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[ Monday, November 17, 2003 ]

 

Fun weekend

Alhamdulillah, our halaqa had our annual mother-daughter iftar on Friday night. The point of these iftars is to give our mothers a break from the cooking and to help them to get to know one another better. Alhamdulillah, I think it went well. This year, our theme was Mexican food, so we all made some dishes or bought some things to make burritos. I came home from Jummah with an hour to cook six pounds of chicken. It was actually fun to cook...probably because I hadn't cooked in a week (Fridays are now my days to cook). I think my mom enjoyed herself. She's not very talkative; in fact, she can be quite antisocial at times. I think part of it is because she can't relate to the other halaqa moms...oh well, I think she still had fun. We gave our moms roses, and read them the story of Baraka (Prophet Muhammad-peace be upon him's- nurse who raised him). Daddy and my bro had dinner together which was great because we hadn't seen him in a while.

We had planned to bead tasbihs for our moms as Ramadan gifts, but the beads came too late for the iftar. We had all ordered different styles of beads and then spent yesterday's halaqa putting the tasbihs together. The beads were made from either glass, wood, or seeds. Since both my sis and I ordered beads we ended up with two tasbihs, so we gave one to our mom and one to our dad. Alhamdulillah, I think they were happy to receive them.

Saturday was spent up north with the family. My cousin and I were in charge of making food for iftar. She finally taught me how to make lasagna, and alhamdulillah it turned out pretty good. We also fried some kabobs (Ii know, I know...greasy food, but I can't resist it!). My dad said that we should break our fasts on the road, so that we'd make it back to the Bay in time for taraweeh. We drove around to say goodbye to all the different aunts and uncles...Alhamdulillah, each house gave us food to break our fasts so by the time we finally left, we had a whole feast ahead of us: water, soda, orange juice, dates, kabobs (two types), samosas (My first ones all Ramadan!), curly fries, ketchup, chatni, lasagna, roti (bread), and of course fruit chard. We stopped by in Davis and ate in a parking lot. My car still smells like food! Yummmmmy!

Sunday School was a lot more fun than I thought it would be...probably because we had all chilled during halaqa. Masha Allah the kids were so cute! We started off going over part of Surah al-Fatihah, specifically the verse, "Mallikiyomideen," which got us started talking about the two angels who write our good and bad deeds, Allah and Shaytan, the Day of Judgement, and Heaven and Hell. The kids were just full of questions:

"Is Shaytan in us?"
"Is Shaytan in our head?"
"What does Shaytan sound like?"
"How do we hear Shaytan?"
"Can our hearts turn clean again?"
"Does everyone in Jannah see Allah?"
"Who made Allah?"
"Where is Allah?"
"And the good angel is on your right shoulder and the bad angel is on your left shoulder right?"

They sound like simple questions, but we have to be very careful how we word our answers, because it's easy for the kids to misunderstand. Religion can be quite difficult to grasp, especially if you're only in the age 5-7 bracket. Masha Allah they pick things up very fast though.

Randomly in the discussion on the Day of Judgement, a couple of the kids also raised their hands up high and piped up with cute comments like, "My mommy told me that when I turn six--whenever I have a new birthday--I should give my old clothes away to people who have empty pockets," and "When someone says something mean too you or hits you, you shouldn't be mean back to them or hit them. If you don't say anything bad back to them you get thawab and if you do hit them back you get gunnah."

The kids still hadn't figured out our names, but we weren't very bothered. It soon became apparent after a few times of being knocked on the head and being called "Teacher, Teacher" that we'd have to come up with a better way for them to get our attention.

Masha Allah they're doing very well with reciting the Arabic alphabet, as well as writing the letters in their workbooks. They had fun coloring the the iftar page in their coloring books, although I had to claw one girl away from drawing pink hearts instead...hehehe, I can already tell that insha Allah she'll be an artist someday.

I think kids that young also have identity crisises like us:
Danny: "Zain is from India!"
Zain: "No I'm not! I'm from Florida!"
Idrees: "Well, I'm from Afghanistan!"
I then asked Mostafa (the quiet, smart one) where he's from. I kind of regretted it because he took so long to answer, as if he wasn't quite sure how to respond. Finally I said, "You're from here, right? Like you were born here?" He nodded. "So where's your mom from?" After some "ummmmms" he replied, "Iraq."

Then half the class screamed:
"OoOoOoO! Teacher, Danny said the S-word!"

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