Ramadan in Saudi Arabia

For those of you who have never heard of Ramadan, it is the Islamic month of fasting where Muslims do not eat or drink anything during daylight hours. They do this in order to remember patience, humility and spirituality. For the entire month of August, all of the people in Saudi Arabia have been celebrating Ramadan. At first I was thinking 'how can these people do this, especially living in the desert, I would die!' but soon came to realize how a society like the one here operates during Ramadan. Basically everyone switches their body clock to sleep during the day and stay up all night. Store hours change to being open in the morning, closing for the afternoon and evening, and then re-opening at 9pm until 2am. It is crazy to see the amount of traffic in the middle of the night and little kids at the supermarket at 1am. And it seems even stranger to stay up past my bedtime to ‘go out’ – but not to the bar, I gotta stay up until 10pm or 11pm to go to Ikea or to the mall.

For me, who usually likes to bring a bottle of water with me wherever I go, it has been a funny rule for me to remember that I'm not allowed to drink it in public, or even in my car (our school and compound are completely exempt from Ramadan rules) .

Another religious adjustment that has taken some time to get used to is prayer time. Basically there are five prayer times a day, and they change based on the position of the sun. There's one at around 4am before the sun comes up, one at around noon, one at 3pm, one at around 6:30pm and one at around 9pm. It's neat to hear the 'call to prayer' - basically every mosque (and there are a lot them) projects this call to prayer which I liken to the sound of 'The Lion King' theme song. It's kind of a chant in arabic telling everyone that it's time to pray, but it comes from all around you. You can here it from anywhere in a city or town. The problem is that everything closes during prayer time which lasts for about a half and hour (including grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, etc) So if you show up at McDonald's at dinnertime and you're starving, but it's prayer time, you are out of luck for 30min until they re-open. I wouldn't think it would be very good for business in Canada.

Random fact # 2: It is very difficult for a Westerner like myself to show up at a store when it is actually open