Eid Mubarak to All

Salaams everyone, Eid Mubarak to all. The Holy Month of Ramadhan has sadly come to an end, and we pray that everyone's prayers and fasts have been accepted by Allah SWT, iA.

If you have been reading our blogs, you wil know that last Eid was fantastic here. It made up for the fact that Ramadhan wasnt packed with the same feeling as it normally is back home, due to the community atmosphere that is lacking here. But anyways, Eid last year made up for it. This year, not quite :)

So there is a story to all this. Eid was either supposed to be on Wed or Thur. Our school is normally off on half of Thur and all of Friday. If Eid was on a Wed, we would have to come to school for half a day on Thursday. The Institute did not want to give us that half a day off :) LOL, everyone tried, from teachers to students..lol... but we have to obey the rules.. anyways, much more to the story...

So as we got closer to the date, it was still unclear when Eid was going to be, however it was clear that the Country of Syria had confirmed that Eid was going to be on Wed. Because it is a govt holiday, the Inst. was forced to close its doors. That meant that we had Wed off for sure. There was a catch though, if our Eid fell on Wed, we didnt get that Thursday off.... basically a two in one kind of holiday. We waited patiently Tue night to find out when our Eid was going to be, and at midnight we received a message that Ayatullah Sistani declared that Eid would be Thursday, you know what that means, a 3 day weekend :) wed, thurs, and friday :-)Well deserved for both students and staff. We were in class from 9-5, 5 and a half days a week while fasting... not an easy task, though rewarding :)

However, ther was a catch to having Eid on Thur.. all other Maraja's declared Eid on Wed, therefore the formal Eid prayers that take place at the Haram was on Wed and we missed out on it :( We had a small eid prayer gathering at our school, where Sheikh Mohammad Ali Ismail lead the prayers and us students were there. Alhamd it was nice but not the same as last year... oh well, cant win them all:)

One of the couples at our school has started a photo diary, this way you can view pictures of happenings, he doesnt mind that we put it on our blog, so cut and paste the link below to view pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/JAMIL.BANDALI/JamilFatimaSYRIAPhotoDiary

Thats it for now, much more to come in the upcoming weeks :)

Salaams