Laptops... an update

A while back I had a post about laptops. Libyan school children are supposed to be getting laptops, a part of the One Laptop per Child project. I found an update about the project, here. - there's even a video showing a laptop in action.

Rainy days

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain but it stopped after a bit. I really like rain, actually the only negative thing I can think about rain is the laundry. I only have a clothes line for drying clothes, no tumble drier - not that they don't exist here, I don't have one simply because the flat is too small and the electrical wiring not strong enough to handle the load. They weren't thinking about large electrical appliances when they built the flats over 30 years ago. So if it rains everything stays wet. Since I have eight people in the house to do laundry for I just keep washing and hang it out in the rain... eventually it all dries. If I stop doing the laundry it piles up too fast and I'd never catch up. So, rain or shine, there's always laundry to be done.

I remember once my sister-in-law had come for a visit and I had just taken all the clothes off the line and was sitting down to fold them. At the time she had two children, but only her son lived with her. She had sent her daughter to live with her mother because she said having two children was too difficult. She looked at the mountain of laundry and said, 'Wow! I can't believe you do this much laundry every week.' I replied, 'This is the laundry for one day.' Her mouth hung open and she said 'Really??' 'Yep, everyday it's like this.'

Imagine only doing laundry once a week! What would that be like? A while ago I made a schedule and said everyone would be responsible for doing their own laundry. Each person had their own day and I gave each person their own basket for their clothes. Did my plan work? Unfortunately, it did not. The kids decided to skip their specified day and let their laundry pile up. If we were living in a bigger place I would have just ignored that and let them deal with it, but with eight people living in a sardine can-sized flat it is just impossible to let mess and clutter accumulate. I gave in and started washing again.

Laundry will just be a life long ordeal... I suppose I could run off and join a nudist colony somewhere, but I don't think I could be so cruel as to impose my nakedness on anyone. lol

Ahhh! I can hear thunder. It's going to rain some more....

Autumn . . .

Autumn has arrived in Libya. The leaves on the trees are slowly turning from green to brown with all the lovely shades of gold and red in between. I took a peaceful walk at the farm yesterday. The weather was perfect; cool, fresh and the skies where blue with hardly a cloud to be found.


Though the trees are losing their leaves, the grass is green again, the effect of the recent rains. The earth has lost the dusty smell it has during the summer and you can walk without getting your shoes full of loose sand.


The very first wildflowers are beginning to appear. Always the yellow flowers show up first.



The olives are ripening, some are ready to be picked. Soon we will replenish our supply of olive oil and process olives for eating.

I watched the sunset and then went home just as the owls and bats began their day.

Giving Thanks My Own Way

I had a nice Thanksgiving after all! I didn't eat the traditional turkey and I had to work but I made the most of it and went on the have a nice day. It was really nice that I got so many nice comments from readers. Thanks! (There are too many nice's in there - I would blast my students for that!)

What really made my day was that I decided to share Thanksgiving with my students at school. I have a class that are at intermediate level and this particular class is comprised of Libyan, Egyptian and Iraqi students. I first asked them what their ideas about Thanksgiving were and they either didn't know, or they thought it was religious and somehow connected with Christmas and Christianity (which it is not). So the first thing I had to do was explain what Thanksgiving was about and then I handed them out a reading that I prepared that was about the first Thanksgiving. You can find it here: Thanksgiving

We had a good time learning about a truly American holiday and the students picked up new vocabulary words such as: venison, wrestling, colonists, tribesmen, game (used in the context of wild game), utensils, epidemic, etc. Everybody liked learning something that they had had misconceptions about. We finished the class by talking about different types of holidays and the meanings of different things that symbolized certain holidays, for example the Christmas tree, candles for Miloud, fool (broad beans)for Ashura, etc. I promised the students I would print out the post about Al-Fatasha that was posted recently on My Enchanting Sareeb. It was a successful lesson.

