Tangled Up In Blog

Eid

Last night Andy, Christina, Chuck and I went to some of their student's house for Eid, one of the major Muslim holidays. Eid celebrates the end of Ramadan when they fast from sunup to sundown. On Eid the kids stay home from school and play all day, there's a ton of food and family and friends stop during the day to eat and visit. They fed us a TON of food...I ate roti (AMAZING!), mixed vegetables, and a shrimp dish that was really spicy and very very good. It reminded me a lot of eating in Louisiana since when I finished they kept trying to feed me more food. After I thought I was done they heaped rice on my plate which I ate all of because I didn't want to be rude...Then when Andy finished they gave him a TON of rice...When he was about halfway done he tried to slide some on my plate and I pulled it away so he looked at me with this pleading look and said "come on, help me out" so pitiful...so I took some of his rice too.
The kid's dad, Halim, showed us the alphabet they use in Bangladesh, which is where they are from. I first met them about two years ago when we went for Eid, and I didn't go last year, but it was amazing how much better his English was from when we had first met. Learning about the alphabet was really neat and the kids told us the story of Eid. Andy spent part of the time playing FIFA street soccer with the boys, Mohammed, George, and Alfred, in the back room which was really funny because every couple of minutes I heard him go "ooohhh" or "urghhhhh". Mohammed's little sister, Hasnat, gave Christina and I henna tattoos which was really cool. She has a bit of a potty mouth so I really like her. I don't know if the parents don't know English curse words or if they just don't care but two years ago she said "shit" repeatedly and no one cared then apparently last year she dropped several f bombs and no one batted an eye. This year she just said piss a lot which isn't a curse word but we weren't allowed to say in my house.
Anyway, we had a great time...everyone was really really nice. It was about 7:45 when we said we needed to get going and the Dad was like, oh stay until 8, which I thought was very cute.

Labels: NYC sights, students

posted by carolyn @ 8:46 AM