Yes there are Eid gifts, Eid cards, Eid decorations, etc etc. Here are a couple of cards I scammed off Google. The last one is an advertisement. You betcha the stores get into the "act" of marketing during a holiday here.
It's official, the head Emom (the official name of the head of a Muslim church, not a new-age name for a female on internet) saw the right thing in the moon (on the moon? by the moon?) this morning between 3-4 am and Ramadan is official over. We know this because at around 430 am, several great loud calls were heard all over the area. As I mentioned earlier, there are several mosques within seeing (and hearing) distance from our apartment. Men (of course) chant, call, (not sing--never call it a song) these beautiful, soulful invitations/reminders to pray. Usually they last about 1 minute. So it was a very surreal experience to be awakened from a deep sleep to the sound of several beautiful, baritone calls to prayer surrounding the area. It must have lasted for 10 minutes.
Now all my students can go back to a regular schedule of eating and sleeping. The poor lil honeys have been keeping a hectic schedule over the past month: go to school from 845 to 145, then go home and take a nap, then at 630, eat a large meal (think Thanksgiving every night) for a coupel hours, then go out a visit family, get to bed around 1230 am, be awakened at 330 am to eat before the sun rise and start all over again.
I didn't fast during the month, although my eating habits changed due to the restrictions. I thought I would lose weight, but alas, I don't think that's the case--maybe it's just water retention because of the heat (tee hee).
The purpose of Ramadan (from my perspective) is for the Muslims to learn patience and develop more charitable habits. Several times the comments given by taxi drivers when we would ask how much the ride home would be from the current location, they would say..."One dinar, two dinar, five dinar-it's your choice, it's Ramadan". And then they would smile (as we gave them one dinar). When I told my students I was giving them the gift of reading a story to them, they smiled and only the brave ones said, "could you give us money instead?" (yeah when they could easily buy and sell me!)
It's been interesting to be here during the holy month of Ramadan. Now we'll see what normal life is in Kuwait. Stay tuned for details.
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