It’s like there’s a huge block in my head that’s preventing
me from writing. I feel stupid. I need to go out and get some physical
exercise. All this cleaning and shopping seriously isn’t for me. I mean come
on. Just the other day I ended up buying myself a pair of pink shoes. Me.
Buying pink shoes. I don’t even like shoes. Or at least I pretend I don’t.
*sigh*
***
This is my attempt to blog while I’m here in the States.
Initially, I wanted to record everything that happened on this trip and post it
on my blog. Kind of like a written vlog. But that hasn't seemed to work out
*see previous post* I’m going to blame the lack of exercise and overeating.
***
I know it’s Ramadan
and I should be directing my energy to reading Quran and praying but for some
reasons I don’t feel like doing anything. All I want to do is sleep and sleep
and sleep.
***
So far, I've written two tiny posts. It seems I’m doing quite
well as long as I keep my posts short. Extremely short. Did I mention I feel
stupid?
***
So I guess I should mention some of the places we’ve been to
in the past week here in Louisville. You’ve probably guessed by now that we’ve
done a lot of shopping – and you’ll be surprised to know a lot of food shopping.
There are actually a lot of Halal food stores here. Pretty convenient, huh? The
first time we walked into a grocery store, which happened to be Kroger’s; we
ended up spending around a hundred dollars. On food. That’s what happens when you send a bunch of
fasting kids into a grocery store and everything looks so good. We did end up having
to check everything we picked up for the letters UD or kosher (which is as halal
as stuff gets over here). This lead to loud whispers across the aisles asking
if the chocolate chip cookies cookies we’d picked up were Halal or not. Unfortunately,
we couldn’t find kosher bread but upon asking two of the staff members there,
they kindly redirected us to a Kroger’s that did sell kosher bread.
***
Have I also mentioned that people here are genuinely nice?
As we were leaving Kroger’s, a young boy of ten or eleven, stopped while
passing by just to say “Asalamualaikum”.
Another lady at Macy’s greeted us the same way. People keep asking where
we’re from and every time I mention Saudi, they usually mention a relative or
friend they know living there. A guy at Target came up to us while we were
looking at bed sheets and after finding out we’re from Saudi, stated that he
was learning Arabic and greeted us with “Kaifahaluk?”. We ended up having a mini
Arabic lesson right then and there. Personally, I think it’s great that people are
so warm towards us. That isn’t to say that people don’t stare and look at us
weird when we first walk into any store. But I'd like to think they’re more curious than
anything else.
Here’s the view from
outside our apartment:
Random Louisville pictures:
Congrats, I actually managed to write 500+ words. *Gives self a cookie*
Oops, I'm fasting.
