Eids aka ბაირამები aka أعياد

The neighborhood men working on 2017's cow, a collective project (Keda, Georgia)

Eid al Adha (or Eid al Kabir in the Maghreb or Kurban Bayram in Turkey and Georgia), or the Feast of the Sacrifice, is on of the two holidays celebrated by Muslims across the world. Eid al Adha is considered the holier of the two, and honors Abraham's willingness to kill his son Ishmael on god's command (the Muslim version of the story differs slightly from the Christian and Jewish versions in which Isaac is the son to be sacrificed). The holiday begins on the 10th day of the 12th month of the Islamic calendar, Dhu al Hijjah, during which many Muslims are also on hajj (pilgrimage) in Mecca. This year, that corresponds to the 21st of August. Celebrations differ across the world, but one thing they all have in common is the sacrifice of animals, representing the animal that Abraham found under his knife as he prepared to sacrifice his son on Mt. Arafat.

Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman 2015

Eid al Fitr, the other widely celebrated holiday, marks the end of Ramadan, the 9th month of the Islamic calendar, during which devout Muslims fast from dawn to sunset every day. Muslims give money to the poor (and often any children in the household) before saying the special Eid al Fitr prayer.

Visualize Keda summer- hot, rural, humid, hills, perfect (2018)

I have now had the privilege of experiencing both Eids with three very different host families, in Morocco, Oman, and Georgia. I'm from a basically agnostic Thai Buddhist/Catholic (?) family, so grew up on typical American Christmas, with lots of presents, an annual Christmas ornament, a picture book with an abbreviated and not very religious Jesus story, and the occasional Christmas mass with my grandparents, so all of this was fairly new to me in 2014, minus the occasional news story full of bloody sheep heads from Cairo or whatever. I only learned the story of Abraham because I took AP Art History in 12th grade (turns out the history of Western art is mostly churches and things that go in or on churches. Ask me about the paper model of the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat aka St. Basils).

My street, Rabat 2014

"Please don't panic." - Rabat, Morocco 2014

Jad at the sheep market (Rabat 2014)

In Rabat I lived with a middle-class young grandmother, her daughter, and her daughter's young son. It was a small household in a tall, cool, and dark medina house. I had acquired my first real smartphone two months prior. I wasn't close to the host family, because my Arabic was terrible, their Arabic (darija) was incomprehensible because it was mostly French, and honestly I wasn't very good about trying to build a good relationship with them. I spent all of my time outside of the house wandering or traveling and I never really learned much about them, their beliefs or thoughts or even their favorite foods or basic stuff like that. I could only assume that since the host grandmother was divorced and wore pants instead of the djellaba typical in our neighborhood that they weren't very conservative. She always had a head covering but it was usually a hat. Anyway, one day we bought a sheep, kept it on our roof for a few days while my host brother ran around yelling "knife! knife!" in baby darija and waving a plastic butter knife, and then on Eid the neighborhood butcher came by, killed it, and then cut it into manageable pieces. Luckily the roof was already painted red. They left the skin on the roof for a very long time, and I never figured out why.

Our cute roof sheep, Rabat 2014

The first time I remember seeing a non-fish animal die for me to eat (Rabat 2014)

Then we ate it! They set up a little barbecue INSIDE THE HOUSE and made delicious sheep foods. I ate a liver sandwich for the first time, and then a lot of other organs, and also pretty much every other sheep part. Other people on my study abroad program had lots of guests or had cows killed in their living rooms instead of sheep on the room, but my first Eid was pretty low key. We ate, and then went back to our typical daily activities. My host family gave some of meat to the neighbors, as you're supposed to do, though not enough for us to not eat sheep for like the next month. One part of the holiday is wealthy people who can afford to sacrifice an animal are supposed to share with poorer people who aren't able to eat meat as often and buy their own sacrifice. I went for a walk that afternoon and the streets were quiet and empty, except for young men tending fires full of burning sheep heads and hooves, one of the more ~heavy metal~ afternoon strolls I've gone on. There weren't any men in the household, so no one went to the mosque for prayers or anything. For an American used to holidays as a BIG DEAL it seemed very low key - sheep killed and done - but they were also a low key family, so it shouldn't have been a huge surprise.