So today I sit down to open check my e-mail and what do I find? A letter sent to me by someone regarding my post about Thanksgiving. They didn't have the guts to post their opinion in my comments section. So I'll share it here:

Dear Sister Khadija,

If you have adopted Islam as your faith, then it would be irrelevant if not sinful to celebrate it since it is a holiday in the christian calendar. In Islam, we thank ALLAH tens of times every single day not just once a year.

I found it a pity that people are congratulating you on “Thanksgiving” eventhough you proclaimed your Islam. Please know that even greeting the kuffar on christmas and other religious holidays of theirs is haram, by consensus. Similarly, Muslims are forbidden to imitate the kuffar by having parties on such occasions, or exchanging gifts, or giving out sweets or food, or taking time off work, etc., because the Prophet peace be upon him said: "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." For more information please read the rest of the article http://thetruereligion.org/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=275

Salam

Please share this information with your readers

You'll notice that the 'person' hasn't the guts even to sign their name. Too bad this 'person' didn't have a chance to sit in my classroom yesterday, sharing some time with warm, friendly, caring, and open-minded students. This 'person' quotes Prophet Mohamed (peace be upon him) as saying "Whoever imitates a people is one of them." - Yes! I'm one of them! I'm an American Muslim - I'm not imitating anyone. How sad that there are such bigoted people in this world....sigh...

Depressed

Today's Thanksgiving... I am here in Libya where today is like any other... I'll go to work, as usual.

It's not only Thanksgiving today, it's also Jenna's birthday today too. She wants a 'Fulla' jump rope - one that has a counter that will tell her how many jumps she's jumped. I'll have to go get her one, but she'll have to wait to use it until after she finishes her exams, otherwise she will forget all about studying on her quest for reaching a zillion jumps.

The banging upstairs continues... I'm really getting disgusted with the non-stop noise. I get a break when I go to work but tomorrow starts the weekend and I'll be stuck listening to it for the duration. Yesterday, while taking a shower they were above my head banging away. I heard a huge crash of what sounded like the idiot workers dropping the bathtub. I thought for sure it would come crashing through the ceiling and I imagined rescue workers would be pulling me out of the rubble, dead, naked and wet. It's a wonder I didn't suffer a heart attack!

No turkey for us, at least not this week. There's a wedding in the family and I'll have to go and eat Libyan food while listening to yet more noise. sigh....

Have a happy Thanksgiving for all who celebrate it.

Thumbs down

I was really excited to see that after all these years Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens put out a new album, An Other Cup. I was looking forward to hearing something great... but did I? NO!

Stuck in the seventies, same old, same old and every song seemed like it had to have a message behind it. One song, Greenfields, Golden Sands, sounded like he was going to start singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. Imagine Cat Stevens singing that! uuugh! What on earth was he thinking???

A couple of the songs are not even songs... poetry read with music in the background. The good old days of having his music going through your mind all day long are over... at least not with this album. There aren't even any songs that are sing-a-long-able, it's kind of listen to only music... and I listened to it once... and felt cheated..... sigh...

Another weekend is over

Today marks the beginning of the kid's mid-term exams. They've been studying all weekend long. Well, actually, they've been mostly fighting with each other, or trying to watch cartoons and they've got either the CD player blasting away, or mp3 players stuffed into their ears. At least that what it seems they've been doing to me. When I tell them to get back to work they complain that they need an occasional break from study.

I've decided not to nag at them too much. They need to be taught that they are responsible for their studies - I certainly can't sit on them all the time, can I?

Ibrahim has been up to his usual tricks. He's broken the glass in the kitchen window. Thank God no one got hurt but it will be difficult to replace because the glass was a special tinted glass that we had installed before we moved in 16 years ago. I'm not sure I'll be able to match the same kind of glass and in order to replace it I'll have to take the window off it's hinges and drive around to the various workshops that sell glass. The thought of having to do this doesn't thrill me at all.

If Ibrahim doesn't make me lose my mind the neighbour upstairs will. The fourth week of pounding and banging upstairs has begun. I can't imagine what else they guy up there has left to knock down.

All the noise, both in my house and beyond, makes me nervous - I am looking forward to going back to work.... it seemed like an awfully long weekend.