Ramadan

Ramadan began this month and will conclude in mid-October. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise until sunset. No food, no drink, no smoking. There are six calls to prayer rather than five. Businesses have different hours, often closed during the afternoon (many people sleep) and then open late into the night. Even Mcdonalds and Starbucks are closed until 6:30 at night. The post office is open from 9:00 PM until 11:00 PM (yes, at night; that's not a typo).

School hours are also shortened. Classes begin at 8:30 AM, and the school day ends at 1:10 PM. Normally, classes run from 8:00 AM until 2:40 PM. Therefore, my classes, which usually are 48 minutes long (a far cry from the 90-minute block scheduling I had back in the States), are now 33 minutes long. Christine's middle-school classes have been shortened from two hours to ninety minutes. I have five classes, in five different classrooms, usually on opposite sides of the building (moving from the girls' side to the boys' side and back); it's tiring enough doing that every 48 minutes. Doing this every half hour is especially hectic. I hardly have time to get settled and get the students working on something before it's time to pack up and leave for another class.

We are enjoying the shortened schedule, however. It's nice to be home by 2:00 in the afternoon. Of course, many businesses are closed (so that trip to the bank or the post office will just have to wait); I can't even go somewhere for a cup of coffee until the sun sets.

This also means that if I want to go to the beach or walk along the Corniche, I am really not supposed to drink water. This is not very easy for someone who really likes his water.

It's interesting, though. The streets come alive at night, and some restaurants sell additional items out in the street that you can grab and take home. Christine and I are trying to get an invitation to a Muslim student's home for "iftar," the breaking of the fast in the evening. Ramadan is scheduled to end on or about October 12, the start of Eid--which will be a reason for Muslims and non-Muslims alike to celebrate (we get a week off from school; Christine and I are planning to go to Oman).

Our neighborhood

View outside our apartment building


One of our neighborhood grocers, located directly across the street from us


The mosque behind our apartment


Celebrating the late Sheikh Zayed


A view of the Arabian Gulf from the Corniche

Dress, rugs and mosques

Thought some of you might be wondering about the dress situation for me (this is Christine). Each time I leave the apartment, I make sure to wear something that covers me to below my knees and something to at least my elbow. This means 3/4 length shirts are great, most of my skirts are fine and my numerous cardigans are coming in very useful. Wearing short sleeve shirts (much less tank tops) and at the knee skirts makes me feel uncovered and unintentionally provocative.

I went to a 4-hour oriental rug design study class with my teaching mate Leanne this past Saturday. The Thompson classification system organized oriental rugs into 4 main categories (tribal, village, town and court) based on considerations such as the rug's intended purpose, division of labor, weaving plan, etc. We also identified the parts of a rug and studied "corner solutions," which are quite telling of the weaver. I came with zero knowledge and now would actually feel confident enough to buy one. Next week: carpet structure.

We have a mosque directly behind our building. (Abu Dhabi claims a mosque every 400 m.) The call to prayer beckons 5 times a day: 5 am-ish, twice while we're gone to school, shortly after we get home, and around dusk. This past Friday I happened to be out for the noon call-out which seems to be equivalent to Sunday morning mass. Men were facing Mecca on prayer mats all around the mosque- in alleys, outside the main entrance, under the few trees if they were lucky. I had been running some errands and really felt like I had walked in on something. I tried to be as invisible as possible. I have been considering doing something every time I hear the call- pausing to be thankful, sending up a little prayer, having my own moment of silence. But nothing has felt right yet. I'll keep you posted...

Settling In

Last night Christine and I drank camel milk. It's creamy and, in spite of refrigeration, warm. Perhaps I should feed the rest of it to the neighborhood cats.

We are gearing up for a month of Ramadan, which should prove to be most interesting. Our school has a special Ramadan schedule that means we start a bit later in the morning, and we end quite a bit earlier. That's a pretty nice schedule. Most of my classes (high school level) will be shortened from 48 minutes to about 33, which will be tough to get much done, but I'm not really complaining. Christine's classes (middle school) are much longer to begin with (two hours), so hers are only shortened to ninety minutes.

During Ramadan Muslim students will be fasting during the day, and after dusk the eating begins. I expect that they will be tired, even more than usual. I wonder what our neighborhood will be like during Ramadan.

It begins Wednesday.

Life in Abu Dhabi

THE CITY: Abu Dhabi is a magnificent city, from the Corniche with its view of the clear-blue waters of the Arabian Gulf to the towering and often fantastically-designed skyscrapers to the many green spaces.

OUR APARTMENT: Our home is nice. It's on a corner two blocks from a major road, with all sorts of little shops and restaurants on the first floors of all the buildings. We're on the third floor, and there's a Domino's Pizza (of all things!) across the street from us. There's a mosque behind our building where we can hear the calls to prayer, but we've been sleeping through the 5:00 am call most mornings. The above pictures (from top down) show: our bedroom, the front of our building, the living room, kitchen, and one of our bathrooms (the one without the shower).

THE SCHOOL: AISA is k-12, single-gender with a boys' side and a girls' side. I teach 5 classes, eleventh and twelfth grade English, both sexes, and Christine teaches eighth-grade math and physical science, both sexes. The kids are mostly from the Middle East, with nearly half of them Emirati, but there are a few Westerners, mainly Germans, Brits, and Canadians (according to last year's figures). Tuition is $12,000 a year, so our students are a bit different from the ones we had in South Carolina. Despite our name, most Americans actually go to our rival school, the American Community School.

THE FOOD: Yum. You could go to McDonalds or Fuddrucker's or TGI Friday's, but we prefer the little Indian and Lebanese places in our neighborhood. It's cheaper than buying your own food and cooking it! (But rest assured, I HAVE been cooking).

SHOPPING: There are several malls, including the massive Marina Mall which has a Carrefour Hypermarket in the basement; it's basically a Super Wal-Mart on steriods. The mall also has a food court with a little roller coaster--and some indoor snow skiing. For a simpler life, numerous little grocers and markets are in our neighborhood. It makes life a bit easier.

GAS: About a buck