About This Culture: Dancing

The dancing in the Arab world has a lot of varieties depending on the region. The gulf countries are similar in that the men and women don't dance together. The women only dance in front of women. The men will often dance in a line and swing their canes.

I hope you enjoy some of the videos that we've taken of some dancing! We sure love this culture!

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About This Culture: Incense

Incense is used by many Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula. They use it to make their homes and their clothing smell nice! The malls have special shops that sell the best kinds of incense!

My favorite kind of incense that I learned to love right away is frankincense. It has a light, sweet smelling scent. You put it in an incense burner on top of a red hot coal. The picture on the right is an Omani man in his shop selling frankincense and incense burners. The picture below shows the frankincense burning.

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About This Culture: Fancy Abaayas

There's a huge variety in styles of abaayas. Recently we were visiting another gulf country and saw these abaayas on display. There's a lot of decoration down the sides and the back. Often times the sheilah that is worn on the head matches the abaaya. Most of the ladies where we live wear simple abaayas without very much decoration.

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About This Culture: Clothing

We have gotten used to the local dress here, but I know it's not as common in the States. We've lived in three different countries in the Arabian Peninsula and each country is slightly different.

Women

It's most common for women to wear the abaaya, the long black cloak. It is long sleeved and goes all the way to the ground. It's a way of being modest. They cover their head with the sheilah, also called hijaab. Some women go even farther and cover their face using a niqaab and then you can only see their eyes.

The picture on the right is of a lady at the beach talking to her son. She's wearing the niqaab so you can't see her face at all. 

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About This Culture: Hajj, Ramadan, and Prayer

I don't claim to know very much about Islam, although I have learned a lot over the last 4 years. There are five pillars of Islam and I wanted to mention three of them here.

"The Five Pillars of Islam are the five obligations that every Muslim must satisfy in order to live a good and responsible life according to Islam."

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About This Culture: Henna

I went with some friends to get henna a couple days ago. This is what it looks like today. I love the brown color of this henna!! We went to get henna because one of my friends was going to travel to see her family and she wanted to have some beautiful henna to show them! 

This is one of the many things that I've grown to love about this culture! Henna can be done for special occasions or just for fun.

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Tallest Building in the World!

A few weeks ago we took a little trip to the Big City! We had a great time catching up with friends and enjoying the malls! One day we got to go up the tallest building in the world!!

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Teaching Joseph the Arabic Alphabet

Joseph is learning two alphabets right now, English and Arabic. He seems to be doing pretty well with the English alphabet and he knows a few of the Arabic letters too.

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Happy Birthday, Tim!

Tim’s birthday was also the first day of Eid! A national holiday on Tim’s birthday!!! We were busy the day of his birthday, but we celebrated the next day too! We sang happy birthday and had cake at some friends’ house. 

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Eid Al Fitr

After Ramadan there is a three day holiday called Eid Al Fitr. It’s a fun time of celebration. The first day is important for visiting. In the morning there are micro-visits. Just stop by and say hi. The kids get money.

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Fancy Iftaar Meal

During Ramadan the hotels offer a special Iftaar meal at sunset. So, we went with some American friends to break the fast at sunset. 

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Learning English

These are the two boys that I’m tutoring a couple times a week. I teach them English and along the way I’m learning more Arabic.

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