you spin me right round baby right round

the other day, my family had a barbecue. no big deal, right?? except that it was held under the hot desert afternoon sun. yes, we have become that big of a group of bbq addicts. we'll risk skin cancer and heat stroke for a good hotdog/hamburger combo. it's a disease i swear. it was mainly held for two reasons: my brother-in-law has the worst bbq addiction of us so my dad was throwing it for him, and my cousins all wanted to experience one of our bbqs because apparently the million pictures of them we have on facebook make them look really fun. almost everyone wimped out though and hid away in the cool air conditioned house. my dad was doing the grilling and a couple of cousins kept him company while me, another cousin, and my brother-in-law spent the entire day running up and down the stairs to get from our house to the grills running errands. lots of stairs. in the heat. with my hijab on. for hours and hours. it was torture. i couldnt even eat any of the food.

today - as i'm sure everyone who is not hiding under a rock somewhere has heard - is the first day of ramadan. so last night a group of us went out to bid goodbye to food for a month by having a really late super fun dinner at some chinese restaurant. okay that's a little over dramatic since i'll still eat 1.5 meals every day (i'm not a big fan of breakfast, but ill get down a small cup of water and a cookie) and the purpose of the outing was not really saying goodbye to anything. it was just a planned thing that got delayed for a few weeks. when we were done, the mall was practically closed and the door we came in from was locked. a security guard had to let us out of his secret security guard only door.

anyways, we got home last night at 1:30ish and i ended up going to sleep close to three. only to wake up at four to get ready for umrah. i could barely open my eyes and my contacts burned like crazy when i put them in again after only an hour of being in solution. i wear them too much - over twenty hours a day. my doctor tells me not to exceed 8 or 9 hours. but as i was saying, we went up to makkah for umrah and omg it was so freakin crowded. it was more like hajj. and that's after everyone said they're not risking going because of the big scary monster known as swine flu. mashallah though.

speaking of swine flu, we were at the supermarket yesterday and this lady started to lecture/yell at us for not wearing masks. apparently we were not taking care of the kids that were with us or ourselves and pretty much deserved to die of swine flu because that's apparently what we wanted. my cousin tried to explain that she works in the hospital and the masks do little to nothing to help protect you, but she wasnt easily convinced. today in makkah, this dude was wearing one of those eye-coverer-things (the ones you get on the airplane so you can sleep or whatever) over his mouth and nose as a mask. i had a really strong urge to ask him if he knew he was using it wrong. i didnt.

my point - which i assure you existed at one point - seems to have gotten lost somewhere around the second paragraph and has refused to ask for directions. going right back to the beginning though i'm pretty sure it was supposed to be about my family's love for bbqs and how ramadan is going to put a stopper on them for a while.

*You Spin Me Right Round - Pete Burns (not the new ugly version)

the little pilgrimage

so i just came back from doing umrah (kinda like the mini hajj for muslims). i seriously think that it is one of my favorite things to do every year. the experience for me is amazing every single time. we always (or almost always) go super early to beat the crowds and the heat - of which there is really no way to completely escape. today we left our house a little before 5:30. in the morning. i slept after 1. im exhausted.

things that i love about umrah:
*the historicalness of the place. i mean, that building has been around for thousands of years. the Prophet (pbuh) walked around the very same one. you can even see the footprints of Prophet Ibrahim. the two hills, Al-Safa and Al-Marwa, that Ibrahim's wife Hagar went between looking for help/water for her and her son. after seven trips between the hills she found a spring had sprung up near her son, the zamzam well.
*the black stone on the corner of the kaaba that was sent down from heaven.
*no matter what time you go, there will always be people there. morning, noon, and night you will find crowds. sure, you can get smaller crowds at "off hours" but it's never empty. it amazes me how many muslims there are.
*the, for lack of a better word, peace i feel after finishing it.
*i have really fond memories of going to umrah as a child with my uncle every summer.
*the way the marble around the kaaba is always cool.
*the pigeons... dont ask me why.


things - mostly people - i hate about it:
*the huge mobs of people who come together with a company or whatever that walk slowly, scream loudly, and basically inconvenience everyone else.
*the people who act like they're the only ones in the place. they mow people down who get in their way without even sparing them an apologetic glance. some of these have their noses stuck in prayer books, some just look straight ahead, but none of them seem to notice that there are in fact other people on the planet with them.
*the people who take the opportunity to have photo shoots. the tourists who take a couple of pictures of the crowds, the kaaba, the mosque, etc irk me a bit but ill live with them. i'm talking about the people that stop every few steps to pose for pictures of themselves. not touristy ones, just close ups of their faces.
*the lack of courtesy a lot of people show for each other. i mean, if you wanna be a complete jerk every day of your life, that's your perogative, but i feel like you should at least try to be decent over there.
*people using the plastic cups for zamzam and putting them on the new pile instead of the place for used ones which is literally a hand away. it's gross..


*yeah, i thought putting a song would be a tad inappropriate