Crunchy (Rabat 2014)

Bread, sheep, olives, eggplant, yum (Rabat 2014)

My next Eid was Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman (a provincial city on the edge of the Empty Quarter). The day before was 117° F. My "host family" here wasn't really a host family, but rather the family of my language partner, whose house I occasionally stayed at. This family was very, very different from my Moroccan one (high key?). My language partner's husband worked for an oil company, they had the entire extended family in one house, they had a maid. This relationship was better than the one I had with my Morocco host family, but was still pretty superficial. I adored my language partner, but we had nothing in common, and since we didn't actually live together, nothing to force us into commonality. We talked a lot, and I learned about her views on race and things like that, but I never responded the way I wanted to, because I never got that comfortable. Holidays with her were fun though. Ramadan in Oman was harsh days of fasting (not my fasting, but no water, every day over 100° has got to be brutal) alternating with nights of wandering the town in a pack of girls and eating the weirdest, richest Instagram video dessert recipes at like 4 am. Also a lot of Vimto.

Ibri at dusk, 2015

Honestly, if you see this, buy it & drink it, it's great (Source: http://www.vimto.co.za)

Host cousin Hagar & I, approx. 8am and the ground is already hot enough to burn my feet (Ibri 2015)

Eid al Fitr began with waking up at like 5:30 am or some unreasonably early time to discover all of the Omani girls already dressed and made up and ready to go. I got into my borrowed Salalah-style wedding dress (we were not given a choice in dresses), and we all went to the family's patriarchal home with about 100 other people, were given money by the adults (in my experience, random Americans will always be included in the "children" category), went to a riverbed market (Eiood) to spend the money on toys and sweets (only children, male chaperones, and the Americans), and then went back to the patriarch's house where other family members set up little stands selling food like barbecue, ramen, french fries and ice cream (and also fireworks). The Omani women mostly stayed inside in the women's room, but I took the freedom to wander. This Eid was basically a party, with beautiful dresses, a lot of money exchanging hands, and greasy, sugary, delicious food, followed by a purgatory of photo-taking and napping, and then 14 girls in one car being driven to eat Pizza Hut in the park for dinner.

Eating mtsvadi at Eid al Fitr in Ibri, Oman 2015. This is party Eid. 

And finally, Georgia! Morocco and Oman taught me a lot about language learning and cultural integration and mistakes and regrets I didn't want to repeat and also I've matured and I'm here for two years instead of a matter of months, which has all helped a lot with my time here, and I think I'm that much happier for it (I am very happy). My relationship with my host family is much better than previous ones, both because of their personalities and a conscious effort on my part. I also have a 12 year old host sister who really wants me to be like a real sister to her, since she doesn't have one, and won't. In the year I've been here I've visited her father's grave with the family, had crying host cousins run to me when they're scared late at night, gone to a collective five days of funeral, including three for someone who I'd gotten to know and care for, yelled at my host sister for mindlessly reposting racist stuff on Facebook, and been offered pocket money by my host grandfather every time I leave the house even though I pay them to live here. This relationship has changed my perspective on their holidays and traditions too. Instead of an external observer, I participate - I entertain the kids while their parents cook and help set the table and clean up and explain to angry host uncles why I haven't visited, where before I just wandered and watched. It's been interesting to compare Adjaran Islam to my previous experiences, mostly because they're practically nothing alike, but again, my experience here is not like my study abroad ones were. I don't know how much of it is former Soviet Union, or Georgia, or Adjara, or Keda, or village life versus city life, or class, or my host family in particular, or just a change in my perspective but it's so very different here. They're probably the richest family living in this village, but the lifestyle is very different from old Rabati people, and radically different from the upper class Omani life. Everyone farms. Most drink, they cook pork in my house though not everyone eats it, my house computer's screenshot is a picture of my host sister on an excursion to a church. At the same time, the older women wear headscarves (but so do a lot of the Christian ones), my host grandmother prays 5 times a day, and the people that did fast fasted for real, while still working on the farm and the kindergarten in the summer heat (not the air-conditioned nap days of my Omani experience). My educated guess is that my host family is very religious for Keda, but considerably less religious than communities further up in the mountains (Khulo) or in Kvemo Kartli or Pankisi. My Moroccan and Omani experiences both seemed strictly family based, but in the village it seems like everyone participates together, though family members stick around the longest. 

