"The daily period of fasting starts at the breaking of dawn and ends at the setting of the sun. In between -- that is, during the daylight hours -- Muslims totally abstain from food, drink, smoking, and marital sex. The usual practice is to have a pre-fast meal (suhoor) before dawn and a post-fast meal (iftar) after sunset."
10.16.04 :: bad jenny... forgot and had a bit of chocolate around noon :[
went surfing. should ask safia about water (even salt water) that gets in my mouth while swimming..
10.18.04 :: today was the worst day so far, but still not too bad. my mouth is always really dry when i wake up. i get used to it by early afternoon, then i feel hungry once in a while, but it usually goes away after a few minutes. looking forward to the ramadan@mit dinner tonight :]
10.19.04 :: woke up around 6:30 this morning to drink water and brush my teeth (then fell asleep again and slept through 2.51 and 1.00). that seemed to work pretty well (besides missing class), didn't get thirsty during the day, and i ate a lot at 6pm.
10.22.04 :: oh man, i am a loser. forgot and had a gulp of water yesterday morning, then worked on 2.009 all day (between 5 hours of class) and got home at 10pm and ate. took a two hour nap, and I've been working on 1.00 since then (it's now 7am). realized i should eat something around 5:30am and made some ramen, but only drank half a cup of water before sunrise... not good. my lips have been really dry this week.. will need to drink a lot of water tonight.
10.23.04 :: again, i'm a loser. went to bed early yesterday (without drinking anything) so that i could get up early and have breakfast and water before playing rugby today. not hard to guess what happened, eh? ('s 8:40am) not sure if i should just suck it up and say it's my own fault for sucking, or give up fasting for the day 'cause otherwise i'm going to be veryveryveryvery sad and dehydrated. my throat is already really nasty. it's not quite the real experience of fasting if i think i can just opt out of it anytime though. grr. wss, eh?
10.24.04 :: well, made it through ~20 minutes of the game yesterday, and then it just kept getting harder to get air down because my throat was so dry. so i had a few gulps of water during the game, but no food 'til sundown. kind of :/ today i got up at 6 and had a nice cooked breakfast and orange juice. 1 week down! i've noticed a couple things so far. i think my food standards have gone down - i'm happy enough to be eating that i'm not nearly as picky. danny's watered down orange juice and cambridge tap water taste great. the other thing is that meals seem like they should be a bigger deal than they usually are. some days the past week i've just been cramming down food between doing work, but when i had the chance i really appreciated getting to sit down and enjoy my meal. i can also see why ramadan would be a time to visit family and friends. breaking the fast is more fun with other people. meh. enough thinking for now, i need to tool.
10.26.04 :: hungry! i think i do get hungrier during the day when i have breakfast. strange. but i got up at 5:30 this morning to study for this afternoon's archeology midterm and had some oatmeal, and now i'm really hungry. throat feels crappy too, but at least my nose isn't running right now. hate being sick. hate!
10.30.04 :: something i've been feeling for a few days but really just thought of concretely: it's very lonely to be doing ramadan in the US. Safia mentioned a couple times how it's much more of a festival in muslim countries, with almost everybody fasting during the day, and celebrations all over the place at night. everyone breaking the fast together after sundown, and another gathering for a meal before dawn. but here, everyone around me is eating and drinking all around me during the day. friends take lunch breaks or go out between classes, i have to refuse when they offer to share a bit, there are tons of free meals that i'm missing (including an IHOP tomorrow!), i can't even go have dimsum on weekends :[ so that's one way that i feel a little left out and isolated. i think the thing i'm feeling more is that i'm not really sharing this experience with anyone. safia and caitlin are also fasting, but i don't see them very often, maybe once every two or three days. in the evenings i still usually eat with danny, but we've both been pretty busy with school and things recently so not always. and when i get up at 6am to eat, the hall is quiet and empty. so i drink some water and make some food and eat it and pet lucca, and go back to bed, while everyone else stays warm and comfy and dreaming. maybe this is something that affects people of any religion or strong dedication to anything - feeling very different than everyone around me because i'm doing something personal that is taken for granted/ignored by most people. i can see how muslims would feel especially alone in the US, even more outside of concentrated communities, because they are so outnumbered. i guess the concept behind ramadan might be similar to that of lent, but there are so many catholics that you'd still feel some camradarie most places you go, and even most non-catholics are familiar with lent. meh. or maybe i don't feel connected just because i actually don't share a common faith with other people. but anways,i seem to be awake now. shower!
11.02.04 :: from http://www.factmonster.com/spot/ramadan1.html.
"Fasting serves many purposes. While they are hungry and thirsty, Muslims are reminded of the suffering of the poor. Fasting is also an opportunity to practice self-control and to cleanse the body and mind. And in this most sacred month, fasting helps Muslims feel the peace that comes from spiritual devotion as well as kinship with fellow believers."
ramadan ends on Nov. 14th. More than halfway through!
11.15.04 :: and then i got hosed and stopped writing. but i kept fasting! it got tiring. a couple days i got really really hungry and just ignored it. towards the end i was pretty thoroughly dehydrated, and had bloody noses, and once accidently dripped some blood into my mouth.. ewww. i also kinda cheated a couple days by deciding that as long as i didn't swallow, i could brush my teeth after dawn. today was great. i had a food truck lunch and was quite happy about it. but now it's 10pm, i'm still doing urop work, and haven't started a pset that's due tomorrow... yeah. the end!