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Call to Worship Dubai

Call to Worship Dubai
Dec 4, 2013 | Blair Lee

Call to Worship Dubai

I am dressed to go out and check out what happens during the Call to Worship in Dubai. The call is broadcast, and then the service is as well. The entire thing lasts about 30 minutes and sounds quite lovely, although I didn’t understand any of it.

When we came back, the concierge asked me if we were Christian, and I said we were not religious. I decided that was the safest response in this Muslim country. I don’t talk about religion at home. I am not going to start here. The concierge was pretty surprised. He said, “But where are you from?” I said the US, and he said, “I know there are Christians and Jews and Hindis, but not religious?” I told him we had that too. I wish I had told him he was forgetting Muslims in his list of religious groups in the US.

The boys would not let me out without one of them either. It felt weird to Sean to be in charge of me. But we got a lot of stares too. I had decided we should stay in the old historic district and there were no women alone on the streets.

Call to worship Dubai, worldschooling, worldschooling India, Blair Lee

New Recording 5-1.m4a

Here is the call to worship Dubai audio file. The call to worship began at 5:30 a.m.  It was very melodious. It went on for about 3 minutes, then stopped and the service which was also broadcast into the neighborhood began at 5:50 and lasted about 15 minutes.

After Dubai, we will be traveling to Delhi, India where we will be volunteering with Cross-Cultural Solutions, working on a service project. Check out this link for more information about incorporating service into your child’s journey through learning.

Check out yesterdays post here and tomorrows here.





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In the air, Flying to Dubai first and then on to India

Flying to Dubai
Dec 4, 2013 | Blair Lee

Well the laugh was on me. For weeks I have been telling everyone we would leave California and fly west. We did not; when flying to Dubai we flew east. When you are 12 hours away it must not matter, and which would you choose European air space or Chinese airspace? So, We flew east over the USA and crossed over into Canada at Minnesota. We flew up and over Iceland, then down to Dubai. We even went over the Ukraine and the Black Sea.

It was an interesting flight. The airplane is huge. It is an A380-800. Guess what, huge airplanes have a huge number of people flying on them. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Until you experience it though, it is hard to understand just what that means. It means a crazy huge line to check in, even with every counter manned. It means rows of long lines to get on the airplane. The number of people in the flight crew is as big as the passenger list on small commuter flights!

Many of the people flying to Dubai with us were catching connecting flights to India or Pakistan. It was a taste of things to come, the smells, clothes, and languages spoken were exotic and interesting. English is not the primary language spoken and we have not even left US airspace. The first few languages spoken over the intercom are Arabic, then Hindi, then English. Oh yes, this is what I signed up for.  There were babies everywhere on the flight too, with mothers walking all over the place, changing tables in the bathrooms, and baby food being served by flight attendants. When dinner was served the choices were lamb (ghost), chicken (murgi), and vegetarian (shakahari). They ran out of vegetarian dinners.

I wish it were cool for me to get up and start snapping photos so you could get an idea of how different this flight is from others I have flown, but it is not ;(.

We got to talking to a woman in line who was headed to Karachi. She came to the US at the age of 20 to marry. It was an arranged marriage. She has been here 22 years now. She told us she loves to visit Pakistan, but she is thankful that she lives in the US and that her daughter, who is 19, was born and grew up in the US. She explained that Karachi is full of girls like Malala but the tribal areas are not. They are feudal and set in their old ways. We asked her if she didn’t worry when she was in Pakistan. She told us the way people deal with the threat of violence that has arisen in Pakistan since 911. She said they are pragmatic about the threat. She said when it is your time, it is your time. That fatalistic approach is the way Pakistani’s cope with the danger. I do not believe in fate, I wonder if I could adapt to this paradigm.

Time for some sleep

Flying to Dubai

16 hours is a crazy long flight! Talk to you tomorrow, with lots of photos.

Sleep did not go as planned. I got sick from something I ate. I spent much of the flight throwing up, which actually turned out okay. It meant that I spent the flight talking (as best I could) to the women standing around in the open areas near the bathroom.

Check out the previous post here and the next post here.