The view from my bedroom window through the persimmons, Keda 2017

For my first Eid al Adha in Keda, I had scheduled a summer camp for that day and half my students didn't show up, but no one told me why, including my (English speaking and usually very helpful) host sister. And then I came home and half the village was in my yard dismembering a cow. I think they just didn't think I would be interested, since it's not actually the biggest holiday here. This year they didn't even do the cow at our house - I guess the Muslim families in my village take turns, so all the men except for one grumpy host cousin disappeared for the afternoon, and returned with a reusable shopping bag full of meat. Unlike in Rabat, we don't appear to have a local butcher, so last year all the dudes just grabbed whatever implements they had and went at it - some were clearly more experience than others, but just imagine two guys holding a massive cow leg and one guy swinging an axe at it trying to break the bone, while little chips of it fly around the yard. 

I looked for a picture of something other than dead cow but failed (Keda 2017)

My host family visited graves this morning with halva, baklava, and roses, and then cooked the meat for dinner, but my host grandfather's birthday party the day before was a much bigger event. It had to end at exactly midnight though, because drinking on Eid is not permitted. By the time dinner rolled around, all the guests were pretty much gone anyway, and more tragically, all the leftovers from the birthday had been eaten. It was such a non-event that I went to Georgian tutoring in the middle of the day. My tutor is Christian, but her neighbor (and my 6th grade student) brought her a plastic bag full of meat anyway. My teenage Christian neighbor (from a Muslim family) went to visit her father's grave today too. Likewise, when the father in my host family's was alive, they had a Christmas tree every year. New Years and Easter were also marked more enthusiastically than Eid al Adha, though I think that might be because Eid al Adha is a religious holiday, whereas New Years and Easter are just for fun - fireworks, pretty eggs, and pasca and no contemplation of death and god. I didn't take any pictures this year, except for one of my baby host cousin watering my plants because there was nothing to take pictures of. 

Nikolozi, King of the Sea (Keda 2018)

Last year's Bayrami feast, because we had to feed all the guys that were hacking apart the cow (Keda 2017)

I missed Eid al Fitr both years, so stay updated for next year I guess.

Waiting - 29 guests for Mawlid (Keda 2017)

Addendum: events that have featured more religious activity here than either Eid: funerals and Mawlid (მევლუდი), Mohammed's birthday and a holiday that very conservative denominations of Islam reject. Both of those events had an imam come to the house for prayers. For my host great-grandmother's funeral, the imam said some words over the body inside with the women (who sit and mourn around the coffin for days), before going outside and leading an actual prayer with the men, who stood hands up in the rain. Her shroud was green, with Arabic writing and a picture of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, the most overtly Islamic symbols I'd seen in our house aside from the Quran that's kept in our top kitchen shelf. During the Mawlid prayer was the only time I've had to wear a head scarf for anything Islam related in Georgia - you have to wear one in Orthodox churches, but apparently not in mosques here if you're just looking around. In conclusion, different countries are different places, and I'm not shocked that a religion as big as Islam is practiced in different ways, but I love having the opportunity to see these different traditions, to try to understand why they're there, and to keep learning. 

My host grandmother's headscarf and prayer rug, my host great-grandmother's shroud (Keda 2018)

Mawlid feast (Keda 2017)

Bonus pic for anyone who finished reading this: host grandfather Shalva, Eid al Adha 2017, Keda

Eid Mubarak!

