Arab Night

Last Wednesday, we had Arab Night! It was so much fun! We first went to the forum room to hear about the Arab culture. The Arabic teacher talked about the culture and customs of Islam, particularly prayer. Two men sang the call to prayer for us that is announced throughout all of Jerusalem five times a day. After the call to prayer, the Islam people pray, so the two men demonstrated for us how the people pray. It was really interesting to hear about their religion. I have a lot of respect for their beliefs and the loyalty they have to Allah. 

After the forum, we went ate Arab food in the Oasis. Early in the day, a group of us volunteered to help prepare the meal. I loved preparing the meal because the chiefs would teach us all about the Arab food and how to prepare it. I was in charge of preparing a dish that had stuffed zucchini with wine leafs that had rice in them. Also, I helped prepare the chicken burritos (well that is what we would call them in America). They had an Arab spice, so I didn’t like them very much, but it was fun to prepare. My favorite thing to help with was the cookie dough! I don’t know if I was much help preparing it, but I sure did help eating it when the chief was not around.  

Anyway, so we had dinner in the Oasis with the many dishes that the students helped prepared. It was really nice! To commence the Arab Night, we had a dance in the gym. It was not ordinary dancing though. Some of the local Arab people came and taught us how to do their form of dancing. Basically, you hold each other’s hands in a circle and do a lot of stepping and skipping. All of us had so much fun learning how to “dance”! By the end of the night, we were all extremely happy until we thought about homework and the midterm the next day.