Jet lag

If you travel overseas, jet lag will most always get you. Once I had thought I had adapted pretty quickly to Omani time, yesterday night got the best of me. I couldn’t sleep for most of the night. I started to get drowsy by 7am, so I made the rookie mistake of taking a short nap without setting my alarm and then waking up twelve hours later in time for a late dinner. So I stayed up all tonight, browsing the web and reading the book “Islam” by Karen Armstrong (very informative book!). Once I heard the 5:28 Fajr call to prayer, I knew this was going to be one long day.

When you live near several mosques, you get to hear a few of the imams calling out the prayer at the same time, which is pretty interesting. I opened the window to hear it better and look outside. Some may expect, as I once had, that people on the street would immediately lay out their mats, face Mecca, and start praying. But that’s not the case! I haven’t once seen a Muslim do this during the call to prayer. I’d imagine there are many devout Muslims who do go to the mosque at the appropriate times and pray, but what I have observed is that as long as you pray several times a day, you’re fine. For example, one of my Arabic teachers went into the bathroom before class and spent a few minutes praying there, and that was good enough. Stereotype about the Middle East busted!

The hotel we're living in for the next couple of weeks 

The view outside our window (just makes you want to go free running)

Well, the sun is beginning to rise here, so I’m going to have to buckle down and stay awake the rest of today!