#casual #candid cuz I totally hang out without my glasses on all the time

So today was (is? it's 1:20 AM, I don't know) Eid, a holiday that happens at the end of Ramadan, unclear exactly why. It was also our last official host family weekend, so I woke up there at 5:30 this morning, an hour later than everyone else. I had a borrowed dress from maybe an aunt of my language partner, that was maybe from her wedding or for a wedding. Unclear. It's in the style associated with the Salalah region, very far from here (next to ~Yemen~). People were a little confused by it, and a few thought that I might just be a really weird Omani, which I guess is an accomplishment.

My little host sister's hennaed feet. I've never seen henna done like this before, maybe it's just an Omani thing? 

Miryam, 6 am, ready to go

Top right, courtesy of Kiaya's Instagram

On Thursday, after a busy afternoon of calligraphy class, grocery shopping, chocolate chip cookie baking, and lunch at 4pm, we went to the house of our academic director for iftar and henna to prep for Eid. 

Hussein's yard at sunset

We ate a typically absurd amount of food (rice, chicken, potato curry-like thing, meat, salad, fruit salad, chickpea thing, cookies, juice, soda, fruit, muffins, more cookies, apricots, watermelon, ~leben~, water, dates) and then settled down an did henna for several hours, interrupted very briefly by the entrance of a large and surprisingly fast scorpion that was promptly dispatched with a shoe, though after causing a fair bit of emotional distress. We got henna from the women in Hussein's family, so it was less professional than sometimes, but more fun. There were 28 of us, so it took a while, and we finally left when the boys got bored I guess. I tried to henna myself, but it's harder than they make it look. Hamdulillah no one sees my legs here.

The bints all dressed up.

Bae, feat. bejeweled thing that babies chew on (what are those called tho?)

The astroturf tho. In front of the grandfather's house.

Anyway. Yesterday (I got distracted midway through this blog post, so I'm starting again after waking up at 3 pm~) was Eid. We left the house at the ungodly hour of 6 am, to go to my language partner's grandfather's house. There were probably a hundred people spread out in and around the house, all in their Eid finery. We went in and greeted people with the language partners (two of the other students and their language partner were there as well, everyone in Ibri is related) and were given money since we're young women and I guess that's a part of the holiday. After that we took ~pictures~ and then headed off to the Eiood, a place where kids (chaperoned by male relatives) go to buy gifts and snacks with the money they just received. It's in a wadi, aka the great outdoors, which I think is why it happens at 7 am. We ran into some of the guys in our program there and the Pakistani guy we befriended on the cab ride back from Muscat, which was funny. Because of the amount of men in the Eiood, the Omani women hung out on a mat by the car, but the American women went and stuck out a lot. I took a bunch of pictures but they're all on film, so that'll have to wait. 

Chewy waaaaaaaajid. Eating this in this dress felt haram. 

After the Eiood, it was back to the grandfather's house. At this point in the day, various family members set up little stands and sell snacks, a very different system from the American one, though I guess they give out a ton of money beforehand so it evens out. There was meshakik (~kebabs~), ramen, fruit salad with ice cream (~!!!~), fireworks and firecrackers, juice boxes, and French fries. Solid system imo. 

Me + habibti Miryam

Lunch feat. not Omani women

Casual house

After that we sat in a majlis (sitting room) for a while, drinking coffee and eating more fruit, and entered the purgatory stage of Eid. We sat, played with children, tried to avoid small explosives, sat some more, Instagrammed, and sat. After a while we switched houses to an uncle's house that was next door because we ran out of space. We watched almost all of Brave, and then watched almost all of it again because everyone was too lazy to get up and turn it off. There were probably 20 girls in the room, all trying to sleep in a rather Tetris-esque manner. After a few hours there we switched to another room because some of the men wanted to watch soccer. Typical. In this room I was out of reach of the air conditioner, and napping in a twin bed with someone else in a room with 20 other people and no air conditioner is another kind of hell. But I managed. We woke up for lunch (rice and lamb) and then went back to sleep. Some of the girls asked for water, but we were told that there wasn't any. Back to sleep. We got up at 5:30 or so, and lurked some more. We went on an excursion with some of the kids to try to find more ice cream but failed. I confused a housekeeper a lot, because she was pretty sure I was Indian and just hiding it. 

