the big events include that the mall stays open all night long.  Yay, sounds great. 

The Eid we're having right now is called Eid al Adha, which is the celebration to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac.  It is supposedly a bigger celebration, but so far all I'm seeing of celebration is that they have strung up those colorful triangular strings of flags on every major chain link fence, like in a used car lot.  And that's it!  Happy Eid, or "Eid Mubarak"!  What's it gonna take to get you in this car TODAY? 

Oh well, at least Mike has had the week off.  It's been great!  We've been to the pool, and to the beach at Half Moon Bay, and to Ras Tanura, and we've gone to the "big park" (the big park on camp that has THREE playsets in it!) and had friends over for dinner, and we went to the Dining Hall for the breakfast buffet, and we went to the grocery store in Khobar, and we had a lazy DVD watching day.  We've tried really hard to plan things and keep busy, because it's easy for it to get really boring around here.  (No school, no playgroups, no music class or T-ball, lots of friends gone to Bahrain for the week, no TV, and still decently hot outside.)

(Speaking of Bahrain, several expats have said that over this week there was a lot of civil unrest, and several people had to drive through areas where they were throwing maltov cocktails.  YIKES!  No, we will not be going there again any time soon.)

Well, yes, still decently hot, but today was better!  It was probably only mid 90s and this morning, I wore jeans to the commissary because it was only 86!  Yes, 86!  Break out the jeans and jackets, people, we are below 90!  I have been chilly all day and it was overcast (!) nearly all day, so it felt cold, like curl-up-in-a-chair-with-your-cocoa-and-a-book kind of day.  Yes, I am a cold-blooded lizard and I need my rock to sun on.  Yes, I have completely adjusted to this hot temperature.  Yes, I am going to be in a bad way when I go home for Christmas. And I keep watching videos of reporters talking about Sandy, and my first thought is, "Wow, he must be hot with that coat on," until I remember that "Oh, yeah, it's cold at home." 

So all you Sandy folks (you know who you are), let us know if things get hairy.  We will try to be watching from here, but I think we will be sleeping for the worst of it tonight.  Good luck!  We'll try to send some dry, warm air your way!


PS The best part of Eid - NO JETS!! YES!!  
And they have installed a new oil drilling rig about 1000 yards from our house, and it blasts these "all clear" signals all day long.  Sounds like the horn of a cruise ship.  SO loud.  But it's been off, too!  NO JETS AND NO HORNS!  YAY!!  HAPPY EID!  EID MUBARAK!