Half-hearted photo shoot. I couldn't handle the velvet allll day (Me, Citlali, and Asma)

So many habibtis~~

We sat around while the Omani women took pictures in their dresses for two hours. They all buy new dresses for Eid, some tradiotnal Omani, some Moroccan-style caftans, some 18th century European looks. They put on a boatload of make-up and let down their hairs to take selfies sans hijab to Whatsapp to each other. It's fun, but I have a somewhat shorter tolerance for selfie taking. We took a few sort of half-hearted photos and then sprawled out on the floor under the AC. 

We were getting tired, but ~pizza~

It was decided that we would be getting pizza for dinner, to be eaten in the park. The process was strikingly similar to 15 American 20-somethings trying to get organized and figure out $$$ and whatnot, basically v exasperating. But we managed, and piled into a car driven by someone's brother or something. 14 of us piled into said car. Bints in front, bints in the trunk, etc. Ate pizza, bought more ice cream (oops), and then headed back to the house to get stuff and go back to the apartment for blissful glorious sleep. Sleep is great.

If you know me, you know that me+children isn''t a natural combination, but Hagar's great.

Week Four Updates

Ibri lifestyle

I'm now in week four of the Ibri experience, which means that it's ~midterms,~ always a fun season in the life of Katharine. I've been very busy and have been failing to update this as regularly as I had hoped (a two-month long program means that once a month doesn't work so well), but maybe I'll get better. Maybe I won't.

My host family's women's sitting room

Last weekend I stayed with my host family for a night, and got to experience Ramadan for the first time (it started on the 18th). My language partner, Noof, is a lovely Omani woman that I meet with three times a week to practice speaking Arabic and to learn more about Omani culture. I also will stay with her three times over the course of the program, and I'm looking forward to the next weekend already.

She lives with her husband's family, which means that there are always lots of people around, and it's not as gender segregated at some houses are, so we (Rachel, another CLS student, is also there) see pretty much everyone (other students do not have this luxury). There are a range of children, ranging from born in the last year to my age, as well as a large number of pet birds. The Omani lifestyle seems very relaxed, especially for women during Ramadan. We took naps, cooked food, slept a lot, walked around the neighborhood at night and visited a bunch of other women's' houses, and ate a lot at every one. I got a nose bleed for the first time in years (ever??) because the desert is slowly desiccating my body. Then we slept some more. I fasted for the day that I was with my family, but fasting all day isn't too hard if you wake up at 11 am and then take a 2 hour long midday nap. I did space out and drink some water, but apparently Allah mostly cares about intent, so I'm probably good.

There's work to be done. Also, I sometimes start writing English words backwards now, which is an interesting return to how I wrote in preschool.

Aside from that, we've done a fair few things lately, and I'm rather exhausted, but enjoying (almost) every bit of it. We visited a little castle in Ibri one evening, and explored and then broke our non-fast with falafel sandwiches; we went up to the top of a hill near the center to watch the sunset across a valley, and then had Iftar at our bus driver Mahmoud's house; and then had a calligraphy class. Helpful advice: don't bother going grocery shopping during Ramadan, there's always an Iftar somewhere that someone wants to feed you.

A glorious Muscat hotel Iftar, featuring Indian food and also a lot of other stuff.

Some hill in Ibri, plus Anthony

Finally, this weekend, four girls from the program and I went to Muscat. I think like twelve other girls also went, but we stayed in a different hotel and only ran into them briefly in the souk. We took the bus from Ibri, which was practically empty and air conditioned, so very unlike Moroccan buses, but not nearly as cheap (3.7 rials!). We stayed at the Ramee Guestline Hotel Qurum, since it was relatively cheap online and Oman doesn't appear to have hostels. Also, we have to send in travel request forms 48 hours before we go anywhere, so I can't do what I normally do and just show up and look for places too sketchy and cheap to have websites :(. It was a lovely hotel though, with a pool that we didn't manage to see, but that was ok because we were five minutes from the ocean and just went for a nice, modestly-attired (read "fully-clothed") swim there. We took the outside stairs to get back in because we didn't want the receptionist to judge us, which was a good choice because a. no judgement, and b. there were cool murals on the stair walls depicting jungles and Hindu gods that I somehow forgot to document. At night we went to the souk, because it's the only place in Oman to buy souvenirs, but I have a shockingly low tolerance (and high standards) for souks after Morocco.

Yup.

On the next day, we went snorkeling with the Oman Dive Center, which was located in the Yiti area of Muscat. It was shockingly expensive after snorkeling in Thailand, but it was beautiful, and nice to be able to wear a bikini and drink water during the day and whatnot. I saw sea turtles!

The crew: Yousef, Ahmed, Madeline, and Charlotte

After the snorkeling, we began a transit odyssey to get back to Ibri. We eventually got a cab to the place where we got another cab to Ibri, which turned out to be lots of fun. Our driver, Yousef, was kind of everything you don't want your taxi driver to be - 24 years old, on the internet on his phone, sitting with one of his legs up by the window, sleep-deprived, and hungry (fasting) - but he was very nice and didn't overcharge us, and we seem to have survived. Three of us sat in the back seat (all five of us could have gotten in, but that was unappealing to some members of our group for some reason), so the other seat was occupied by a 19 year old Pakistani guy named Ahmed who works at a barbershop with his family in Ibri. They spent a substantial portion of the ride arguing about why their respective country was better (mostly Ahmed explaining why Pakistan is great, and Yousef being like "...no"), and then Ahmed showed us all a lot of pictures on his phone. He specializes in very pointy looking haircuts, and there are apparently a lot of guns in Pakistan. Yousef stopped to buy Iftar snacks and forced us to eat dates even though he was still fasting, and then stopped again so he could actually eat, at which point we were encouraged to try Ahmed's Pakistani sweets, which we a bit too milky/buttery for me to enjoy, but I ate them anyway. Apparently in Oman it is safest to just always carry snacks with you, so when offered everyone else's, you have something to offer in return. Now I know.

Links Links Links (Vaguely Middle Eastern News Compilation Contemplation 19/6)

I try really hard not to spam Facebook with tons of links to things that are mostly relevant to my studies and not my life (because Facebook is ~all about me~), but sometimes I still want other people to read them, so here goes this week's vaguely Middle Eastern news contemplation:

Firstly, I saw these two articles right next to each other on my newsfeed, and I thought the juxtaposition was interesting. I feel like we're told so often that Israel is an oasis of acceptance in a Middle East full of hate that it's important to note these things too.

I thought the pictures in this article, though not from a particularly reputable news source, were a nice glimpse of hope from Syria, something we don't see too often.

This New York Times editorial (sorry for my future overrepresentation of this source, I have to tell myself it's worth paying for a subscription) caught my attention for the comments on the United States. We're such a large, wealthy country that it's hard to believe we take so few refugees and leave it to Europe and other countries to deal with the problem. Props to the State Department for trying though!

I enjoyed this video because it's in Arabic (woo, practice all the time!) and also because it's about women's involvement in politics in Yemen during the Arab Spring. I'm working on a paper on the same thing in Tunisia, and it's interesting to compare the two. I also recently started following Alex Potter, an American photographer in Yemen, on Instagram. I find her inspiring because she's only five or so years older than me and doing war photography in the Middle East, speaks Arabic, and is bringing attention to a situation that the American media tends to overlook. However, I also think I should try harder to find more people to follow and read that are actually from the regions in question. I speak and read (basic) Arabic, and am capable of reading local news sources, the only thing stopping me is laziness - it's so much easier (faster) to just follow Americans and Brits, and read English captions - but it's important to look beyond the Western point of view, especially since I have the capability to do so. I'm sure there are equally good Yemeni photographers, I just have to find them.

Finally, though not really ~Middle Eastern~, in the U.S. some activists are trying to do Ramadan in a more environmentally friendly way, and that makes me happy. The food waste part especially stood out to me, because in Oman it seems like tons of food goes to waste after normal meals, so I can't imagine after Ramadan meals (though I won't have to imagine in like three hours!).

Week Two Is Done!

Chillin' (Photo courtesy of Kate H.)

Another week has blown by, unlike the predicted cyclone. Another 20 hours of Arabic class, 15 hours or so of homework and studying, not enough sleep, and a little exploring.

Highlights from daily life include: looking at kittens from four floors up.

I unfortunately came down with some sort of illness earlier this week, of the variety that only sleep could fix. Fevers are uniquely awful in a place where temperatures regularly reach (and stay near) 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Arabic classes are uniquely awful when you have a fever and 6 hours of sleep. So it goes.

No one else climbed to the top, so for a moment I was blissfully alone.

Aside from that, last weekend was absolutely delightful, and I have to write about it before I go to my host family's house this afternoon and get totally distracted by Ramadan festivities (رمضان كريم y'all).

I forgot to charge my camera for the first day's adventures... Oops. Here's a Jebel Akhdar pic.

Anyway. On Friday of last week we got up at 7:30 AM, like we had for every day of the program until this morning, when I slept until a glorious 9 AM (this is shockingly early for America Katharine), and went on a trip to a wadi (a valley that fills with water occasionally) and then the family farm of our wonderful center director, Sultan.

Swimming with Sultan (Photo courtesy of Kathleen W.)

This wadi, Wadi Al Thahera (spelling is questionable), was fed by a spring, and had some water despite only one brief spell of rain in the time we've been here. We walked to it along an old aqueduct and over a beautiful Roman (also questionable) bridge, and a few of my classmates and I went for a fully-clothed swim. Luckily it's rather arid here on the edge of the Empty Quarter, so I was nearly dry by the time we got to the bus. I caught some very un-danger-conscious frogs, and generally had a grand time.

Strollin' (Photo courtesy of Kiaya S.)

The farm was fairly close by, and we began with sweets and coffee in house, followed by a tour of the rest of the farm. There were goats, sheep, chickens, and camels, of course. At this point, after a year in Morocco including Eid al Adha, I'm somewhat less entranced by goats and camels than I might have been previously. The highlight for me was the ~plants~. There were tons of date palms that some of the students climbed using an interesting rope device (I was wearing a skirt, sadly); a giant fig tree, on which I found one perfect one; some fenced off and unripe mangos (also sad), and a bunch of other things. I'm now even more determined than I was previously to get a fig tree. I wonder if they grow well in New Orleans... After the fruit tree and animal tour, we went back to... more fruit! There were giant platters with more peaches, bananas, kiwis, mangosteens (!!!), apples, grapes, and oranges than all 26 of us could ever finish. That was followed by naptime, and then... more food. We had delicious probably sheep and rice, eaten sans utensils, and then headed back to nap some more while we digested.

Abandoned village lyfe

Saturday was an all day adventure to Jebel Akhdar, part of a mountain range near Ibri, and the site of Oman's last war, in the late 1950's. The name means "The Green Mountain," but, like so many places in Oman, it was rather brown and dry. That didn't make it any less beautiful though. It was kind of an odd place, half given over to military installations and half to tourists and villages. We visited a rose water factory where they make traditional Omani rosewater, which smells like barbecue and is rather expensive, and then an abandoned village above an empty wadi. This village had apparently been abandoned at some point in the 1960's, after persuasion from the Sultan to come join the rest of the country. We then returned back to the village with the rosewater factory to visit a beautiful spring with a few too many leeches for my taste, and then ate a picnic lunch with some goats that kept trying to steal our food. Rice and meat, no utensils, as per usual. We stopped at University of Nizwa on the way back, attempting to visit some sort of exhibition on the history of Islam in the area, but it had essentially ended by the time we got there. The last group gave us a little presentation anyway, and took a lot of picture of the random Americans in their empty exhibit, which reminds me that I should try to find their Instagram.

A stepped mountainside still used for agriculture

That trip made me want to explore more of Oman's nature, and we have our first free weekend coming up, so inshallah I'll find somewhere accessible!

I <3 wadis